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Jaime V. Suzuki

Instructor Matthew Gilbert

English 348

6 December 2010

Poetry and the Channeling of Beauty through the Veil

In his poetry, Percy Shelley searched for ways to describe and eulogize sublime powers,

represented indirectly in ´Mont Blanc,µ and more explicitly in ´Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.µ

Rejecting Plato·s idealism, however, he paints a more inclusive picture in his essay ´A Defence of

Poetryµ in which poets link our world with the spiritual world. Shelley believed that poetry was the

highest moral endeavor in the world because with its use of language that through imagination

allows a new beauty to inhabit the objects of this world we can learn to love our world and be better

persons, while avoiding the pitfalls of becoming embittered at not finding ideal things to love behind

the veil.

At first glance, Shelley·s insistence on looking beyond superficial appearances seems to echo

the Platonic idealism in which all the things in this world are simulacra or flawed manifestations of

perfect ideal things in another plane. And he seems to agree with Plato that there is a clear divide

between the higher realm and our realm when he discusses the role of poetry by saying in his

Defence that poets are able to send forth into human consciousness ´the vanishing apparitions

which haunt the interlunations of life,µ those things of spiritual beauty that do not exist in this world.

These apparitions, in turn, can only bring joy to those in which their sisters abide or sojourn. These

sisters do not inhabit the people with which they abide ´because there is no portal of expression

from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of thingsµ (831-832). That is to
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say, poetry cannot perfectly translate the divinity it is trying to communicate from the spiritual realm

into our realm. However, Shelley does not say that the transcendental principle of unity (i.e the One

or Intellectual Beauty), or the aspects of the divinity manifest in the apparitions are completely

divorced from this world. Instead, he believes that we can tease out their beauty and truth  the

things of this world themselves. In fact, he says, ´[p]oetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the

world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiarµ (829). That is the trick: make the

commonplace new and part of the eternal and transcendental principle of beauty.

So for Shelley, one of the defining characteristics for a poet is a supremely high degree of the

´faculty of approximation to the beautifulµ or the relation between the highest pleasure possible to

achieve from mimetic representation in the arts and its cause. His tool is (metrical) language, an

appropriate choice, ´[f]or language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and has relation to

thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments, and conditions of art have relations among each

other, which limit and interpose between conception and expressionµ (828). Here we see in the

difference between language and other art modes (painting, sculpture, music, etc.), a similar

hierarchy to that of imagination and reason: language is a child of imagination, with no reference to

anything in nature, while the other art modes refer to nature, since they exist as things of this world.

Language, however, is not completely adequate, as we have already noticed by the fact that it cannot

perfectly translate transcendental beauty into this world. In his ´Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,µ

Shelley understands that this sublime power can accomplish things he is unable to put into words.

The speaker in the poem has the hope ´ That thou³O awful LOVELINESS, / Wouldst give

whate·er these words cannot expressµ (71-72). Intellectual beauty operates in which human language

does not have the capacity to describe.

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But what good do poetry and its ability to perceive the One do for our world? Shelley

believes that poetry is a desirable force because the alternative preserves an oppressing status quo.

He introduces the opposition between poetry and the noxious alternative in his discussion of the

differences between reason and imagination: ´Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the

agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substanceµ (826). It is clear from this

conclusion that for him there is a hierarchy between the two, and that without imagination reason

would be useless, dead, or nonexistent. Imagination is essential for poetry since it is the ability to

grasp unifying principles in diverse objects. Later in the essay, he elaborates on the problem of the

lack of imagination, and its greatest expression poetry, in the rational endeavors of human beings

when he says that: ´The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of

man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed

those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slaveµ (830).

Without poetry, any conquest that man achieves traps him into complacency. He may understand

the workings of objects in nature and their relation to each other, but because he does not grasp a

unifying principle of beauty, his knowledge of himself and his spirit does not evolve. Thus, his ever

´newµ scientific knowledge reinforces the illusion of freedom, while in actuality it is perpetuation a

tyranny of reason. Shelley expresses this insight in his ´Hymn to Intellectual Beautyµ when the

speaker of the poem remembers his past in his appeal to the invisible intellectual beauty: ´. . . never

joy illumed my brow / Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free / This world from its dark slaveryµ

(68-70).

Poetry combats the slavery of a world trapped in mere rational relations because it has a

highly salutary moral effect since it is deeply intertwined with love. Specifically, imagination, that

faculty that enables a poet to find the One in things of this world, is a precondition for love: ´The

great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with
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the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good,

must imagine intensely and comprehensivelyµ (829). Shelley is saying, then, that poetry can teach us

how to love. If we can see things of this world partaking of spiritual beauty, we will value these

things and protect them. This protection in turn preserves the creative cycle of finding new and

beautiful meanings in this world, making us turn away from destructive paths. In the ´Hymn to

Intellectual beautyµ Shelley calls forth the ´phantoms of a thousand hoursµ as witnesses of his

pursuit for the unseen power whose shadow he could perceive. He tells us, ´they have in visioned

bowers / Of studious zeal or love·s delight / Outwatched with me the envious nightµ (65-66),

so this pursuit was not only doing as a conscious effort on the part of the speaker, but also as an act

of love. We notice that besides putting ´zealµ before ´delight,µ there is no indication of a hierarchy

between them.

It is in the light of poetry and love that we can begin to understand the failure of the man

that lifted the veil in the Sonnet (´Lift not the painted veilµ). ´[H]e sought, / For his lost heart was

tender, things to loveµ (7-8). This person went to the other side of the veil to look for ´things,µ and

was unsuccessful because he only made a studious effort to lift the veil (the first element of the

pursuit of Intellectual Beauty) without the poetic capability of love to allow his tender heart to

conceptually apprehend that there are no solid things to be securely grasped on the other side, but

´evanescent apparitionsµ or³like this sonnet says³hope and fear. The fact that he could not

´approveµ the things from this world shows that he also lacked the imagination to be able to

experience the truer love that appreciates things as they are while finding beauty in them. In the

Defence, Shelley warns about attempting to bring the narrow morality of the poet·s age in the search

of the principle behind the veil: ´A poet therefore would do ill to embody his own conceptions of

right and wrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical creations, which
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participate in neitherµ (829) The lack of approval from the man in the sonnet stems from the moral

convictions of his age he was unable to cast off.

The different way in which Shelley reacts in ´Adonaisµ illustrates how a poet can catch a

glimpse of the One without ´reaching inµ the world behind the veil and getting lost in its spiritual

insubstantiality:

I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;

Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,

The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. (492-495)

He explains before these lines that it is his poetic faculty that takes him away from Adonais, and this

distancing is cause of concern, even fear, for him. At the same time, he can see through the soul of

Adonais through the deepest veil. We know the soul remains behind the veil because it merely

beacons from the spiritual realm. Shelley knows the Eternal are in the realm where Adonais soul is

now, but he can only name them; poetry cannot grasp these beings nor does it need to. Imagination

allows the poet to see the beautiful One in our world.

Percy Shelley links imagination, poetry, and love in a coherent manner to be able to conclude

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  with his famous bon mot ´Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.µ

Poets link the present and the future in their creative capacity to find the beauty that naturally

belongs to the spiritual realm of the One and apparitions in our world. This found beauty gives

novelty to the commonplace objects in our world; in the future, this novelty will have become

commonplace, so a new poetic revival will be necessary at that time. The imagination necessary to

activate this cycle of poetic inspiration also leads to loving our world imbued with the beauty of a

higher realm. The process is not perfect, since the language of poetry does not effect a perfect
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translation of the spiritual apparitions in our world and we can never enter into the higher realm, but

it is enough: it makes imperfect beings such as ourselves more moral and more aware of the good in

our world.