Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Percy Bysshe Shelley asserts that "Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
It is possible to join him and those who came before and since; to add to the body of work, our own words which have "startled" us "by the electric life" contained in them. These posts are an attempt to become a "mirror" and reflect the "gigantic shadows" or big ideas, "which futurity" our muse, "casts upon the present". Shelley's big ideas included a list of 5 very specific reform goals:
This list was made in 1819-20 and yet to this day we are still urging our governments to enact them. Notice that the list of reforms are transportable across time, place and culture unless your culture craves runaway debt, armies of aggression, privileged classes beyond liability, religious doctrine as public policy, and justice unavailable.
My understanding of reading Shelley is that to become a legislator of the world, to become an agent of reform, a trinity of action is required.
It is possible to join him and those who came before and since; to add to the body of work, our own words which have "startled" us "by the electric life" contained in them. These posts are an attempt to become a "mirror" and reflect the "gigantic shadows" or big ideas, "which futurity" our muse, "casts upon the present". Shelley's big ideas included a list of 5 very specific reform goals:
- We would abolish the national debt. (future post coming about the subject of "national debt" as well as this post about abolishing the tax system with a financial transaction fee, the APT)
- We would disband the standing army.
- We would, with every possible regard to the existing rights of the holders, abolish sinecures (payoffs).
- We would, with every possible regard to the existing interests of the holders, abolish tithes, and make all religions, all forms of opinion respecting the origin and government of the Universe, equal in the eye of the law.
- We would make justice cheap, certain and speedy, and extend the institution of juries to every possible occasion of jurisprudence.
This list was made in 1819-20 and yet to this day we are still urging our governments to enact them. Notice that the list of reforms are transportable across time, place and culture unless your culture craves runaway debt, armies of aggression, privileged classes beyond liability, religious doctrine as public policy, and justice unavailable.
My understanding of reading Shelley is that to become a legislator of the world, to become an agent of reform, a trinity of action is required.
- One must study the past struggles for liberty handed down through the lineage of great poets, philosophers and educators.
- One must allow the muse or unapprehended future, to cast its shadow of words and images upon us to the degree that we are sincerely astonished.
- And one must publish (communicate) our sparks of revolutionary ideas as lawgivers have done since Solon of Athens (638-558 BC) whose poetry and reforms were recorded on "axones" or wooden "lazy susans".
My contribution is the 6th reform which caught me totally by surprise on June 1st 2008 while I was traveling with members of the Simon Fraser University Graduate Liberal Studies class in Italy as we traced our way from Montreux to Rome via Venice, Florence, Siena and other Tuscan and Umbrian towns that either Shelley, Byron or Rousseau had spent time in. I was allowed to accompany the class as a member's spouse and although I was not enrolled in the program, I was expected to complete the course readings and participate in the class discussions along the way. This fulfilled the first essential action required in becoming "... a legislator of the world."; the study of the past masters of thought.
The environment of reading, study, discussion and travel set up the second requirement of experiencing the startling excitement generated by the current of power contained in an idea (the 6th reform), and that led me here to the third essential of publishing.
The environment of reading, study, discussion and travel set up the second requirement of experiencing the startling excitement generated by the current of power contained in an idea (the 6th reform), and that led me here to the third essential of publishing.
The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Edouard Fournier (1889)
"A Philosophical View of Reform"
Shelley's 200 page (+/-20,000 word) manuscript "A Philosophical View of Reform" was written between December 1819 and May of 1820 but never finished ending abruptly in mid-sentence and was first published by T. W. Rolleston in 1920.
A copy in various formats including PDF is available offsite here: www.archive.org/details/philosophicalvie00shelrich.
"A Philosophical View of Reform" is where we first see Shelley's famous argument that "Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
Shelley's insights into this remarkable assertion are found in the prose at the end of his Chapter One (of only three completed) leading up to his conclusion.
"Such is a slight sketch of the general condition of the hopes and aspirations of the human race to which they have been conducted after the obliteration of the Greek republics by the successful tyranny of Rome, its internal liberty having been first abolished, and by those miseries and superstitions consequent upon them, which compelled the human race to begin anew its difficult and obscure career of producing, according to the forms of society, the greatest portion of good.
Meanwhile England, the particular object for the sake of which these general considerations have been stated on the present occasion, has arrived, like the nations which surround it, at a crisis in its destiny. The literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever followed or preceded a great and free development of the national will, has arisen, as it were, from a new birth. In spite of that low-thoughted envy which would underrate, through a fear of comparison with its own insignificance, the eminence of contemporary merit, it is felt by the British that this is in intellectual achievements a memorable age, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared in our nation since its last struggle for liberty.
For the most unfailing herald, or companion, or follower, of an universal employment of the sentiments of a nation to the production of a beneficial change is poetry, meaning by poetry an intense and impassioned power of communicating intense and impassioned impressions respecting man and nature.
The persons in whom this power takes its abode may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little correspondence with the spirit of good of which it is the minister. But although they may deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve that which is seated on the throne of their own soul.
And whatever systems they may have professed by support, they actually advance the interests of Liberty.
It is impossible to read the productions of our most celebrated writers, whatever may be their system relating to thought or expression, without being startled by the electric life which there is in their words. They measure the circumference or sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and
all-penetrating spirit at which they are themselves perhaps most sincerely astonished, for it is less their own spirit than the spirit of their age.
They are the priests of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they conceive not; the trumpet which sings to battle and feels not what it inspires; the influence which is moved not but moves. Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
1819 was a productive year for Shelley who began or completed a third of his 24 major works including "A Philosophical View of Reform". Although it took another 100 years before it would be published, Shelley knew that the big ideas he articulated would resonate across time and survive as seeds do, hidden below the leaves of autumn to arise one future spring and act less as an individual's idea but as a reflection of the age.
Shelley's 200 page (+/-20,000 word) manuscript "A Philosophical View of Reform" was written between December 1819 and May of 1820 but never finished ending abruptly in mid-sentence and was first published by T. W. Rolleston in 1920.
A copy in various formats including PDF is available offsite here: www.archive.org/details/philosophicalvie00shelrich.
"A Philosophical View of Reform" is where we first see Shelley's famous argument that "Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
Shelley's insights into this remarkable assertion are found in the prose at the end of his Chapter One (of only three completed) leading up to his conclusion.
"Such is a slight sketch of the general condition of the hopes and aspirations of the human race to which they have been conducted after the obliteration of the Greek republics by the successful tyranny of Rome, its internal liberty having been first abolished, and by those miseries and superstitions consequent upon them, which compelled the human race to begin anew its difficult and obscure career of producing, according to the forms of society, the greatest portion of good.
Meanwhile England, the particular object for the sake of which these general considerations have been stated on the present occasion, has arrived, like the nations which surround it, at a crisis in its destiny. The literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever followed or preceded a great and free development of the national will, has arisen, as it were, from a new birth. In spite of that low-thoughted envy which would underrate, through a fear of comparison with its own insignificance, the eminence of contemporary merit, it is felt by the British that this is in intellectual achievements a memorable age, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared in our nation since its last struggle for liberty.
For the most unfailing herald, or companion, or follower, of an universal employment of the sentiments of a nation to the production of a beneficial change is poetry, meaning by poetry an intense and impassioned power of communicating intense and impassioned impressions respecting man and nature.
The persons in whom this power takes its abode may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little correspondence with the spirit of good of which it is the minister. But although they may deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve that which is seated on the throne of their own soul.
And whatever systems they may have professed by support, they actually advance the interests of Liberty.
It is impossible to read the productions of our most celebrated writers, whatever may be their system relating to thought or expression, without being startled by the electric life which there is in their words. They measure the circumference or sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and
all-penetrating spirit at which they are themselves perhaps most sincerely astonished, for it is less their own spirit than the spirit of their age.
They are the priests of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they conceive not; the trumpet which sings to battle and feels not what it inspires; the influence which is moved not but moves. Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
1819 was a productive year for Shelley who began or completed a third of his 24 major works including "A Philosophical View of Reform". Although it took another 100 years before it would be published, Shelley knew that the big ideas he articulated would resonate across time and survive as seeds do, hidden below the leaves of autumn to arise one future spring and act less as an individual's idea but as a reflection of the age.
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