Shelley as a Revolutionary Poet

Shelley was a true-born child of the French Revolution. The spirits of that revolution found its expression
in Shelley’s poetry. But as a critic observes:

“The greater rigour of his nature begot in him a passion for reform and a habit for rebellion which are
the inspiration of his longer poems.”

Throughout his life he dreamt of a new society, a new world, absolutely free from tyranny and
exploration. He was a dreamer of dreams and was always at war with the existing world of complete
chaos and confusion. He led a ceaseless war against the existing political, social and economic
institutions.

The Age of Romanticism is one of great turmoil in which Europe faced the greatest and frightful uprising
– the French Revolution. The watchwords of the Revolution were Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It
stood for the natural rights of man and total abolition of class distinctions. Its impact on the civilized
world was unimaginable. The English people, embarked on an age long struggle monarchy, found in the
watchwords a reflection of their own ideas and ideals.

In spite of the failure of the French Revolution, the social and political upheaval in France played a great
part in influencing English Romantic Movement. The Revolution was characterized by three phases
which affected English romanticism. These are:

1. The Doctrinaire Phase – The Age of Rousseau

2. The Political Phase – The Age of Robespierre and Danton

3. The Military Phase – The Age of Napoleon

These phases had a deep impact on Shelley’s mind. Shelley was the only passionate singer of the
Revolution. This was not because he looked beyond the instant disaster to a future reconstruction, but
because his imagination was far less concrete than those of his great contemporaries. Ideas inspired
him, not episodes. So he drank in the doctrines of Godwin, and ignored the tragic perplexities of the
actual situations. Compton Rickett is of the view:

“Widely divergent in temperamental and genius as Shelley and his mentor were, they had this in
common – a passion for abstract speculation. Only Godwin expressed them in ‘Pedestrian’, Shelley
gave to them music and colour.”
Shelley’s revolutionary attitude was constructive in the long run. In his preface to “The Revolt of
Islam”, he pointed out that the wanted to kindle in the bottom of his readers a virtuous enthusiasm
for liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor prejudice,
can ever wholly extinguish among mankind. In another work “Prometheus Unbound” Shelley made
his hero arch-rebel and compared him with Satan of “Paradise Lost”. In the concluding stanza of the
song there is a return of belief that Earth shall share in the Emancipation of man:

Where morning dyes her golden tresses,

Shall soon partake our high emotions;

Kings shall turn pale!

“Ode to the West Wind”, was also written by the poet under the direct influence of the times. The
moral, social and political regeneration seemed to Shelley possible in the atmosphere of Nature. The
‘West Wind’ seemed to be an expression of this background. Finding his life miserable, he implores the
wind:

Oh, life me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Shelley’s revolutionary passion flows from his idealism. All his life he dreamed of an ideal world without
evil, suffering and misery. It would be a world where reason would rule supreme, and Equality, Liberty
and Fraternity wound be no empty words.

“Ode to West Wind” expresses the poet’s intense suffering at the tyranny of life and his great hope in
the bright future of humanity. The poem symbolizes three things; freedom, power and change. Clutton
Brock, his great critic says:

“For Shelley, the forces of nature have as much reality as human beings have for most of us, and he
found the same kind of beauty that we find in the beauty of human beings in the great works of art.”
Thus the poet finds the “West Wind” a fit symbol to raise and enliven his spirit out of the depths of
desolation, dejection and weariness. Moreover the ‘Wind’ should scatter his thoughts among the
universe:

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of his verse,

Scatter, as form an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Conclusion
It may be said that the Revolution to Shelley was a spiritual awakening, the beginning of a new life. He
traced all evil in life to slavery. Free and natural development is only possible when he enjoy liberty. And
liberty in his opinion was freedom from external restraints. Freedom was the first watchword of the
French Revolution. Thus the Revolution kindled the imaginative life of Shelley as it did that of
Wordsworth. But the fire in Wordsworth extinguished before long; whereas in Shelley it kept burning all
through his brief career and permeated all through is poetic work. Cazamian said:

“Shelley belongs to that rare species of mankind whom reason and feeling convert revolutionaries in
the flush of youth an who remain so for the rest of their life.”