Shelleyan Top Ten Moments - 2017

Welcome to my inaugural, year end "Shelleyan Top Ten" list. The eligibility criteria for an appearance on this list is pretty straight forward (and subjective!) First the event or occurrence must have contributed to raising the awareness of Percy Bysshe Shelley among the general public. Second, it also needs to have come to my attention - which is not omniscient (this means my list is not necessarily definitive!). Finally, I also have ranked on the basis of whether the moment was unusual or unexpectedly brilliant.

In any event, these sorts of lists are supposed to be fun and are designed to provoke debate and conversation.  So let the discussion begin.

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The 10 Best Shelley Moments of 2017

10.        Entering the list at number ten is the Penn-Shelley Seminar series that is overseen by Eric Alan Weinstein. The seminar brings scholarship from around the world together to examine the life and work of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Over the past three years, more than a dozen Penn faculty members spanning five separate departments have contributed as have almost forty visiting scholars -including me!  You can watch my most recent presentation by clicking the link to "The Radical Shelley in His Time and Ours". Together Eric and his team have produced nearly 100 hours of unique digital scholarly content, all of which is being made freely available. An associated MOOC became of of the world's favourites in 2016. Say what you will about MOOCs, hundreds of people participated in Eric's course as did I. It is fair to say that my entire Shelley project was inspired by that course. Like Shelley, Eric wants to change the world; Shelley can help us to do this. I look forward to the relaunch of the Shelley MOOC in 2018!!! You can learn more about Eric's initiatives here.

9.         At number 9, we have Paul R Stephens (follow him on Twitter here) who launched a series of “On This Day" Tweets that focus on memorable excerpts from the letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Featuring over 300 selections so far, the series also matched the prose with very carefully chosen works of art. Paul is a Shelley scholar working on his PhD at Oxford. With Paul’s permission, I began republishing his selections on The Real Percy Bysshe Shelley Facebook page in November with the addition of a couple of paragraphs of my own commentary.  These posts have proved to be a huge hit, drawing hundreds of reactions and scores of comments and shares. What makes Paul’s selections so clever is the manner in which they draw attention to different aspects of Shelley’s multifaceted character.  So, well done Paul, don’t stop now!!!!

8.         In the summer of 2017, the Keats-Shelley Association of America (full disclosure: I am a Board Member) announced an ambitious online communications strategy which involves revamping its website and launching Twitter and Facebook feeds. The organization has hired Shelley scholar Anna Mercer as the official coordinator. She currently oversees four communication fellows. I have been advocating for this since I joined the Board as I believe social media (despite all of its drawbacks) is an essential tool to build communities. I look forward to great things from this initiative in 2018.

 7.        In March of 2017, English fashion designer John Alexander Skelton deployed Shelley's Mask of Anarchy in his spring runway show. This is an example of members of the general public engaging with Shelley and the radical past and unusual ways. You can read my article, "Shelley Storms the Fashion World" by clicking the button below. Skelton has to be one of the first clothing designers in history whose clothing line was inspired by a bloody massacre.  This might strike many as unusual, but I think it is actually quite an important example of art interfacing with politics and political protest – in a manner Shelley would have whole-heartedly approved.

6.         Frankenreads is another initiative of the Keats-Shelley Association of America. It enters my list at number 6.  An ambitious project it is designed to get people around the world thinking about and reading Frankenstein, the concept is built around a massive, world-wide reading project slated for Halloween of 2018.  While this project is virtually entirely focused on Mary, it can nonetheless function as a gateway through which we can interest Mary Shelley enthusiasts in Percy - after all, he was an active and not insubstantial collaborator on the novel. You can learn more about this brilliant KSAA project here.

5.         Flying in under the radar at number five is Tess Martin's brilliant animation short based on Shelley’s fragmentary poem, The Dirge. You can read the poem here. There is speculation that the poem was based on a true story about Ginevra degli Almieri, who was thought dead of a plague that swept the city of Florence in the year 1400, and was put in a vault to be buried the next day. But she then awakens and is mistaken for a ghost by both her husband and her parents. Martins gorgeous, ghostly interpretation of the poem is exquisite. It is one of the years great Shelley events. Thanks to Tess Martin and Max Rothman the good folks at Monticello Park Productions. I have an upcoming article on this magnificent project.

4.         Shelley took an unexpected star turn in the summer blockbuster, Alien Covenant. This is deserving of fourth place on the list!!  After the movie was released, I was very excited to hear that Shelley's poem Ozymandias features prominently.  The poem's theme is woven carefully into the plot of the movie, with David (played again by Michael Fassbender) quoting the famous line, "Look on my works ye mighty and despair." David, as followers of the movies will know, is a "synthetic humanoid" - one in a long line of such creatures, one of the most famous being Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. That David quotes the poem without a trace of irony is central to the question of whether or not these creatures are fully human or not. For David, not to see that Shelley is employing one of his trademark ironic inversions, suggests that something is not quite right with him. That he mistakenly attributes the poem to Byron is another twist altogether. Enjoy Zac Farini's terrific review, "David or the Modern Frankenstein" by clicking the button below.

3.         During the summer of 2017, I published in three installments, for the first time, the text of a speech given by Shelley devotee and crusading journalist Paul Foot. It was an epic one-and-a-half-hour extemporaneous speech delivered to the London Marxism Conference of 1981.  I have estimated that the project took over two hundred hours – involving laborious transcription, research and editing. The entire speech was ultimately collected together and published on my website in the fall of 2015 by my research and editorial associate, Jonathan Kerr. You Paul epic speech "The Radical Percy Bysshe Shelley" by clicking the button below. Here is a link to the only audio we have, so you can listen along!! Here's to one of the greatest of all Shelleyans, Paul Foot. We will never forget you Paul, you left us too soon.

2.         Sitting in the number 2 position is the Shelley Conference 2017. The project was the brain child of Shelley scholars Anna Mercer and Harrie Neal, who were motivated by their frustration with the fact that, in Anna's words, there is no "regular event, academic or otherwise, dedicated solely to the study of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s works. Neither is there such an event for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.” Given the outsize influence these two writers have had on our modern world, this fact is astonishing.  The Conference was a wonder and featured keynotes by three of the world’s leading Shelleyans: Nora Crook, Kelvin Everest and Michael O’Neill.  You can watch these here, here and here.  Slowly, I am also releasing panel presentations – but the process is somewhat time consuming.  My hope is that this conference will be followed by many more. Anna? Harrie? Percy and Mary owe you big time -- so do we all. Read Anna's article "Why the Shelley Conference" by clicking the button below

The Best Moment of 2017

1.         Pride of place this year goes to Jeremy Corbyn who adopted Shelley's poetry from The Mask of Anarchy as the foundation of his election campaign. The election slogan itself, “For the Many. Not the Few”, had a catalytic effect on the electorate and we can only guess at how many voters it mobilized. Corbyn then went on to quote Mask of Anarchy on several occasions.  The most memorable were at his campaign-concluding rally, and then after the election at Glastonbury. Both occasions were electrifying. Corbyn’s harnessing of Shelley earns pride of place in my year end list because it awoke tens of thousands of people to Shelley’s existence. Opportunities like this tend to be generational – and we just experienced one. His use was also a perfect illustration of why Paul Foot thought Shelley was so important. Shelley doesn’t just supply ideas (though there are plenty of those), he furnishes us with inspirational rhetoric and enthusiasm. Paul wrote, “Of all the things about Shelley that really inspired people in the years since his death, the thing that matters above all is his enthusiasm for the idea that the world can be changed”. Well, thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, we just witnessed such change first hand. Read my article "Jeremy Corbyn is Right: Poetry Can Change the World" by clicking the button below.  Watch the speech below (Shelley is quoted at 2:40). Thank you Mr, Corbyn, your job now is to bring some of Shelley's egalitarian dreams alive. Don't stop with the slogan; Shelley can be your best friend. Don't let us all down.

If you have some moment I have missed, write to me here: graham@grahamhenderson.ca.  2017 was also a terrific year for my website and the associated Facebook and Twitter accounts.  You can read about my progress in building a modern Shelley community here: "The Year in Review - 2017" .  I have big plans for 2018. Happy New Year to everyone. Here's to a magnificent, Shelley-packed 201811

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The Worst Moment of 2017

Now, most folks also offer a reflection on the worst moments of the previous year.  I am no different. For me, hands down, the worst moment of 2017 for Shelley was the release of Haifaa al Mansour’s atrocious re-invention of the lives of Mary and Percy.  It is a hot mess. What facts she doesn't distort to suit her fictional story line, she simply invents.  A fact checker could spend weeks correcting her mistakes. Here it is in a nutshell: the film makers want you to believe that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in a single night based entirely on personal experiences of abandonment and bereavement. No collaboration. No apparent research. Yeah, it is THAT bad. In trying to put Mary on a pedestal it actually completely trashes her reputation for meticulous research, collaboration and hard, hard work. Oh, and after having been abandoned by Shelley in her hour of need (portrayed as a heavy drinker who directly causes the death of her first child) - a man who has stolen credit for her novel - she takes him back at the end of the movie with no questions asked. Because, ya know, that's how it happens in teenland, right?  It also trashes the reputation of almost everyone around her. Despite my hopes it would not find general release, it has. So Shelleyans can look forward to an invented story of Frankenstein’s creation which is jam packed with misrepresentations, false claims, fabrications and innuendo. You can read more about in my article, "The Truth Matters".  This publicity photo pretty much sums up the movie. This is what you will get - a ridiculous, fatuous teen drama. Avoid it if you can. Shame on those who made this film.

Let Liberty Lead Us; Connecting the Radical Poetry of Cottingham, Eminem and Shelley

In Shelley's introduction to Prometheus Unbound, he proudly remarked that he had a “passion for reforming the world”. For a poet who struggled to publish his more radical poetry during his lifetime, he has a remarkable record for actually accomplishing his objective.  His effect upon the modern labour and union movements has been well documented. If we took a single example, his influence on Pauline Newman who, inspired by Mask of Anarchy, helped create the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (one of the most powerful and effective unions of the 20th Century) and the Worker's University (where courses on the radical poets of the French Revolution were taught), Shelley could be well satisfied. I have written about this here.

Today I want to look at two recent examples of poetry’s potential to reform the world: poet and performance artist Arielle Cottingham and rapper Eminem.

Arielle Cottingham at the Australian Poetry Slam Championship in 2016

Cottingham, a Texan now living in Melbourne, won the 2016 edition of the Australian Poetry Slam. She was recently interviewed by Andrea Simpson for the magazine ArtsHub. In an article meaningfully entitled, “Why We Need Poets More Than Ever Before”, Cottingham cited Shelley as an inspiration for her work and pointed to his famous comment in A Defense of Poetry: Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

I have unpacked what Shelley meant by this here. It was PMS Dawson who pointed out that Shelley used the term "legislator" in a special sense. Not as someone who "makes laws" but as someone who is a "representative" of the people. In this sense poets, or creators more generally, must be thought of as the voice of the people; as a critical foundation of our society and of our democracy. They offer insights into our world and provide potential solutions - they underpin our future.

I think this puts me in essential agreement with Cottingham who explained her own view to Simpson thusly:

[Shelley] argues that poets are the moral barometers of their times and circumstances – and look at the well-known poets today. Bob Dylan is lauded as the voice of a generation. Maya Angelou elevated the voice of the black woman to an unprecedented visibility. Gil Scott Heron wrote a single line of poetry so prescient that it became more famous than he himself did – "The revolution will not be televised." To quote Miles Merrill, "poets are more honest than politicians."

You can watch Cottingham’s championship performance at the Sydney Opera House here:

Cottingham’s electrifying peroration firmly positions her as a modern Shelleyan with designs on reforming the world:

We [women] will shout our poetry into every hurricane that history hurls at use. For we have always shaped history the way the moon shapes the tide; no matter how invisible it seems. We don’t have to be invisible anymore. So when the next storm comes, nail your doors open, bite down on your microphones, let history flood your lungs and unleash hurricanes of your own.

This make me think of another of Shelley’s remarks in the Defense where, using another extreme weather-related metaphor, he says,

The great writers of our own age are…the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social conditions or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging is collected lightening….

Well, speaking of discharged lightening, let’s now turn to Eminem. As Bari Weiss pointed out in the New York Times recently, rappers have led the way in providing opposition to the Whitehouse Racist's authoritarian-tinged presidency. But as she goes on to say:

Yet Eminem’s “The Storm,” a scathing four-minute attack on the “kamikaze that will probably cause a nuclear holocaust,” which he debuted at the BET Awards on Tuesday night, has already overshadowed all of these previous anti-Trump musical efforts. It’s made major news headlines. It’s already garnered 8.7 million views on YouTube. And there have been some two million tweets about the performance, with praise pouring in from stars including LeBron James and Ellen DeGeneres.

Weiss ties the greater impact to Eminem’s whiteness and the fact he comes from Detroit – both factors which pose something of an existential threat to the Whitehouse Racist:

Eminem knows that Republicans buy songs — his songs — too. His message to them is to stop buying. After focusing on the evils of the “racist 94-year-old grandpa” in the White House, he gives his Trump-supporting fans an ultimatum. “I’m drawing in the sand a line: you’re either for or against,” he says. “And if you can’t decide who you like more and you’re split / On who you should stand beside, I’ll do it for you with this,” he adds, giving his middle finger to the camera.

Weiss goes on to point out that those of his fans who support the Whitehouse Racist have already vowed never to listen to his music again. So Eminem has put a lot in play here. You can watch the full, searing, 4-minute recording of his freestyle cypher here:

Eminem opens by mocking Donald Trump's vague and meaningless "calm before the storm" threats.  But then, after a pause, he offers a real Shelleyan storm, discharging his collected lightening with a cold, calculated fury.

And speaking of cold, calculated fury, lets us finally turn our attention to Shelley. 

When Shelley famously declared that he was a lover of humanity, a democrat and an atheist, he deliberately, intentionally and provocatively nailed his colours to the mast knowing full well his words would be widely read and would inflame passions.

Shelley's words, written in 1816, appeared in a Chamonix hotel register. The top line reads, in Greek, I am a lover of humanity, democrat and atheist. BOOM!

The phrase, lover of humanity, however, deserve particular attention. Shelley did not write these words in English, he wrote them in Greek using the term: philanthropos tropos. This was deliberate.  The first use of this term appears in Aeschylus’ play Prometheus Bound. This was the ancient Greek play which Shelley was “answering” with his own masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound. 

Aeschylus used his newly coined word philanthropos tropos (humanity loving) to describe Prometheus, the titan who rebelled against the gods of Olympus. The word was picked up by Plato and came to be much commented upon, including by Bacon, one of Shelley’s favourite authors.  Bacon considered "philanthropy" to be synonymous with "goodness", which he connected with Aristotle’s idea of “virtue”. Shelley knew this and I believe this tells us that Shelley identified closely with his own poetic creation, Prometheus. In using the term, Shelley is telling us he is a humanist - a radical concept in his priest-ridden times.

When he wrote these words he was declaring war against the hegemonic power structure of his time. Shelley was in effect saying, "I am against god. I am against the king. I am the modern Prometheus. And I will steal the fire of the gods and I will bring down thrones and I will empower the people." And not only did he say these things, he developed a system to deliver on this promise.

As I watch the performances of Cottingham and Eminem, I can only wish Shelley could as well.  I can imagine the wide grin that would cross his face.

Now, here is an example of Shelley's own discharge of collected lightening: England in 1819. This is a poem whose words, with very minor changes, could apply to the the man Eminem called a racist 94-year-old grandpa:

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.

My point in drawing attention to these two modern poets is to remind us that one of the true fountainheads of radical poetic opposition to tyranny and oppression was Shelley. And whether modern poets knowingly operate in that tradition, as Cottingham appears to, or not, they do function as the voice of the people and in that sense as our representatives; or as Shelley would have said, as our legislators. They are all philanthropos tropos: lovers of humanity.

Today the liberal arts and the humanities are under a similar attack by the parasitic, cultural vandals of Silicon Valley. Right across the United States, Republican governors are rolling back support for state universities that offer liberal arts education. The mantra of our day is "Science. Technology. Engineering. Mathematics." Or STEM for short.  This is not just a US phenomenon.  I see it happening in Canada as well.  There is a burgeoning sense that a liberal arts education is worthless.

Culture is worth fighting for - for the very reasons Shelley set out. What Shelley called a "cultivated imagination" can see the world differently - through a lens of love and empathy. Our "gifts" are not given to us by god - we earn them.  They belong to us.  We should be proud of them. The idea that we owe all of this to an external deity is vastly dis-empowering. And it suits the ruling order.

A corollary of this, also encapsulated in Shelley's philosophy, is the importance of skepticism.  A skeptical, critical mind always attacks the truth claims of authority.  And authority tends to rely upon truth claims that are disconnected from reality: America is great because god made it great. Thus, Shelley was fond of saying, "religion is the hand maiden of tyranny."

It should therefore not surprise anyone that many authoritarian governments seek to reinforce the power of society's religious superstructure. This is exactly what Trump is doing by blurring the line between church and state. Religious beliefs dis-empower the people - they are taught to trust authority.

Eminem has drawn a line in the sand. Shelley has discharged his collected lightening. Arielle Cottingham has unleashed her hurricane. Let's join them at the barricades. Let Liberty lead us.

Eugene Delacroix, July 28, Liberty Leading the People. 1831. Oil on Canvas. The Louvre.

Shelley Storms the Fashion World with Mask of Anarchy

In what is surely one of the most unusual but at the same time coolest uses of Shelley's poetry, English fashion designer John Alexander Skelton deployed Shelley's Mask of Anarchy in his recent runway show. The circumstances are quite extraordinary.

First, Skelton's entire clothing line was inspired by, and I am not making this up, the Peterloo Massacre.  According to Rebecca Gonsalves,

"Skelton was inspired by the Peterloo Massacre of 1918 [sic], which saw armed cavalry charge into a peaceful pro-democracy protest in Manchester, killing many and injuring hundreds, and in turn inspiring Shelley’s controversial poem."

While Gonsalves has the date of Peterloo wrong (it took place in 1819) she gets the rest absolutely right.

Skelton has to be one of the first clothing designers in history whose clothing line was inspired by a bloody massacre.  This might strike many as unusual, but I think it is actually quite an important example of art interfacing with politics and political protest – in a manner Shelley would have whole-heartedly approved.

Skelton, hailing from York, had recently become aware of the events at Peterloo. According to Gonsalves, he was appalled not only by the loss of life and the carnage, but also the fact that two hundred years later, this massacre has not been properly memorialized by the English authorities. If anything it has been swept under the carpet.

From Michael Demson's Masks of Anarchy which you can buy here.

I have written at length about Peterloo in my review of Michael Demon’s graphic novel, “Masks of Anarchy”. It was also referred to by Mark Summers, in his article which I republished here.  Briefly the facts are as follows: On the morning of 16 August 1818, a peaceful assembly of some sixty thousand English men, women and children began to gather in what is now St. Peter’s Square in Manchester (hence the name the massacre was popularly given: Peterloo). They did so quietly and with discipline. The protest was organized by the Manchester Patriotic Union and was to feature the famed orator Henry Hunt. Here is Demson's depiction of the event:

Hunt was to speak from a simple platform in front of what is now the Gmex Center. The crowd brought homemade banners that proclaimed REFORM, UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, EQUAL REPRESENTATION and LOVE. But before the speeches could begin, local magistrates ordered the local militia (known as ‘yeomanry”) to break up the meeting.  This was done with extraordinary violence.  As many as 12 protestors died and over 500 were wounded.

In the aftermath, journalists attempting to cover the massacre were arrested and news of the event suppressed. The businessman John Edwards Taylor was so shocked by what had happened that he went on to help set up the Guardian newspaper to ensure that the people would have a voice. Today the massacre still lacks an appropriate memorial despite decades of demand. For years, the event was commemorated only by a blue plaque which described the massacre as follows:

 “The site of St Peters Fields where on 16th August 1819 Henry Hunt, radical orator addressed an assembly of about 60,000 people. Their subsequent dispersal by the military is remembered as “Peterloo”.

That the term “dispersal” is used to describe what was a massacre is an unconscionable euphemism.  It was only in 2007 that the following plaque replaced it:

You can read about the Peterloo Memorial Campaign here.

According to Michael Scrivener, “the response of the radical leadership to Peterloo was surprisingly timid…the leaders must have been more alarmed than inspired by the revolutionary situation”. Hunt, for example, called for passive resistance in a variety of forms (such as tax resistance) and others sought a Parliamentary investigation. Only Richard Carlile (a radical journalist championed by Shelley and who later did much to keep Shelley’s reputation alive) proposed a meaningful response: he and a few others proposed a general strike – which never materialized. Shelley as we shall see went much further. Scrivener notes: "...the key to understanding the uniqueness of Shelley’s poem is his proposal for massive non-violent resistance.”

His proposal for non-violent resistance famously appeared in one of the single greatest political poems written in the English language, The Mask of Anarchy.

Skelton became aware of this and so he wove Shelley into the fabric, so to speak, of his fashion show as well. "I wanted to bring light to the blood that was spilled at Peterloo," said Skelton. He was frustrated that the massacre is so poorly remembered today despite its immense significance and resonance in our modern times.

Skelton was also aware that,

“after Peterloo, mass meetings were banned, so people showed their allegiances in discreet ways. The way they would show unity was with one singular thing that was incredibly powerful en masse. One of the most discreet was a ribbon between the first and second buttonhole of their fustian jacket.”

Fustian is a type of cotton cloth that was worn by workers during the 19th century. It was heavy and durable, and according to historian Paul Pickering radical elements of the English working class chose to wear fustian jackets as a symbol of their class allegiance. This was especially marked during the Chartist era. Pickering has called the wearing of fustian "a statement of class without words.” Readers of this blog will remember that Shelley was also a major influence on the Chartists.

This clearly resonated with Skelton who picked up this theme and presented a clothing line with strong historical echoes and overt political overtones. In her review of the show Gonsalves noted that

"Each model was dressed in roughly hewn garments that were snagged, sewn and patched as though they had been worn, and loved, forever. Checks and stripes were mixed and matched, and a limited colour palette focused on earthy brown, rust, cream and mushroom.[There was a] “sense of authentic imperfection to the waistcoats, collarless shirts, thick twills and too-short trousers. This was reinforced by Skelton’s use of street-cast older men who looked like they had lived lives in these clothes rather than simply donned them backstage.”

So where does Shelley come in? Well, it appears that the principle lens through which Skelton came to view the massacre was Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy.  So powerfully did Shelley’s poem impress him that he had his models recite the entire 91 stanzas! If you follow this link you will arrive at Skelton’s Instagram account and can watch a rehearsal with one of the models reading from the Mask of Anarchy.  It looks fantastic, thought regrettably the audio quality is poor.

All of this reminds us of the extraordinary longevity of Shelley's influence.  The Mask of Anarchy was not even published in his lifetime, yet it continues to inspire and influence creators and politically active thinkers to this day. Well done Percy. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley In Our Time.

Shelley, who among poets was one of the most supremely political animals, described the condition of England in 1819 in a manner which should make us fear for our future. Around the globe tyrants and demagogues are taking power or going mainstream and entire civilizations are subject to theocratic dictatorships. If we don't want our future to look like this, we will need to organize and resist:

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

       England 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Jonathan Freedland, writing in the Guardian, has some surprisingly Shelleyan proposals and suggestions to avoid this potential future. The Guardian's coverage has in general been superb. This can be contrasted with some of the coverage of Trump's inauguration address in the New York Times.  One article (see insert) referred to Trump’s demagogic, xenophobic anti-intellectual inaugural diatribe as “forceful.”  This is a disgraceful, shameful euphemism.

Freedland, and the Guardian, on the other hand have called a spade a spade.

What fascinated me about Freedland’s article was the language he used.  It struck me as distinctly reminiscent of Shelley – particularly in the many passages that focus on resistance and nonviolent protest. It was redolent of the Mask of Anarchy:

"So what should those who have long dreaded this moment do now? For some, the inauguration marks the launch of what they’re already calling “the resistance”, as if they are facing not just an unloved government but a tyranny. Note the banner held aloft by one group of demonstrators that read simply: “Fascist.”

"Placards and protests will have their place in the next four years. But those who want to stand in Trump’s way will need to do more than simply shake their fists. The work of opposition starts now."

And if people don’t think that what we are facing is a potential tyranny, we need look no further than the fact that Trump began signing executive orders immediately – the first one designed to role back the Affordable Care Act. Neither arm of the government has even had the opportunity to consider how to do this or with what what it should be replaced. In addition, he has ordered the creation of a missile defense system aimed squarely at southeast Asia, and created a new national holiday to celebrate “patriotism” – a euphemism no doubt for his own for Trumpian brand of xenophobic jingoism.  Are you worried yet?  This is day ONE.

Freedland goes on to set out what he sees are the principal ways opposition to Trump can be organized:

“At the front of the queue, as it were, are the press. There’s no doubt Trump sees it that way. With Clinton out of the way, the media has become his enemy of choice. The media’s very existence seems to infuriate him. Perhaps because it’s now the only centre of power he doesn’t control. With the White House and Congress in Republican hands, and the casting vote on the supreme court an appointment that’s his to make, it’s no wonder the fourth estate rankles: he already controls the other three.

That puts a great burden of responsibility on the press. Trump has majorities in the House and Senate, so often it will fall to reporters to ask the tough questions and hold the president to account. And it won’t be easy, if only because war against Trump is necessarily a war on many fronts. Just keeping up with his egregious conflicts of interests could be a full-time job, to say nothing of his bizarre appointments, filling key jobs with those who are either unqualified or actively hostile to the mission of the departments they now head. It’s a genuine question whether the media has sufficient bandwidth to cope.”

I agree on all counts. And we would do well to ruminate on one of the many reasons we are in this mess in the first place.  We are here because Silicon Valley’s right wing brand of cyberlibertarianism has attacked some of the very foundations of our democracy and marginalized the left. The media has been hamstrung. And while we still have vibrant top-line outlets such as the Guardian and the NYTimes, local news has virtually ceased to exist. And social media has simply NOT replaced this – a point Freedland also makes. I think we need to usher in an era of mass civil disobedience and protest and that includes fighting back at corporations like Google who seek to dominate the way we see the world. My message to Millennials would be to remind them that, no, you do not simply have to accept things the way they are and slavishly follow brands. Once upon a time it was cool to say “fuck you” to corporations and “the man.” Here is Freedland:

“But that will count for nothing if there is not a popular movement of dissent, one that exists in the real world beyond social media. Some believe the mass rally is about to matter more than ever. Trump, remember, is a man who gets his knowledge of the world from television, and who is obsessed by ratings. How better to convey to him the public mood of disapproval than by forcing him to see huge crowds on TV, comprised of people who reject him?

And this will have to be backed by serious, organized activism. The left can learn from the success of the Tea Party movement, which did so much to obstruct Barack Obama. That will force congressional Democrats to consider whether they too should learn from their Republican counterparts, thwarting Trump rather than enabling him."

The title of Freedland’s article is this:

"Divisive, ungracious, unrepentant: this was Trump unbound"

Peter Paul Reubens, Prometheus Unbound. 1611-12.

I am fascinated by this because it seems to be a possibly ironical reference to Shelley's great poem, Prometheus Unbound whose villain, Jupiter shares many characteristics with Trump. In Shelley’s poem, however, it is the hero, Prometheus, who is unbound and overthrows Jupiter. Here it is the forces of darkness that have been unbound. Prometheus Unbound is a mythic drama, so we should not look to it for the sort of political commentary we saw in his short poem England 1819, quoted above.  But it does have some startling imagery which describes the sort of world we could live into if we stand by and let fascists like Trump assume total control. The poem opens with a sort of monologue in which the hero, Prometheus, is speaking to Jupiter (Zeus). Prometheus describes a world:

Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.

There are some wonderful touches here and does the description of Jupiter not fit the thin-skinned, praise-seeking Trump perfectly? What a great phrase: “knee-worship” -- is that not exactly what Trump seeks from his “deplorables” in fact from all of us? And isn’t the phrase “hecatombs of broken hearts” gorgeous! The word hecatomb refers to an ancient Greek practice of sacrificing an enormous number of oxen and has come to mean an extensive loss of life for some cause.  Here Shelley harnesses the term to conjure an image of a world filled with people who are afraid, who have given up and whose hearts are broken – pointless sacrificed.

The most important insight that comes, however, from Prometheus Unbound, is that we create our own monsters; that we enslave ourselves. And when we think of how Trump became President, I think it is important that we agree that in many ways we are all responsible for this.

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Hotel Reigister from Chamonix in which Shelley declared himself to be an atheist and "lover of mankind."

Shelley had also famously declared that he was a "lover of humanity, a democrat and atheist.” I have written about this here and here.  These are words of enormous power and significance; then as now. The words, "lover of humanity", however, deserve particular attention. Shelley did not write these words in English, he wrote them in Greek: 'philanthropos tropos". This was deliberate.  The first use of this term appears in Aeschylus’ play “Prometheus Bound”. This was the ancient Greek play which Shelley was “answering” with his own masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound. 

Aeschylus uses his newly coined word “philanthropos tropos” (humanity loving) to describe Prometheus. The word was picked up by Plato and came to be much commented upon, including by Bacon, one of Shelley’s favourite authors.  Bacon considered philanthropy to be synonymous with "goodness", which he connected with Aristotle’s idea of “virtue”. Shelley must have known this and I believe this tells us that Shelley was self-identifying with his own poetic creation, Prometheus.

Shelley had deliberately, intentionally and provocatively “nailed his colours to the mast” knowing full well his words would be widely read and would inflame passions. So, when he wrote those words, what did he mean to say?  He meant this I think:

I am against god.

I am against the king.

I am the modern Prometheus.

And I will steal the fire of the gods and I will bring down thrones and I will empower the people.

No wonder he was considered a threat.

Not only did he say these things, he developed a system to deliver on this promise.

Part of his system was based on his innate skepticism, of which he was a surprisingly sophisticated practitioner.  And like all skeptics since the dawn of history, he used it to undermine authority and attack truth claims. As he once said, "Implicit faith and fearless inquiry have in all ages been irreconcilable enemies. Unrestrained philosophy in every age opposed itself to the reveries of credulity and fanaticism."

Let us now talk a little about his political theory and bring ourselves up to the present.

"And who are those chained to the car?" "The Wise,
"The great, the unforgotten: they who wore
Mitres & helms & crowns, or wreathes of light,
Signs of thought's empire over thought; their lore
"Taught them not this—to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mutiny within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
"Caught them ere evening."                                  

                                                Triumph of Life 208 – 15

These words are from his last great poem.  We see in this passage a succession of military, civil and political leaders all chained to a triumphal car of the sort Roman generals were fond using when they celebrated victory.

The triumph of Lucius Aemellias Paullus

But Shelley adds a twist. In his poem, these rulers are now themselves slaves. This helps us understand a curious idea of Shelley’s which has confused many of his readers.  And that is the idea that the tyrant who enslaves men is himself becomes a slave. This is because they are slaves to all their baser instincts. We can clearly see Trump in this picture.  As the character Asia shrewdly notes in Act II of Prometheus Unbound: “All spirits are enslaved who serve things evil.”

Now, Shelley saw a way to avoid this. And it is tied closely to his theory of the imagination and his understanding of the nature of people.  Shelley believed that we did not have to be slaves of our baser instincts the way Trump is.  His cure is the education of the imagination; something it is difficult to imagine Trump having ever undertaken as it is widely believed he has almost never read a book.

The great Shelley scholar, PMS Dawson wrote that Shelley believed “the world must be transformed in imagination before it can be changed politically.”  This imaginative recreation of existence is, said Dawson, both the subject and the intended effect of Prometheus Unbound.

This is a wonderful idea: Shelley’s poem not only maps out a scheme to reinvent ourselves and therefore change to world, but also, simply by reading the poem we will have started out on our journey. This underlines the importance of the arts to making our world a better place.  I think of Obama’s statements about the importance of books to him while he held the presidency.  And then I think of the rumours that Trump intends to act to wipe out support for the arts. I think of the manner in which the right wing cyberlibertarian “religion” of silicon valley has attacked the very foundation of art – the ability of our creators to earn a decent living.

One of the central teachings of Prometheus Unbound then is that only someone devoid of the liberty of self-rule can become a tyrant and enslave others. Gaining control over our baser instincts therefore becomes central to the advancement of society (this also explains why Shelley clung so tenaciously to his idea of the perfectability of humanity. In Act III of the poem we clearly see the protagonist’s ascent to the “autonomy of self-rule” as an example for mankind to follow.

Finden's reimagining of Shelley drawn from the Curran portrait.

Shelley’s purpose in all his poetry is to help us (or cause us) to enlarge our imaginative apprehension of the world to such a point that there are no limits or inescapable evils. I think he believed that this is the role of all art. We need to be able to see different worlds, alternate worlds so that we can order our own world more equitably.  Contrast this with Trump’s barbaric cry that America is only for Americans and that he will implement strategies which will benefit only Americans.  This type of xenophobia, coupled with what amounts to a war on knowledge and the arts, is designed to create an environment in which tyranny becomes perpetual.

Shelley, however, is not a poet of gloom and dystopia.  Shelley believed in humanity, he believed that we all have in us the power to be better and to make a better world.  Indeed, the whole of Act 4 of Prometheus Unbound celebrates man’s birth into a universe that is alive because it is apprehended imaginatively.

Shelley did not, however think this would happen overnight.  He was a gradualist, though I think even he would be surprised at just how gradual change can be.  I often think that the thing which would shock him most about our modern world is not rockets and computers, but the fact we are still living in a priest and tyrant ridden world in which wealth is concentrated more than ever in a few hands. But he also believed that in moments of crisis, progress can emerge from conflict. Which is exactly where we are now. Exactly how we extract progress from our current crisis is up to us.

But I hope that we can see a glimpse of the future in these extraordinary pictures from around the world of the massive women's marches. Women are employing the very tactics that Shelley proposed two centuries ago:

'And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again-again-again-

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many-they are few.'

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These words have inspired generation of protesters and leaders, including Gandhi. Today, as Freedland also points out, the threats are so multifaceted that they threaten to overwhelm us. As facile as this might sound, I think we need to believe in ourselves and in human nature.  We need to resist, we need to organize, we need to keep the arts alive. It will not be easy.  This is a theme explored by Michael Demson in his graphic novel that celebrated Shelley other great political poem, The Mask of Anarchy. I reviewed it here.

At the end of Prometheus Unbound come three stanzas of the most exquisite poetry ever written. In the first stanza Shelley forecasts the end of tyranny. He sees an abyss that yawns and swallows up despotism. And he sees love as transcendent.  Now the moment we start to talk about the role of "love" in this I think some people might roll their eyes.  But don’t.  Shelley is thinking more about empathy than romantic love here.  And nurturing empathy within us may be one of the greatest challenges our time.  Certainly, Trump and his “lovely deplorables” have utterly failed in this regard.  Shelley then goes on to itemize the psychological characteristics which will ensure that the tyrant once deposed, does not return. 

Shelley imagines a radical reordering of our world.  It starts with us. Are we up for the challenge? Shelley was. Take the closing words of Prometheus Unbound and print them out. Pin them to your fridge, memorize them, share them with loved ones and enemies alike.  Let them inspire you. Let them change you.  And never forget he was 27 when he wrote these words and dead with in three years:

This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
   And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
   Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
   Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
   The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
   To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
   Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Shelley's poetry has changed the world before; let them change it again.