Hey there, comrades. This post differs from ones I've made in the past in a number of ways. Firstly, it's about an artist rather than an activist. Secondly, it's about a dead white man, a category of human I had thus far avoided, as I find them to be rather over-represented in discussions about history. But I wanted to do a couple things. Firstly, I wanted to show the roots of radicalism that run, frequently forgotten, through what might be considered the canon of English literature. Secondly, I wanted to remind people that it's not just members of oppressed groups who have the obligation to fight oppression. Thirdly, I wanted to get my former-English-major on and talk about some poetry that I really like. So, without further delay, let's talk Shelley.
Most people nowadays know Percy Bysshe Shelley primarily as the husband of the woman who wrote Frankenstein. Many people also know him as the guy who wrote a lot of Romantic poetry, and hung out with Byron. These things are true, but I'd like to remind us all that he also had a revolutionary streak a mile wide. (England was still using the Imperial measures at that time. Otherwise it would have been a 1.6 kilometer-wide revolutionary streak, and let's face it, that just doesn't sound fun.)
Born in 1792 to a white, Protestant, extremely upper class English family, Percy was definitely a child of privilege. You could be forgiven for assuming his life was awesome, and maybe it would have been, except for the fact that upper class English people of the 19th century were kind of fucking psychotic. When Percy went off to school, he got his ass kicked. A lot. I mean, one would expect a child named "Percy" to get his ass kicked, but one would not expect his classmates to organize daily "Shelley-baits" (you know, like bear-baits, except young Percy Bysshe Shelley was a budding Romantic poet, not a bear, which some would argue put him at a disadvantage), where they would surround him and attack him, because they thought the way he screamed sounded funny. Yeah, they kind of treated each other the way they treated the rest of the world, the English upper classes.
It didn't take long for young Percy to start stirring up trouble. When he was 19, and a student at Oxford, he published a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism. I will not claim that it reads like a radical text right off the bat; the first sentence is:
"A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support any proposition, has ever been allowed to be the only sure way of attaining truth, upon the advantages of which it is unnecessary to descant, our knowledge of the existence of a Deity is a subject of such importance, that it cannot be too minutely investigated; in consequence of this conviction, we proceed briefly and impartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced."
Yeah, as openings go, it's not exactly "A specter is haunting Europe," but the point isn't the prose (and the prose gets a lot better as you keep going) but the argument Shelley was making. He argues for rationality, relying on the evidence of the senses, and concludes with "Every reflecting mind must allow there is no proof for the existence of a Deity." And then a smug little "Q.E.D." like a good Oxford student. True fact: England was, and is, the world's leading exporter of pompous, and the nation owes it all to people like 19 year old Percy Shelley and the rest of the Oxbridge crowd.
This pamphlet would not be a big deal, nowadays. Mostly because people would get bored and stop reading several words into the first sentence. In 1811, it got Percy and the friend he wrote it with expelled from Oxford. His father got in touch with the school, (remember, English aristocrats have some pull in situations like this. Or, you know, any situations.) and got them to agree to let him back in, as long as he would recant his atheism.
Don't think for a second Shelley would have made it onto this blog if he hadn't told the school, and his father, to fuck off. Being essentially a 19th century disaffected teenager, Percy was all "whatever," and ran off to Scotland with a 16 year old schoolgirl. His relationship with his father became rather strained after that.
Percy and his new wife hung out for a while (we're not really going to talk about her, because as those of you who know the Romantics know, she wasn't the cooler of his wives) in the Lake District, where Percy was trying to write poetry. For most of the early 19th century you couldn't throw a rock in the Lake District without hitting a poet enraptured in the Romantic sublime, but somehow it wasn't working for Percy, because he kept thinking about Ireland. Not about the rolling green hills and beauty of nature either, but about the ridiculous amounts of oppression Britain was getting up to there. Ireland had been officially made a part of Britain just twelve years before, by the Act of Union, and Catholic Emancipation, which was supposed to have happened, hadn't. That was no small thing; it basically meant that it was considered impossible to be both a loyal British citizen and a Catholic, and since Ireland was now a part of Britain, that meant that a whole bunch of Irish people who had just been minding their own business, were now essentially at least semi-treasonous by default, and were being treated as such. Rebellions were flaring up from time to time, but were being suppressed, and anyone who didn't care for Britain was being shipped off to penal colonies in Australia. Many people didn't care for Britain, but NO ONE cared for Australia. (Except the people who were already there before the British showed up, but the British were doing what they could to make Australia suck even worse for them than it did for the folks in the penal colonies. And Britain was pretty good at making places suck.)
Percy did what any dreamy poet would do; he headed to Ireland, wrote a few articles and pamphlets calling for Irish independence, and fell in with a seriously revolutionary crowd, attending nationalist rallies, and attracting the attention of the British government, who decided that they'd better keep an eye on him. He was writing political treatises at this point, not poetry, works with titles like "A Declaration of Rights," and getting seriously pissed off at what he called "fireside revolutionaries," what we would today probably call "slacktivists." A friend warned him "Shelley, you are preparing a scene of blood!" When someone says something like that, you can pretty much figure that the person they're saying it to is a long way away from sitting around the Lake District, writing about how nature makes them feel. (Note: I absolutely support sitting around the Lake District, writing about how nature makes you feel. I also support writing revolutionary pamphlets.)
Did I mention that as he was calling for insurrection, Percy was also calling for nonviolence? It didn't end up coming to much, and Percy left Ireland disappointed, but remember that idea of nonviolence, because damn was he ahead of his time there. We'll get back to that. For now, let's cover the fact that Percy, like a tool, left his wife, but, like an awesome person, married the daughter of prominent women's rights advocate, (and possible future blog entry) Mary Wollstonecraft. You know that lady as Mary Shelley, inventor of the Romantic gothic horror genre, and writer of the best gothic novel in existence. (You other former English majors wanna fight me on that? Bring it. Castle of Otranto is a terrible book. Yeah, I said it. Frankenstein all the way.)
Most people nowadays know Percy Bysshe Shelley primarily as the husband of the woman who wrote Frankenstein. Many people also know him as the guy who wrote a lot of Romantic poetry, and hung out with Byron. These things are true, but I'd like to remind us all that he also had a revolutionary streak a mile wide. (England was still using the Imperial measures at that time. Otherwise it would have been a 1.6 kilometer-wide revolutionary streak, and let's face it, that just doesn't sound fun.)
Born in 1792 to a white, Protestant, extremely upper class English family, Percy was definitely a child of privilege. You could be forgiven for assuming his life was awesome, and maybe it would have been, except for the fact that upper class English people of the 19th century were kind of fucking psychotic. When Percy went off to school, he got his ass kicked. A lot. I mean, one would expect a child named "Percy" to get his ass kicked, but one would not expect his classmates to organize daily "Shelley-baits" (you know, like bear-baits, except young Percy Bysshe Shelley was a budding Romantic poet, not a bear, which some would argue put him at a disadvantage), where they would surround him and attack him, because they thought the way he screamed sounded funny. Yeah, they kind of treated each other the way they treated the rest of the world, the English upper classes.
It didn't take long for young Percy to start stirring up trouble. When he was 19, and a student at Oxford, he published a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism. I will not claim that it reads like a radical text right off the bat; the first sentence is:
"A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support any proposition, has ever been allowed to be the only sure way of attaining truth, upon the advantages of which it is unnecessary to descant, our knowledge of the existence of a Deity is a subject of such importance, that it cannot be too minutely investigated; in consequence of this conviction, we proceed briefly and impartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced."
Yeah, as openings go, it's not exactly "A specter is haunting Europe," but the point isn't the prose (and the prose gets a lot better as you keep going) but the argument Shelley was making. He argues for rationality, relying on the evidence of the senses, and concludes with "Every reflecting mind must allow there is no proof for the existence of a Deity." And then a smug little "Q.E.D." like a good Oxford student. True fact: England was, and is, the world's leading exporter of pompous, and the nation owes it all to people like 19 year old Percy Shelley and the rest of the Oxbridge crowd.
This pamphlet would not be a big deal, nowadays. Mostly because people would get bored and stop reading several words into the first sentence. In 1811, it got Percy and the friend he wrote it with expelled from Oxford. His father got in touch with the school, (remember, English aristocrats have some pull in situations like this. Or, you know, any situations.) and got them to agree to let him back in, as long as he would recant his atheism.
Don't think for a second Shelley would have made it onto this blog if he hadn't told the school, and his father, to fuck off. Being essentially a 19th century disaffected teenager, Percy was all "whatever," and ran off to Scotland with a 16 year old schoolgirl. His relationship with his father became rather strained after that.
Percy and his new wife hung out for a while (we're not really going to talk about her, because as those of you who know the Romantics know, she wasn't the cooler of his wives) in the Lake District, where Percy was trying to write poetry. For most of the early 19th century you couldn't throw a rock in the Lake District without hitting a poet enraptured in the Romantic sublime, but somehow it wasn't working for Percy, because he kept thinking about Ireland. Not about the rolling green hills and beauty of nature either, but about the ridiculous amounts of oppression Britain was getting up to there. Ireland had been officially made a part of Britain just twelve years before, by the Act of Union, and Catholic Emancipation, which was supposed to have happened, hadn't. That was no small thing; it basically meant that it was considered impossible to be both a loyal British citizen and a Catholic, and since Ireland was now a part of Britain, that meant that a whole bunch of Irish people who had just been minding their own business, were now essentially at least semi-treasonous by default, and were being treated as such. Rebellions were flaring up from time to time, but were being suppressed, and anyone who didn't care for Britain was being shipped off to penal colonies in Australia. Many people didn't care for Britain, but NO ONE cared for Australia. (Except the people who were already there before the British showed up, but the British were doing what they could to make Australia suck even worse for them than it did for the folks in the penal colonies. And Britain was pretty good at making places suck.)
Percy did what any dreamy poet would do; he headed to Ireland, wrote a few articles and pamphlets calling for Irish independence, and fell in with a seriously revolutionary crowd, attending nationalist rallies, and attracting the attention of the British government, who decided that they'd better keep an eye on him. He was writing political treatises at this point, not poetry, works with titles like "A Declaration of Rights," and getting seriously pissed off at what he called "fireside revolutionaries," what we would today probably call "slacktivists." A friend warned him "Shelley, you are preparing a scene of blood!" When someone says something like that, you can pretty much figure that the person they're saying it to is a long way away from sitting around the Lake District, writing about how nature makes them feel. (Note: I absolutely support sitting around the Lake District, writing about how nature makes you feel. I also support writing revolutionary pamphlets.)
Did I mention that as he was calling for insurrection, Percy was also calling for nonviolence? It didn't end up coming to much, and Percy left Ireland disappointed, but remember that idea of nonviolence, because damn was he ahead of his time there. We'll get back to that. For now, let's cover the fact that Percy, like a tool, left his wife, but, like an awesome person, married the daughter of prominent women's rights advocate, (and possible future blog entry) Mary Wollstonecraft. You know that lady as Mary Shelley, inventor of the Romantic gothic horror genre, and writer of the best gothic novel in existence. (You other former English majors wanna fight me on that? Bring it. Castle of Otranto is a terrible book. Yeah, I said it. Frankenstein all the way.)
Percy kept on writing, both poetry and politics. He wrote a couple of revolutionary tracts, under the pseudonym "The Hermit of Marlow." In case you missed that reference, Marlow (guy who wrote around the same time as Shakespeare) was a famous English atheist. These tracts were pretty damn critical of the concept of monarchy. One of them "An Address to the People on the Occasion of the Death of Princess Charlotte" is particularly interesting. You'd expect a pamphlet written on the occasion of a royal's death to sort of dance around the whole idea that monarchy is bullshit, but this tract basically consists of Percy going "seriously? Monarchy? That's a thing we have?" and saying that what the people should be mourning is not the death of one member of the royal family, but the existence of the aristocracy, period. It's worth noting that Percy's most famous work, an apparently apolitical poem called Ozymandias is also rather critical of the concept of power, authority, royalty, and wealth. You can read it as a poem about the ravages of time, but viewed in the context of Percy's politics, doesn't it kind of read as a "yeah, you THINK you're in charge of this country. Wait until you're just a pile of sad-ass stones in the desert, you authoritarian bastard." I think it does.
After that, Percy spent quite a bit of time traveling, and having babies that died. There was other family drama as well - the wife he left for Mary killed herself, and left a note blaming him for her death, which was as tragic as it was probably accurate - and he was hanging out with the ridiculous, sexy, and ridiculously sexy Lord Byron. His radicalism even shocked Byron, and shocking Byron was not an easy task; this was the guy who had to leave Britain because he had, essentially, shocked England so hard the country couldn't deal with him anymore. Once, when the two were checking into a hotel, Percy signed the register with his name, and then the words "democrat, great lover of mankind, and atheist," in Greek. Byron thought this was a bit risky of him, and crossed it out. Byron did. When Byron, the man for whom the phrase "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" was invented thinks you need to be a little more careful and discreet, you are living life on the edge. And yes for a British poet, living life on the edge apparently involves things like making bold declarations in Greek in hotel guest registry books.
It was around this time that Percy wrote two political poems, the ones that made me decide he need an article written about him for this blog. These poems were called The Men of England and The Masque of Anarchy. Men of England is a call for the working class to rise up against the people who exploited them. (People, it must be said, like Percy's family and friends...) Here's a bit of the poem (the "you" in the text is the English working class)
"The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.
Sow seed -- but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -- let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -- let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear."
Call me crazy, but that sounds like a call for the workers to seize the means of production. In 1819. Let's be clear, here. While Percy was calling for the workers of England to seize the means of production, Karl Marx was pooping in diapers and trying really hard to figure out walking. Yes, that means he also had yet to grow the magnificent beard. Percy was ahead of his time on this one.
But Percy's pre-figuring of future ideas goes even more awesome. The Masque of Anarchy (he was using the word "anarchy" not in its political sense, but in the other sense of "holy shit, chaos and death," but we can forgive him for that). This poem is, in my opinion, by far his greatest political work, and it was written in response to the Peterloo Massacre, which, as the name would kind of suggest, if you squint, occurred at a place called St. Peter's Field (the "Peterloo" thing was an ironic name, intended to invoke the Battle of Waterloo, which had happened a few years before), where 15 peaceful protestors, calling for reform of the parliamentary system, were killed, and hundreds injured, after cavalry charged into a huge crowd and commenced with the stabbing. Percy, like many people, was displeased by this, and he wrote a Not Subtle poem in response, which not only criticized and demonized many prominent politicians, but also articulated, for basically the first time ever, the idea of non-violent resistance.
Now, you may be wondering just how Not Subtle this poem is. It's an allegorical poem, and you would not believe how unsubtle you can get with an allegorical poem. Sample text:
"I met murder on the way-
He had a mask like Castlereagh-
Very smooth he looked, yet grim
Seven blood hounds followed him.
All were fat, and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew."
Castlereagh, the guy who the allegorical representation of freaking murder is wearing a mask of? He was a British politician who helped suppress the last great Irish rebellion in 1798, and who was hugely important in getting the Act of Union (which made Ireland a part of Britain, remember?) passed in the first place. So, that's about how subtle Percy is throughout this poem with politicians he doesn't care for. They're generally symbolizing murder, and feeding human hearts to dogs. There is a LOT of that kind of stuff at the beginning of the poem.
That's not what's cool about this poem, though. What's cool is what Percy calls on the people of England to do about all this oppression and hearts-being-fed-to-dogs business. Get ready for this, because this is awesome. First, he imagines a scene like in St. Peter's Field. It starts with a gathering of determined people.
"Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made you, free."
He imagines violent opposition:
"Let the horseman's scimitars,
Wheel and flash like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
in a sea of death and mourning."
The protestors, though, do not fight back.
"Stand ye calm, and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war."
Lastly, he imagines the aftermath of the ensuing massacre.
"Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.
Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street.
And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company"
It's an idea we're quite familiar with in this day and age; nonviolent resistance is met by violent resistance, and the side that uses violence is shamed and shown to be in the wrong by their use of violent oppression to silence opposition. This is the first time in European history that the idea of nonviolent resistance had been articulated. Not only was Percy taking away the real lesson of the Peterloo Massacre, he was also prefiguring the way that nonviolence would be used by people like Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Which is, when you think about it, kind of amazing.
The last stanza of the poem is so damn good, I'm going to let it end the article. So before we get there, I'll finish up with Percy's story. At age 30, he and friends were working to put together a newspaper that would be called The Liberal, which would disseminate controversial, radical political writings. This never happened, as Percy and the man he was setting up the newspaper with died that year, sailing on Shelley's yacht. (I can't believe this blog is featuring a man who owned a yacht.) And then his wife spent the rest of her life carrying around his heart; did I mention she wrote amazing gothic fiction? Some people think Percy's death was suicide, and some think it was politically motivated murder. Or it could have been because he was sailing the boat himself, and he wasn't very good at it. Either way, the world lost a great poet, and a great political writer, and he died just as he was about to begin what had the potential to be his greatest political work. It's possible that, had he lived, we'd know him today, not as a poet, or as the husband of Mary Shelley, but as the author and distributor of great revolutionary texts. We'll never know. I'll let these lines of Masque of Anarchy sum up the greatness that was Percy Bysshe Shelly. (and seriously, read the whole poem.)
"Men of England, heirs of glory
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one might mother,
Hopes of her, and one another,
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."
Causes: Irish Independence, Catholic Emancipation, atheism, social justice, vegetarianism
Specific Lessons For Modern Activists: Being a member of a privileged group does not mean you can't, shouldn't, or don't have an obligation to fight oppression. And if you're on the brink of a great political undertaking, do try not to drown.
After that, Percy spent quite a bit of time traveling, and having babies that died. There was other family drama as well - the wife he left for Mary killed herself, and left a note blaming him for her death, which was as tragic as it was probably accurate - and he was hanging out with the ridiculous, sexy, and ridiculously sexy Lord Byron. His radicalism even shocked Byron, and shocking Byron was not an easy task; this was the guy who had to leave Britain because he had, essentially, shocked England so hard the country couldn't deal with him anymore. Once, when the two were checking into a hotel, Percy signed the register with his name, and then the words "democrat, great lover of mankind, and atheist," in Greek. Byron thought this was a bit risky of him, and crossed it out. Byron did. When Byron, the man for whom the phrase "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" was invented thinks you need to be a little more careful and discreet, you are living life on the edge. And yes for a British poet, living life on the edge apparently involves things like making bold declarations in Greek in hotel guest registry books.
It was around this time that Percy wrote two political poems, the ones that made me decide he need an article written about him for this blog. These poems were called The Men of England and The Masque of Anarchy. Men of England is a call for the working class to rise up against the people who exploited them. (People, it must be said, like Percy's family and friends...) Here's a bit of the poem (the "you" in the text is the English working class)
"The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.
Sow seed -- but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -- let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -- let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear."
Call me crazy, but that sounds like a call for the workers to seize the means of production. In 1819. Let's be clear, here. While Percy was calling for the workers of England to seize the means of production, Karl Marx was pooping in diapers and trying really hard to figure out walking. Yes, that means he also had yet to grow the magnificent beard. Percy was ahead of his time on this one.
But Percy's pre-figuring of future ideas goes even more awesome. The Masque of Anarchy (he was using the word "anarchy" not in its political sense, but in the other sense of "holy shit, chaos and death," but we can forgive him for that). This poem is, in my opinion, by far his greatest political work, and it was written in response to the Peterloo Massacre, which, as the name would kind of suggest, if you squint, occurred at a place called St. Peter's Field (the "Peterloo" thing was an ironic name, intended to invoke the Battle of Waterloo, which had happened a few years before), where 15 peaceful protestors, calling for reform of the parliamentary system, were killed, and hundreds injured, after cavalry charged into a huge crowd and commenced with the stabbing. Percy, like many people, was displeased by this, and he wrote a Not Subtle poem in response, which not only criticized and demonized many prominent politicians, but also articulated, for basically the first time ever, the idea of non-violent resistance.
Now, you may be wondering just how Not Subtle this poem is. It's an allegorical poem, and you would not believe how unsubtle you can get with an allegorical poem. Sample text:
"I met murder on the way-
He had a mask like Castlereagh-
Very smooth he looked, yet grim
Seven blood hounds followed him.
All were fat, and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew."
Castlereagh, the guy who the allegorical representation of freaking murder is wearing a mask of? He was a British politician who helped suppress the last great Irish rebellion in 1798, and who was hugely important in getting the Act of Union (which made Ireland a part of Britain, remember?) passed in the first place. So, that's about how subtle Percy is throughout this poem with politicians he doesn't care for. They're generally symbolizing murder, and feeding human hearts to dogs. There is a LOT of that kind of stuff at the beginning of the poem.
That's not what's cool about this poem, though. What's cool is what Percy calls on the people of England to do about all this oppression and hearts-being-fed-to-dogs business. Get ready for this, because this is awesome. First, he imagines a scene like in St. Peter's Field. It starts with a gathering of determined people.
"Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made you, free."
He imagines violent opposition:
"Let the horseman's scimitars,
Wheel and flash like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
in a sea of death and mourning."
The protestors, though, do not fight back.
"Stand ye calm, and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war."
Lastly, he imagines the aftermath of the ensuing massacre.
"Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.
Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street.
And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company"
It's an idea we're quite familiar with in this day and age; nonviolent resistance is met by violent resistance, and the side that uses violence is shamed and shown to be in the wrong by their use of violent oppression to silence opposition. This is the first time in European history that the idea of nonviolent resistance had been articulated. Not only was Percy taking away the real lesson of the Peterloo Massacre, he was also prefiguring the way that nonviolence would be used by people like Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Which is, when you think about it, kind of amazing.
The last stanza of the poem is so damn good, I'm going to let it end the article. So before we get there, I'll finish up with Percy's story. At age 30, he and friends were working to put together a newspaper that would be called The Liberal, which would disseminate controversial, radical political writings. This never happened, as Percy and the man he was setting up the newspaper with died that year, sailing on Shelley's yacht. (I can't believe this blog is featuring a man who owned a yacht.) And then his wife spent the rest of her life carrying around his heart; did I mention she wrote amazing gothic fiction? Some people think Percy's death was suicide, and some think it was politically motivated murder. Or it could have been because he was sailing the boat himself, and he wasn't very good at it. Either way, the world lost a great poet, and a great political writer, and he died just as he was about to begin what had the potential to be his greatest political work. It's possible that, had he lived, we'd know him today, not as a poet, or as the husband of Mary Shelley, but as the author and distributor of great revolutionary texts. We'll never know. I'll let these lines of Masque of Anarchy sum up the greatness that was Percy Bysshe Shelly. (and seriously, read the whole poem.)
"Men of England, heirs of glory
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one might mother,
Hopes of her, and one another,
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."
Causes: Irish Independence, Catholic Emancipation, atheism, social justice, vegetarianism
Specific Lessons For Modern Activists: Being a member of a privileged group does not mean you can't, shouldn't, or don't have an obligation to fight oppression. And if you're on the brink of a great political undertaking, do try not to drown.
I made an interesting discovery about The Mask of Anarchy a couple of months ago. That final verse kept reminding me of something but I couldn't figure out quite what -- so I went googling and what popped up was the Internationale.
ReplyDeleteOn reading through the different versions of the song given at that page, it struck me that both the familiar English translations might better be called free adaptations of the French original -- and that both draw on Shelley for the added bits.
The French version goes on at great length about prisoners of hunger and enslaved masses and overthrowing tradition, but it doesn't have anything about either rising from slumber or throwing off chains. That's the part that slipped in from Shelley.
One version begins, "Arise ye workers from your slumbers, Arise ye prisoners of want." (That was the line I was trying to remember when I knew Mask of Anarchy reminded me of something.)
And another, from the IWW Songbook, begins:
Arise ye pris'ners of starvation
Arise ye wretched of the earth
For justice thunders condemnation
A better world's in birth!
No more tradition's chains shall bind us
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall;
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been naught we shall be all.
Cory, that's a very interesting point! Is there any evidence that the people who did the English translation (off the top of my head, I don't know who did that) were influenced by Shelley? The Masque of Anarchy is hardly ubiquitous enough for us to assume anyone read it, but I think you make a compelling argument for a connection.
Delete-Miriam "Steampunk Emma Goldman" Rocek
Must agree about The Masque of Anarchy -- I taught it in a Romantics seminar a few years back and it was the hit of the season. The students couldn't stop talking about it.
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