What is PB Shelley’s Vision of Change and ‘Creative Destruction’?
Percy Bysshe Shelley is a Romantic poet of the early nineteenth century, or an (un)acknowledged legislator of the world who centred ‘creative destruction’ in his vision of social change — and not simply as an oxymoron.
Everything we usually associate with ‘Romanticism’ — love for nature, foregrounding of the faculty of imagination, and isolation of the artist from society — is injected with politics when it comes to PB Shelley. His notable essay on poetry, A Defence of Poetry (1821), in fact, has two major concerns — the social purpose of art and the position of the artist in society.
Art, Shelley asserts, cannot be divorced from politics and the artist has a social responsibility to produce transformative art.
The Need For Change
Throughout his life, Shelley was deeply affected by the political situation in England. The Regency years form the adult years of his life. These years were marked by a short-lived optimism towards the weakening of monarchy after the French Revolution (1789–99), Britain’s wars against Napolean and the French, a thriving royal class but a burdened working class, a repressive State, the Peterloo Massacre, and violence.
Shelley, like other liberal thinkers of the time, recognised the need for change — liberty and freedom became important concerns for him.
In this period, Shelley wrote some of his best-known ‘revolutionary poems’, including ‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819), ‘Ode to Liberty’ (1820), and ‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820).
The Fall of the Old Order
A common image in both ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and ‘Ode to Liberty’ is that of a past — an older monarchical order. The more obvious reference to this order’s fall is in ‘Ode to the West Wind’, in the description of the submerged palaces and towers (Part III):
“And saw in sleep old palaces and tower/ Quivering within the wave’s intenser day”
The less obvious reference is in the dead leaves in Part I of the poem, which are “Pestilence-stricken multitudes”, referring to outdated ideas, thoughts, and beliefs.
In ‘Ode to Liberty’, Shelley is hugely critical of monarchy and organised religion — “the impious name / Of KING” and “the pale name of PRIEST” — and the ideas associated with them, which are like “snaky knots” that coil around people (“can bind / Into a mass, irrefragably firm”). This destructive past must not be repeated. Shelley emphasises this in the use of verbs in the poem — cut, stamp, hurl, and blot.
However, there is another kind of past that is also evoked — a glorious past symbolised by Athens (Greece) and Rome, where Liberty resided and art thrived — its “earliest throne and latest oracle”. This past still underlines England and must be recalled in the process of change —
“As Athens doth the world with thy [Liberty’s] delight renew.”
The fall of this past, however, rings a note of caution, already hinting at ‘creative destruction’.
Forces Of Change
The two forces associated with change are the West Wind and Liberty.
The West Wind is described as a powerful force. As Stewart C Wilcox writes in “Imagery, Ideas, and Design in Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind””,
“Our primary impression is often onrushing power… where it streams over the earth like a wild river.”
The “winged seeds”, which “lie cold and low” like “corpse[s] within its grave”, symbolise an almost eternal sleep that England is subjected to. The West Wind, then, is an awakening force — a herald of a revolutionary message.
The other force is Liberty — it counters tyranny and is associated with civilisation. This force of Liberty and the acknowledgement of its necessity are required to counter the tyrannical forces that envelop England.
Liberty is also an end goal of change.
Agents Of Change
This brings us to the next concern in Shelley’s vision — who must bring about this change? For Shelley, the answer is simple — the masses. The answer can be found in ‘Prometheus Unbound’, in which the figure of Demogorgon is significant.
Prometheus, the rebel hero, is unable to overthrow Jupiter, the tyrannical ruler, on his own. Asia, Prometheus’ lover, finds the solution — Jupiter can only be overthrown with the help of the masses. As Paul Foot writes in the book Red Shelley, Asia recognises that
“there is something more powerful than tyranny; a united and risen people. Her (Asia’s) problem is to breathe a spirit of unity and confidence into the shapeless Demogorgon.”
In ‘Ode to the West Wind’, the “winged seeds” represent the masses that lie passive and must be driven to power by the West Wind’s revolutionary sweep. In ‘Ode to Liberty’, Shelley uses the metaphor of a volcanic eruption in the context of the Spanish Revolution of 1820. There are “howls” and “leaps” and “glares in chorus” in Spain and Sicily, while “England yet sleeps”.
Therefore, the vision of change and transformation that Shelley offers is the overthrowing of the older, oppressive order by the revolutionary forces wielded by the masses.
Creative Destruction
However, this transformation, Shelley recognises, would not be easy. In ‘Ode to the West Wind’, the West Wind is described as both a destroyer and preserver —
“Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!”
This creation of a dichotomy is significant. Another set of opposites in the poem is autumn — the season of approaching death — and spring — the season of regeneration.
These opposites emphasise ‘creative destruction’.
The revolution would destroy an older, oppressive order and bring hope of regeneration, but this destruction would be all-encompassing. It may destroy one’s most priced aspects of life as well.
The Poet-Prophet/Poet-Activist
In this process of transformation, the role of the artist is highly specific. Shelley appoints himself as a poet-prophet.
In ‘Ode to the West Wind’, he appeals to the West Wind to make him its “lyre” — its instrument — so he may “drive my [his] dead thoughts over the universe” to “quicken a new birth”. In ‘Ode to Liberty’, he calls out to Liberty to reside in England.
The poet does not merely prophesise a revolution but becomes an active participant in the process of change. He becomes an agitator. For Shelley, poets were the “unacknowledged legislators of the world” (A Defence of Poetry). Their social responsibility was to create art not just for pleasure but for social change. The poet was required to change with time and create transformative art lest he fail to perform his social function and decay with time.
One of the most common criticisms levelled against Shelley, in this regard, is that he remains a ‘reformist’. This criticism is based on Shelley’s expression of anxiety towards the mob and violence in some of his letters and pamphlets.
For every argument in support of Shelley’s ‘reformist’ attitude, one finds a counterargument for his revolutionary zeal.
Paul Foot attempts a clarification. He writes that
Shelley’s “non-violence in the abstract vanished in reality… because he saw that there were occasions when the violence of the oppressor could only be countered by the violence of the oppressed.”
