Poetry wars When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 it was greeted with enthusiasm by the young intellectuals of Europe. The English poet William Wordsworth was no exception. He wrote verses in support of the Revolution, including these significant lines,
In these lines Wordsworth is claiming that man is naturally free in the liberal sense of having no impediments to his individual will and reason. The individual man is superior to everyone else but God; he needs no restraints and recognises no laws except those accepted by his own reason; he follows his own will in all things (but always chooses to do the right thing). A few decades later another famous young English poet, Shelley, was still holding firm to the same political ideal. In his work Prometheus Unbound (1820), Shelley advanced his ideal of a “new man” who would “make the earth one brotherhood”. This new man would be,
Shelley is following the same ideal as the young Wordsworth, but has taken things a step further. Unlike the nature’s child described by Wordsworth, Shelley’s new man does not recognise a higher authority in God, nor is it assumed that he will always choose what is right. Shelley has also drawn out the logic of this liberal concept of freedom by rejecting nationalism. What matters for Shelley is that we are all equally sovereign individuals – the kings over ourselves. We are not to be circumscribed, contained, or ranked according to collective identities, whether they be based on class, tribe or nation. In the long run, Shelley got his way. The liberal concept of freedom came to dominate Western politics; it became such an orthodoxy that traditional nationalism came to be seen negatively as a limitation or restriction on the individual, and as a “discriminatory” offence against equality. There was resistance along the way, though, to this unfolding of the liberal view. The French Revolution did not meet the expectations of its supporters. It did not return man to a natural, untrammelled freedom, but unleashed the Reign of Terror, followed by the dictatorship of Bonaparte. Wordsworth reconsidered his position. He shed his liberalism and adopted a more conservative outlook. This change in his views is very clear in his homage to Edmund Burke, the political philosopher who had stood against the stream and had warned, prophetically, of the likely consequences of the Revolution:
There is no quibbling about liberalism in these lines. Wordsworth, following Burke, no longer believes that our own individual will and reason, acting alone, are sufficient to order society. Time hallowed institutes and laws are to be respected, even though they cannot by definition be self-authored. Customary social ties do not circumscribe individual freedom but are remarkable for their vital power. Most strikingly, we are born to our allegiances. Wordsworth, in asserting this, has made a root and branch rejection of liberalism, and has, politically, set himself free. He is no longer limited, in what he identifies with, to purely “voluntary” associations chosen as a deliberate act of will or reason. Instead, the whole gamut of allegiance is open to him. He may follow his deeper loyalties to an inherited ethnic nationalism; he may identify completely with an inborn masculinity; he may accept traditional and stable forms of family life; and he may assent to external, objective codes of morality. Wordsworth, having once shared Shelley’s enthusiasms, knew how to break most cleanly with the ideal of the sceptreless, tribeless new man. But Wordsworth’s defence of nationalism was not the most famous of its time. In 1804 Sir Walter Scott wrote a stinging attack on those who felt no allegiance to their own homelands. He relied less on theory and more on force of expression:
There is only a hint of theory in this poem. The “wretch” is described as being “concentrated all in self” and this perhaps is aimed at the radical individualism of the “new man” who was, despite the best efforts of poets like Wordsworth and Scott, to so greatly affect the fortunes of twentieth century Europe. Comments:3
Posted by John S Bolton on Sun, 16 Apr 2006 22:40 | # It is not surprising that poets would be the ones to try to make an ideal of the stateless person. Traitorism was unreason even in the Age of Reason. To try to set it up as an ideal, that we do not owe loyalty to our fellow nationals when they are attacked by foreigners here, was a piece of black romance, even in the Era of the Romantics. 4
Posted by Al Ross on Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:01 | # Shelley’s political attitudes, so well-documented in the late Paul Foot’s biography of the poet, ‘Red Shelley’, comport neatly with many of those held by his fellow Old Etonian, David Cameron. 5
Posted by Mark Richardson on Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:08 | # Al, thanks for reminding me about the Paul Foot work on Shelley. I read it many years ago and had forgotten about it. 6
Posted by Williams the Plumber on Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:35 | # Shelley was no Byron. The more things change the more they stay the same - Shelley was a product of lesser priviledge than Byron but he fell into the same trappings of pseudo-sociialism and the equality of humanity that infests our current leftists. Imagine there’s no countries Imagine no possesions 7
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 17 Apr 2006 21:22 | # “Nothing to kill or die for” Lennon, of course, was killed precisely for nothing, if one accepts that that’s what the dilluded mentation of Mark Chapman adds up to. From the transcript of Chapman’s parole board hearing:-
So feeling good about oneself, the wellspring of much liberal pontification, did for Lennon in life and in death. Imagine. Post a comment:
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Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:49 | #
In The Call to Freedom (1819) Shelley, a non-swimmer, wrote:-
Odd how those words today perfectly fit our circumstance, while possessing no connection whatsoever to anybody Shelley might wish to champion.