3. Shelley’s Nonviolent Poetics
Shelley’s prose works explore the philosophy of nonviolence and the necessity of its applicability as an ethical and pragmatic tool and weapon against injustices of all kinds. Works such as An Address to the Irish, A Declaration of Rights, and On the Vegetable System of Diet bear the fruits of Shelley’s nonviolent vision. The prose works have a poetic dimension and are written in a language and style replete with meaning and pregnant with Shelley’s philosophic imagination. Poetic dramas such as “The Revolt of Islam”, “Prometheus Unbound”, “The Cenci”, “Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot the Tyrant”, “Hellas”, and “Charles I” also carry the same messages. The message is directed to specific people traumatised by violence and the misery imposed on them by the King and statesmen. However, particular emphasis is laid on his poetic works like “The Mask of Anarchy”, “A Philosophical View of Reform”, “Song to the Men of England”, “Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills”, “The Triumph of Life”, etc which carry his poetic and philosophic visions of nonviolence.
“The Mask of Anarchy” was written by Shelley shortly after the Peterloo Massacre at Manchester on 16 August 1815. It is one of Shelley’s masterpieces on his philosophy of nonviolence. On the date stated above, a crowd of some 60.000 people peacefully gathered to hear Orator Hunt speak of reform. Unprovoked government troops stormed the crowd with an arrest warrant for Hunt. About nine people were killed and over four hundred wounded. Words of this massacre reached Shelley in early September, and by the end of the month, the enraged humanitarian completed his poem inspired by the tragic events of Manchester.
The “Mask” has three major movements in its 372 lines. The first movement is the triumphant march of King Anarchy and his followers, “Drunk as with intoxication / Of the wine of desolation / Through England to London (lines 49-50). Three of Anarchy’s henchmen described in detail are “Murder” (line 5) representing Castlereagh, “Fraud” (line 14), representing “Eldon and “Hypocrisy” (line 24) who rides “On a crocodile” (line 25) representing Sidmouth. These are the people who feed on the people’s sweat, “Tearing [them] up and trampling [them] down; / Till they came to London Town” (lines 52-53). By their monstrous actions and deeds, each city dweller, “panic-stricken” felt their hearts sink with terror “Hearing the tempestuous cry / Of the triumph of Anarchy” (lines 56-57) and his “hired murderers, who did sing” / Thou art God, and Law, and King. / We have waited, weak and lone / For they coming, Mighty One! / Our purses are empty, our swords / are cold, / Give us glory, and blood, and gold!” (lines 59-64) The multitude has been made slaves by the tyrannical few, through force and cunning. They forge the arms that oppress them and they acquiesce in despotic conspiracies such as “paper coin”. At the arrival of Anarchy and his followers, all praise him in whispers, “Like a bad prayer not over loud” (line 68), while others run for their lives.
In the poem’s second movement, Hope lies down in calm protest before the horses of Anarchy’s procession, expecting her body to be crushed by the king’s cruel power, as her spirit already has been. According to Desmond King–Hele, Hope’s protest is an early example of the sit-down demonstration, nay, a lie-down demonstration against oppression. He declares that:
Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses’ feet,
Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy (lines 98-101).
The results of this simple act are miraculous. The image of “Active Love” arises between Hope and her foes, and puts them to flight. The “patient eye” with which she sees the murderers is a symbol of resilience and resistance. The “prostrate multitude” then listens to a voice that incites them to revolutionary nonviolence, which is the poems final movement. This prostrate position of the multitude is an indication of both their helplessness and resignation to their fate. The revolutionary voice addresses them in the following words:
‘Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty 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… (lines 147-156)
The men of England are compared to “Nurslings of one mighty mother”. The “mother” is the universe and all its inhabitants including man. The adjective “mighty” qualifies not only the magnificence of the universe but also the fact that it provides hope and solace to all its inhabitants and treats them equally. It is therefore wrong that some “nurslings” or offspring of the same mother should trample on others and subject them to misery. Shelley incites them to wake up from their slumber and rise to their rights. He compares them to lions that are sleeping “slumber” and that need to wake from this slumber. Their slumber is as a result of the chains in which they live. “Chains” is synonymous with misery and the poor treatment they are subjected to. They should thus break these chains, compared to “dew”, and shake it off. They allowed the dew to settle on them because they are constantly asleep and refuse to rise up to their rights. Breaking the chain and shaking off the dew is a call for a revolution, a mass revolution of the indolent “many” against the violent “few”. The contrast between the violent few and the indolent many and the possibility of overthrowing the few is signalled by the encouraging expression “Ye are many-they are few”. By addressing the many with the pronoun “Ye” and the few violent ones with “they” is a reverence for the people and a portrayal of their ability to become divine by changing their lot.
Shelley thus understands the strength and power of the maltreated many if they are united in their cause and so warns them to free themselves through nonviolent means. He cautions them not to repeat the mistakes of the French Revolution by being vengeful, and violent. As he puts it:
Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood – and wrong for wrong –
Do not thus when ye are strong (lines 193-196).
Rather than retaliation, the crowd, the multitude, and the oppressed will find victory through education, serenity, non-cooperation, civil disobedience and passive resistance. They should not exchange “blood for blood”. This means that they should not behave like their oppressors. Shelley thus calls them to nonviolent actions and gives them the methods to be used. He recommends that:
Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God made ye, free – (lines 166-169)
No matter what the tyrants do, Shelley calls on the assembly to remain steadfast and defiant. “Vast” denotes the uncountable oppressed who, although trampled upon, should make the oppressors know, in a solemn way, that they too are human beings created, like the oppressor, in the image of God and thus have equal rights. As Shelley puts it, “Let the tyrants pour around / With quick and startling sound….” (lines 302-303), “Let the charged artillery drive / Till the dead air seems alive….” (lines 308-309). “Let the fixed bayonet / Gleam with sharp desire to wet / Its bright point in English blood….” (lines 311-313), “Let the horsemen’s scimitars / Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars….” (lines 315-316), but let the multitude not react. He calls on them to:
‘Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,
‘And let panic, who outspeeds
The career of armed steeds
Pass, a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.
‘Let the laws of your own land,
Good or ill, between ye stand
Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Arbiters of the dispute, (lines 319-330)
The collective nonviolent action of the oppressed is likened to forest that is thick and silent. The “folded arms” and “looks” “hand to hand” and “foot to foot” of the oppressed are symbols of their defiance before the oppressor. It also signifies that they are not afraid of the gun and that theirs is a force of argument and not the argument of force as used by the oppressor. This is a typical example of collective nonviolence in the face of violence. If in this total defiance, Anarchy and his followers, the tyrants, “dare”:
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and main, and
hew, –
What they like, that let them do.
With folded arms and steady
eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away (lines 341-347)
“Slash”, “stab”, “maim” and “hew” are the different methods that the tyrants use to oppress and kill. Being few, Shelley contends that they will kill and main and hew, until they get tired and then withdraw. In this act of bravura and nonviolence against violence the tyrants, Shelley believes, will, despite their ferocity and thirst for blood, be defeated. He posits that:
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 (lines 348-351)
According to Young, this is “Shelley’s most concise poetical statement of his belief in the ultimate powers of the nonviolent many to be victorious over the violent few in an actual political situation” (line 143). From a Marxist perspective, there is ultimately going to be a conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor. The final victory, Marx intimates, lies in the hands of the oppressed or the proletariat. This is what happens in this poem. The oppressor is defeated and a proletarian society takes over. This justifies Marx’s theory of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It equally signals Shelley’s prophetic vision of a new society achieved through nonviolence. The synthesis here is the envisioned new society of equality and freedom. This kind of nonviolence is a faith too idealistic for some political strategists to conceive. It was, however, not too idealistic for Gandhi when he led the Indian Independence movement. The consequences of such nonviolent movement and passive resistance might be very far-reaching. It is estimated, for instance, that “ten thousand Indians were murdered during the struggle (for independence) while not a single Britisher was killed”. But the consequences would have been inestimable had the revolution been violent. Gandhi is quoted to have cited sections of “The Mask of Anarchy to a large crowd gathered in commitment to nonviolence. According to Geoffrey Ashe
| [3] | Ash, Geoffrey. Gandhi. London: Stein and Day, 1968. p. 105. |
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in
Gandhi, Shelley’s poem was the specific source that suggested the tactics of mass civil disobedience and passive resistance to the nonviolent militants. “The Mask of Anarchy” openly calls for another meeting as the one just dispersed. According to Steven E. Jones
| [9] | Jones, Steven E. “Shelley’s Satire of Succession and Brecht’s Anatomy of Regression: “The Mask of Anarchy”.” Keats-Shelley Journal, vol. 43, 1994, pp. 67-85. |
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, in an article entitled “Shelley’s Satire of Succession and Brecht’s Anatomy of Regression: “The Mask of Anarchy” and Der anachronistische Zug Oder Freiheit und Democracy” in
Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World “The Mask of Anarchy” is:
A poem in which Shelley aims to “represent” – to stand in the place of, and to speak for – the people. Shelley seeks to act as an exiled, out-of-doors representative, to figure the predicament of the people in a way that will move them to intervene in events (193-200),
Shelley in the poem ironically implies that Murder, Fraud, and Hypocrisy wear the mask of actual politicians namely, Castlereagh, Eldon, and Sidmouth. He also asserts that the underlying reality in each case is abstract evil, mere façades of the living people. They are led by Anarchy. Structurally, the poem can be divided into two major parts. The first part is the twenty-one stanzas of the satiric masquerade, the second, after a brief transition scene, is fifty-five stanzas of exhortation. The transition consists of fifteen stanzas of allegory, the poem’s dramatic transformation scene. Emerging from this scene, the maid – Hope walks “ankle-deep in blood” " anarchy lies dead, and his horse grinds “to dust” the rest of the procession. The satirical mode of the first part gives way to the exhortative mode of the final part, but only through a purgative representation of figurative violence. As Steven E. Stones puts it:
This may be Shelley’s attempt to counter, rather than merely imitate, the real violence just experienced in Manchester, but its effects are ambivalent. Precisely what happens during the poem’s transition is difficult to say; the transformation scene takes place as it were through a veil, or a theatrical scrim [lines 195].
Conclusively, “The Mask of Anarchy” is a satire of succession that attempts to figure out the people's intervention in the otherwise continuous descent of power. Shelley hopes for change through a radically redrawn succession.
“Song to the Men of England like “The Mask of Anarchy” also demonstrates the power of Shelleyan nonviolence, passive resistance and non-co-operation, as recommended tactics to overthrow tyranny. The poem dramatizes Shelley’s position of support to the masses. It begins by asking a series of questions. Why do England’s men labour and suffer so that the rich can be idle and indolent on the fruits of their toil? It then states the fact of oppression and its solution, summarised in the following stanza:
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears (lines 17-20).
The “Men of England the proletariats or the “Bees of England” are contrasted sharply with the “lords”, “tyrants”, “ungrateful drones”, and “stingless drones”. The “Bees of England”, “sow”, “find”, “weave” and “forge”, whereas the indolent and “ungrateful” drone “reaps”, “keeps”, “wears”, and “bears” all that they have not worked for. According to Shelley, the remedy to such “plough” and “toil” lies in non-cooperation and civil disobedience.
Sow seed, -but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -let no impostor heap;
Weave robes, -let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, -in your defence to bear (lines 21-24).
The poem simply demands that the people should stop supporting the economic despotism that oppresses them, and suggests that such despotism that is presently supported by the toil of others will fall of its weight.
One, however, has the impression that Shelley’s verse line, “Forge arms, -in your defence to bear”, is a call for violence against violence. Young, on the contrary, thinks that the statement is “not so much a call to fight violence against violence, as it is a shifting of perspective on a fact of political life” (line 153). What the statement means is that if the Men of England are going to forge arms, they should not be silly enough to give the arms to their oppressors and tyrants as they have been doing. They should keep the arms for their defence. This brings to mind the question of violence in nonviolent resistance. Although Gandhi
| [7] | Gandhi, Mahatma. The Doctrine of the Sword. Navajivan Publishing House, 1927. p. 217. |
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, for instance preached non-violence, frequently and fortnightly he addressed himself to the question of violence in revolution. In his essay “The Doctrine of the Sword”, he states:
I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus, when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used physical force which he called not and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become & remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.
But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.
What Gandhi means, and which is manifest in Shelley’s poem, is that if the capacity for non-violent self-defence is lacking, “there need be no hesitation in using violent means” (19). Shelley’s could actively support the cause of revolution in Greece and yet lament that the revolutionaries were not wise and imaginative enough to see the “preferability” of non-violent tactics to violent ones. The point I am anxious to make here is the distinction between absolute pacifism and non-violence. Non-violence must not become a weapon of tyranny, as Christianity had become and used as a moralistic doctrine by despots to enslave the people willingly and peacefully in chains of degradation. Like Martin Luther King Jr.
| [10] | King, Martin Luther. Why We Can’t Wait. Signet, 2001. p. 81. |
[10]
writes in
Why We Can’t Wait:
I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth…. [so, there is] the need for nonviolent gadflies to create a kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
Although Shelley recognises that the people have the constitutional “right of insurrection” which is “derived from the employment of armed force to counteract the will of the nation” (Philosophical View of Reform, VII, 533) he, however, pleads passionately against the people turning to this “last resort”, and that is the case in “Song to the Men of England”
“Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills” composed in October 1818 is one of those poems in which Shelley clearly expresses what Wilfred Owen calls “The Pity of It”, the pity that wars and conflicts “distil”. Shelley in this beautiful lyric song is sensitive and sensible to the alternation of day and night and the circular movement of history from tyranny to tyranny. His desperation arises less out of his clear vision of the tragedy of historical circumstances, but more out of man’s apparent inability to transcend this alternation of violence with violence and tyranny with tyranny. He contends that:
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but ‘tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge (Stanza 7, lines 26-30).
According to Shelley, man must develop the power and the will to shape an existence for himself. Such an existence should conquer the deadly circles of humanity’s history, one which refuses to be part of this circular violence, tyranny and revenge. Instead of kow-towing and submitting to the tyranny of life, man can perhaps escape to what Shelley describes as:
…Some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me and those I Love
May a windless bower be built
Far from passion, pain and guilt (lines 9-12)
For this socially minded poet, what sounds like an escape to an island retreat is in no way an escape from humanity. Rather it is an invitation for humanity to join him in this nonviolent utopian “calm and blooming cove” so that in that world of imagination:
We may live happy there,
That the Spirits of the Air,
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing Paradise
The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves
Under which the bright sea heaves:
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies,
And the lovewhich heals of strife,
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood;
They, not it, would change; and soon
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grows young again. (lines 18-39)
Shelley thinks that the universe can be a paradise. His invitation for man to join him in this earthly paradise is both vegetarian and a plea for nonviolence. This imaginative paradise may also entice the “polluting multitude”. The polluting multitude is a synonym for the oppressor who is also capable of being good, in the image of God.
“The Triumph of Life”, the unfinished last poem of Shelley would have contained the same basic thematic structure as “Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills”, but it is more elaborately developed and dramatically presented. The central figure in the poem is “the Car of Life” which moves in all directions, and drags the chained human beings, its victims, wherever it goes. The only two figures that escape those chains of enslavement are Socrates and Christ. They are among the “sacred few” to escape. Apart from them, the “deluded” spirit of Rousseau answers the question posed by Shelley to know “those who are chained to the car”:
The wise,
‘The great, the unforgotten, - they who wore
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light,
Signs of thought’s empire over thought – their lore
‘Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mystery within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
“Caught them are evening” (lines 150-157).
Those who are chained on to the Car of life are those who dedicated their lives to the world and never knew themselves. “Mitres”, “helms”, “crowns”, and “wreaths of light” refer to kings and statesmen who oppress the innocent man. They forgot that they are made in the image of God and that they are not different from other men in the universe. Since they did not know themselves, life bore them sightlessly through existence. Because they loved the things of the world, like “fame” and “greatness”, they lost “peace” and “virtue”. Carl Woodring
| [22] | Woodring, Carl. Politics in English Romantic Poetry. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1970. p. 322. |
[22]
, in
Politics in English Romantic Poetry, says that “To know yourself, means to avoid dominion over others, thus to escape life’s dominion over you, and in the effect to love your neighbour”. Socrates and Christ are not part of the enslaved many. This is a depiction of their exemplary nonviolent lives, imaginatively comprehended by the poet. It is by loving one’s neighbour as one loves oneself that one can be free and escape from this Car of life, and for Shelley man only needs to will and so will it be. In order words, Love is innate in every man, and all man needs to do is to develop the love in him, love himself and show the love to others (neighbours). In this case, there will be no violence in the world. Those who have failed to know themselves, according to Shelley, include among others Napoleon, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Emperor Paul of Russia, Catherine the Great, Leopold II, Pope Gregory, Saint John, Caesar, Constantine, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great. To these people should be added Plato and Rousseau who are also chained to the car of life. Like Young says, Rousseau is chained to the Car because “he loved himself more than his neighbour”. The spirit of Rousseau in “The Triumph of Life” can be considered as one of those misdirected spirits categorised thus by Shelley in his “Preface” to “Alastor”:
Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted) perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave (line 15).
“The Triumph of Life” ends with the question “Then What is Life?” (line 344). From a purely Shelleyan perspective, life for a majority of mankind is selfishness, for the misdirected few, it is searching for the things of another world, and for the sacred few, it is like Young puts it “self-mastery through brotherly love” (line 158). For the sacred few, the state of existence is not static but dynamic. It is a continuous struggle against the corrupting and degrading life of the world in an unquenchable attempt to fully realise the sacredness of humanity. Put differently therefore, life is not what it is, an alternation of violence, tyranny, and selfishness. Life is supposed to be a fountain of universal love that flows in every human heart, producing as such a non-violent spirit that permeates the universe for a harmonious living. Such is the position of Shelley.
Shelley’s other anthologised sonnets are designed to provoke an imaginative response compatible with the spirit of non-violence. “Ozymandias” for instance, indicts the vanity of men who build an empire on power and wealth rather than on peace and love. Ozymandias, the king, is a symbol of tyranny and vanity, a king who was not to be trifled with as the words “frown”, “sneer”, and “cold command” suggest. But in the face of his ruthless and tyrannical rule, his death reveals the vanity of human power and tyranny. Of all he stood for, (tyrannical, fearful, violent, oppressive and repressive), he has fallen with his kingdom, and nothing remains of him but his “shattered visage” (line 4) and the epitaph that stands in “the desert” (line 3) stresses the vanity of power. It reads:
‘My name is Oxymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away (lines 10-14).
Shaddrach Ambanasom
| [2] | Ambanasom, Shadrach. The Radical Romantic Poets: An Introduction. Yaoundé: Presses Universitaires de Yaoundé, 2001. pp. 113-115. |
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has an interesting interpretation of the poem. He reveals meaning through a study of the poem’s diction. As he puts it, when the narrator starts talking:
we notice the use of words of emotion: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone…”. The noun is “legs” but solidly qualified by strong adjectives “vast”, “trunkless”, “of stone”, which tell us that these were huge legs that were once very strong but which today are without a strong body; we are talking of a broken statue. Near these legs lies a partially buried “shattered” face…. It is as if God himself came down to earth in one form or the other to teach Oxymandias a lesson by administering his statue a crushing, devastating blow….
Ambanasom goes ahead to frame the message of the poem in his own words through the following lyrical lines:
Tyrants, be not proud!
Nothing made by man is indestructible
Nor earthly kingdom lasts forever
Dictators, know then your limit!
For all is vanity!
The point in “Ozymandias is that underneath this exposition of tyranny and its vanity is the unspoken Shelleyan suggestion that “Intellectual beauty” characterized by love and nonviolence is the ultimate that all must seek and at all times.
This same basic punch line is extrapolated in another sonnet, “England in 1819”. The poem indicts the blind tyranny of kings and priests who rule by the “two-edged swords” of violence and whose death may bring the dawning of a brighter day. It is a critique against the king, his off-springs, the politicians, the priest, and others who “starve” and “stab” the people. The poem has two categories of people. On the one hand, “the king”, the “princes”, “rulers”, and the religious personalities, and on the other hand the “people”. This echoes the Shelleyan statement “Ye are many, they are few” and sets a thesis and an anti-thesis. The thesis here from the Marxist perspective is the first category:
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, -
Princes, the dregs of their full 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 (line 1-5).
This category of persons in the theory of Marx constitutes the ruling class. They make “Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay” (line 10). The religion practiced is “Christless, Godless” (line 11), and the “Senate” is like a statute, unable to make any laws that can favour the people.
The antithesis is the “people” (line 6), nay the masses who are “starved and stabbed in the untilled field”, -(line 6). The underlying point to be unearthed here is that while the higher class is all powerful, the lower class is all weak. Although the latter labours, his fruits are enjoyed by the former. This is bound to create a situation of conflict between the two classes. The result of this conflicting situation will be a kind of synthesis, a harmonised society where all are equal and thus share the same privileges and advantages. Whereas Marx preaches a proletarian revolution, Shelley thinks that a revolution is not necessary because the oppressors, though “to their fainting country cling” (line 5) will themselves collapse as suggested in the line “Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow” (line 6).
Although the word “blood” may denote violence, the ensuing expression “without a blow” suggests non-violence. In other words, the violence of the ruling class is confronted with the powerful non-violence of the working class. Even if they are killed, from their graves will “burst” a “glorious Phantom” that “may illumine our tempestuous day”, thus the synthesis, and the mystical power of non-violence. Ambanasom considers the last two lines of the poem (the heroic couplet) as “the turning point in the sonnet”. Truly it is. According to him, “For all the bleakness painted, the hopes that the immorality, wickedness, and inhumanity will end up producing a revolution that from the graves of those victimised a revolution will emerge to put things right” (line 115). It will be a simplification of Shelleyan ideology and philosophy of non-violence to think that the word “revolution” here means violence. On the contrary, it means “change”, “without a blow”, and this change will come when the oppressors will be in their graves – the grave which symbolises the end of an era and the annihilation of a system, violent and tyrannical as it might have been. This same grave also signals a new birth.
Apart from Shelley’s sonnets, and the examples discussed above, Shelley’s political odes also denounce temporal powers that rule over men by fear, and prophesy the founding of political liberty when man comes to truly know himself and love all humankind. In “An Ode Written October, 1819, Before the Spaniards Had Recovered Their Liberty”, Shelley pleads to the Spanish to master the passions of revenge and pride on which tyrannies are built. “Ode to Liberty” is a study of history as a cycle of tyranny begetting tyranny and the enslaving of the oppressed. Like the first two odes, “Ode to Naples” is a passionate cry from the non-violent poet to the peoples of Naples to put their trust in the “Great Spirit, deepest Love” in their struggle for freedom. In all of these poems and many more, Shelley does not waver in his trust that non-violence, if accepted by the majority of people, would create a better society. He thus spent his life in communicating the human grandeur of his vision.
Apart from the poems, Shelley’s great dramas also illuminate his philosophic vision of the essence of nonviolence in human society. They are his strong desire to communicate to more people his vision of truth and nonviolence and this is why we include them in this study. Shelley’s major poetic dramas like “The Cenci”, “Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot the Tyrant”, “Hellas, and “Charles I” are representations of the Shelleyan vision of nonviolence. They also demonstrate, especially “The Cenci”, the Shelleyan criticism of evil responding to evil, (exemplified by Beatrice) as well as Shelley’s promotion of fulfilled love through will, as seen in the eyes and actions of Prometheus in “Prometheus Unbound”. Whichever way we look at it, Shelley in his dramas as in his poetry and prose, brings out the tyranny of mankind against man but shuns revenge and violence as a response to oppression.
In sum therefore, Shelley’s nonviolence as seen in the poems, lyric dramas, political pamphlets and other works is an ethical and pragmatic philosophy of life used in the fight against oppression, repression, dictatorship, totalitarianism and miseries of all kinds. Nonviolence, characterised by non-cooperation and civil disobedience, is as such a basic life principle propounded by Percy Bysshe Shelley and taken over years later by Mahatma Gandhi. The fundamental and unanswered questions are why Shelley has not been credited with the philosophy of nonviolence, why Gandhi did not acknowledge Shelley and did both men know each other, read each other? Who inspired who?
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