A sublime experience of Shelley in "Mont blanc"
著者（英） Toyoko Hashimoto
journal or
publication title
Doshisha literature
number 38
page range 15‑33
year 1995‑03‑10
権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000014784
A SUBLIME EXPERIENCE OF SHELLEY IN "MONT BLANC"
TOYOKO HASHIMOTO
I
Shelley's lyrics reflect emotional force of man's craving for an intelligible universe. Indeed, the nostalgic delight with which we return to them gives evidence of emotional attitudes which Japanese readers have shared and have not even yet entirely outgrown. This is the outcome of a desire to gain a clearer comprehension of the poet's concept of nature as it appears in the lyrics. It is observed that the emotional tone of his view is tinged with assumptions drawn from a metaphysic rooted in religion.
Within such a conceptual framework he quests for the relationship between "I" and "thou" ; and being a lyrical poet, he constantly develops his assumptions. One of his lyrics I have chosen, "Mont Blanc", stands on the borderline between aesthetics and philosophy. The alienation from familiar life is characteristic of Shelley's poems, and the view I want to submit is that this isolation from the familiar creates solitude as a milieu for meditation on the meaning of human life. The poet's concern is not the supremacy of art over actuality, but the function of his poetry for mankind. He regards himself as a representative of humanity.
I shall discuss Shelley's aesthetics, paying attention to the aspects of the Sublime, and in "Mont Blanc" we might see his poetic ambition. The analysis of Shelley's poetry will necessitate an examination not only of his uniqueness, sensibility, and creative imagination, but also of subjectivity versus objectivity, of temporal versus eternal time, and of the esoteric versus
(15J
16
the exoteric.
A degree of reconciliation between oriental and occidental cultures and traditions has been internalized by me, albeit with understandable limitations. I hope that difference in perception, however, may serve to . elucidate rather than obscure· an investigation into the aesthetic effect of
Shelley's lyrics.
Regarding new readings by new readers, Jerome McGann, in his essay,
"The Third World of Criticism", refers to Shelley's Prometheus Unbound as an example of the poet's interpretation of Aeschylean drama and affirms that poetry always has the potential for a new reading:
... Aeschylean drama, however, like all poetry, lays down a rich deposit of incommensurate detail even as it follows its specific ideological commitments. In this way poetry always tells more than it knows, always cames within itself many opportunities for greater objectivity and truth. 1
As McGann points out, Shelley's poems might provide something that could be explored by new eyes cultivated in a different climate. In order to relinquish the English Empire in the literary world, readers of "the third world" should consider this very distance from the English tradition as a challenge which brings its own confidence.
It seems that "Mont Blanc" is difficult, esoteric2 if we were to borrow Shelley's expression, for Japanese readers to appreciate because of the poet's philosophical speculation on Nature. Also, the stanzaic movement of the speaker's argument is a strain on readers. However, the study of the Western theories concerning aesthetics will be of help to understand the poem. What I am concerned with is the sublime as the poet's aesthetic experience.
II
Observation of Nature
Samuel H. Monk contributed a great deal to the study on the tradition and theory of the sublime and names John Dennis as the first Englishman who:
... early manifested an interest in the sublime, not only in regard to natural scenery, but to theory as well. Before the end of the seventeenth century he had outlined his ideas, carrying the inquiry far beyond the region in which Longinus and Boileau had wrought, by investigating the emotional responses of individuals who experience the sublime.3 As Monk stresses Dennis's emphasis on the importance of individual emotion, so Shelley's emotional response is a significant element in his rephrasing. "Mont Blanc" can be seen as a poem registering the integrity of the manifold impressions made by natural objects. The question of subjectivity and objectivity is crucial for Shelley. In the poem there is no clear-cut declaration such as Emerson expresses in his lecture on "Nature":
Standing on the bare ground,-my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,-all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all.4
Shelley is unable to state his total surrender to nature with such a phrase as
"I am nothing." Romantic poets inherited something of their powers of observation from the picturesque poets of the eighteenth century. However, these earlier poets placed particular emphasis on scenery and English country life. In Thomson's "Autumn", The Seasons,5 natural description is mixed with metaphor. "The Northern Ocean" (line 862) leads to comments on
"What Nations come and go?" (line 867) and speculations on the style of "the plain harmless Native" (line 871). John Dyer's "Grongar Hill" has some affinities with "Mont Blanc" in the poet's use of a cave setting for the
purposes of meditation.
o
MAY I with myself agree, And never covet what I see;Content me with an humble shade, My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For while our wishes wildly roll, We banish quiet from the soul:
'Tis thus the busy beat the air, And misers gather wealth and care.
Now, even now, my joy runs high, As on the mountain-turf I lie;
While the wanton zephyr sings, And in the vale perfumes his wings;
While the waters murmur deep, While the shepherd charms his sheep;
While the birds unbounded fly, And with music fill the sky.
Now, even now, my joys run high.
(line 130-146)6 Scenery works as motivation for the elevation and encapsulation of the poet's attitude to Nature, and the correlations. between Dyer and Shelley lie in that the poet meditates on the meaning that Nature represents in relation to his Self. Shelley tells of his adoration for Mont Blanc, but he does not speak of the love of the country, nor is peaceful English rural life represented as readers see it in eighteenth century poems. Nature urges him to consider the relationship between the perpetual presence and his own mind:
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange To muse on my own separate phantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremlttmg interchange With the clear universe of things around;
(,Mont Blanc' line 34-40)7 A relationship of the seer and the seen is keenly felt, but here seeing is no longer a matter of taste, rather, it is act of the poet's quest. The melancholy stance of past poets is replaced by philosophy. In the first stanza the speaker shows by the metaphor of a river and a brook a remarkable contrast between the mighty "everlasting universe of things" (line 1) and "human thought"
(line 5) such as "a feeble brook" (line 7). The motif, the interchange of the two is told. In the second stanza the speaker addresses to "Ravine of Arve"
(line 12) and describes the landscape he is confronted with. What is noteworthy in this stanza is that the motif of the unification is described like a picture. The reader has to receive what the poet draws in terms of pictorial image where birds of feathers flock together, representing mystic inter- penetration. Then, in the third stanza the speaker tells of how creative imagination is obtained. Here, it is not the poet's task to speculate on perfecting himself, rather he aims at obtaining intuitve imagination which he cannot cultivate in the world of reality. He suggest a transformation of value, envisaging that "gleams" (line 49) might be caught in such a trance like sleep and death. The great mountain "Mont Blanc", in association with the Ravine of the Arve is addressed as "Thou" (line 80) and represents power. In his attempt to evoke a sublime response in readers, the poet uses another aspect, a theory of terror. We can regard this chapter as the poet's initiation into a new vision. In the forth stanza inaccessibility of the mountain is emphasized on the one hand while busy activities of mutable lives are placed on the other. In the manner of mono-colour photograph, a pictorial image of the mighty mountain with crowning snow is presented. Power and beauty are unified in the final stanza followed by the poet's repeated affirmation of his
20
imagination usmg a rhetorical question.
III
The Affirmation of Individualism
The question here is, whom is the poet addressing? The identity of 'thou'
1S hinted at those lines:
In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pass by
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast F ram which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
(line 44-48)8 The "still cave" is the human mind that lies in "the breast" while "the witch poesy" is one personification of imagination, as the note in the N orton Critical Edition stipulates. Imagination, in fact, is the focal point of the poem. This interpretation is supported by the last three lines:
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy? (line 142-44)9 If "thou" is imagination, and if there are times of interchange between the universal mind and the human mind, how is the sign.ificant moment achieved? Shelley's argument is so subtle that the reader is uncertain about the relation of "I" and "thou".
The wilderness has a mysterious tongu~
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be But for such faith with nature reconciled, Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
(line 76-83/°
The passage could be paraphrased thus: Man may be reconciled with nature only through such faith with which the wise, great, and good interpret, or can feel, a voice of great mountain to repeal large codes of fraud and woe.
Paradoxically, while expressing his belief that Nature can inculcate humility, Shelley is expressing his own egotism by the inevitable apposition of the Poet Self with the phrase, "the wise, and great, and good / Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel". The speaker's tone is so calm that it gives a sound affirmation of human "tribute" (line 5) to "The everlasting universe of things"
(line 1). Thus, Shelley's centripetal drive is apparent, and for him the self is the primary centre of cognition.
The poem I have chosen could be interpreted as the poet's self portrait;
one can trace his true confession intricately camouflaged by his art. There is an essay by Kazuo UedaY He is interested in seeing each Shelley poem as a signpost of his life and regrets that his poetry has not yet been judged properly. Ueda defends the poet's works by claiming that Shelley's poetry should be situated among the great world literature for youth. Presumably, through his translation of Goethe's Faust I in 181512 Shelley might have placed himself in the position identical with the youth. The hero's thirst for knowledge in Faust I could have been transformed into the speaker's wish to affirm his imagination. It will not be irrelevant to remember that Alastor was published in February in which a youth who is "insatiate of knowledge", is
"led forth by an imagination", and is "avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion" ("Preface"of Alastor)Y Here we see that there is a link between an individualistic drive or the primacy of imagination in Shelley and his interests in German literature. When objectivity inculcated by faith is
22
incompatible with subjectivity affirmed by his egotism, we have to turn to Nature in a hope of being able to solve this paradox.
IV
Order in the World of Nature
Is there a hierarchy in the world of nature in "Mont Blanc"? M.H. Abrams thinks that Shelley's essay, The Defence of Poetry demonstrates the strain of a Platonic aesthetic to cancel differences and reduce everything to a single Form .
. . . Since the realm of Essences is the residence of all modes of value,
"to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good" ; in consequence any aesthetic judgment inescapably involves a moral and ontological judgment as well. These several values,in turn, are ultimately the attributes of a single Form of Forms; and Shelley goes beyond Plato and approximates Plotinus, for whom all considera- tions had been drawn irresistibly into the vortex of the One.14 However, in my reading of Plotinus, "the realm of Essences" has an order, and the One is positioned in the highest as the Authentic Essence. Nothing is distinguished or divided in the cosmos of unity, but there is a difference.
Soul, without partition, has a nature of divisional existence. Thus, there are a Divine Mind that does not move and a Soul that can move above and below, and the latter keeps its integral nature (Fourth Ennead, 1)15 We see: that Abrams' statement needs a more correct way of expression.
In relation to Shelley's philosophical strain, Kenneth N eill Cameron traces back the two currents of criticism that regard Shelley as either mythological or social thinker in the essay entitled "Shelley as Philosophi- cal and Social Thinker: Some Modern Evaluations". Commenting on Carl Grabo's books, Cameron states that "There is, however, no evidence that Shelley read Plotinus or other Neoplatonists ... ,,16 However, it is not
without significance to conjecture that Shelley, as a romantic writer of second generation, knows of Plotinus or German romantic writers because his interest in German literature increased after 1815 when he first read Faust
L
as we have already seen.I am not, in what follows, very much concerned about analytic discussions of Shelley's neo-platonic strain. This is a subject far too large for treatment here. However, when I attempt to consider the question of esoteric or exoteric elements in Shelley's experience of the sublime, I have to examine the poet's function in his romanticizing, that is, cultivation of the ideal. He wrote "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" in the same year of his composition of
"Mont Blanc", and the relationship of "I" and "thou" is much more understandable in terms of the platonic idea.
Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm-to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To hear himself, and love all human kind.
(line 7:78-84)17 The poet worships the fair SPIRIT and prays for it so that he as well as every form could be supplied with calmness like the truth of nature descended on the poet's passive youth. There is an argument that every human being contains "thee", therefore, "all human kind" should be loved.
The reflective manner of his youth reminds the reader of Wordsworth's
"Tintern Abbey", however what I am concerned with is the word "De- scended". Here, the working of "fair SPIRIT" is suggested by the argument that the speaker's faith calls for the working of "power" that emanates from
"thee". The relationship "I" and "thou" is explained as the interchange
24
between faith and the working of spirit. Taking what we have seen into account, my focus of attention shall be laid on some objects that are endowed with much freedom of action. The following is a descriptive passage of the interchange between the universal mind and human imagination, where the atmosphere of reverie is created.
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wmgs Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
(line 41-43i8 The phrase "One legion of wild thoughts" is impressive in giving a sense of speed and creating an image of different feathers of birds resting together.
What the reader should take notice of is that Shelley's framework of conception is changed by his pictorial description. The vertical relationship between the universal mind, symbolized by the great mountain, and the poet's faith is made horizontal, and a unity between the universal mind and the individual human mind is expressed in a metaphor of mixing wings. The notes of the N orton critical edition say that the syntax of above three lines is ambiguous, but I regard "that" or "thou" (line 43) as two separate entities because basically, there are two planes in the poetic world of the poem. From the word, "seeking" (line 45), "One legion of wild thoughts" is understood as
"wild imagination" that belongs to the "human mind". What makes this poem difficult lies in the fact that the speaker's argument, that is his faith in the universal mind, and the pictorial description that should support his argument are not in conformity with each other.
v
The Role of Mytlwlogical Figures
Then, we have to turn to Nature in order to seek for some symbols that can
compromise the disparity between the poet's logic and his art. In "Mont Blanc" the mountain is personified and addressed to "thee", but its inaccessibility is emphasized:
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity Remote, serence, and inaccessible:
(line 96_97)19 The mountain, Mont Blanc, stands aloof keeping a distance from the earthly world:
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain, Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep Holds every future leaf and flower; ~the bound With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth, And that of him and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound Are born and die; revolve, subside and swell.
(line 84-95lo With the image of inaccessible mountain and the low tone of the speaker who speculates on "The source of human thought" (line 5), the reader is unable to transcend. Here what we should get a hint from Plotinus's Ennead is the essence that intermediates the highest and -the human mind.
In seeking for objects that can link the two minds of universal and of the human, I shall turn to Shelley's myths as his poetic convention, and of his peculiar function is to widen the scale of the reader's visionary world by using mythological figures. We remember the line 21 "Of some fierce
26
Maenad" of "Ode", and in "Mont Blanc" the poet uses the image of a daemon and Daedalus. His attitude toward his material is quite free. Daedalus is depicted as the craftsman who fashioned the earth. The use of mythological figures in their semantic amplification is effective in giving gaiety and wit to the passage. However, a crucial point in "Mont Blanc" is that the stanza where those mythological figures are used tells the reader of settings of mutable activities. As we have seen, the quoted passage from line 84 to line 95 conveys the superficial and transient world in contrast to the serene region of the sublime that is remote from the world of experience. Therefore, even with Daedalus's quality that goes beyond human's, it is impossible to reach to the region of Essence, nor does he make a part of the Essence that descends from the inaccessible mountain. Shelley's use of mythological figures is effective in order to avoid any boring simplicity of the tone, but it is not persuasive enough to explain his higher reality-the interchange between the universal mind and the human mind. So far we can conclude that the poet's mythopoetic world is neither religious nor philosophical, but pagan and aesthetic.
VI
Time as a Flash and Time as Eternity
Here, in order to understand the substance of the poem, we have to delve into aspects of the sublime. A.C. Bradley points out that a mystic experience of the sublime is momentary, and that an experience of sublimity is felt as a flash and is different -from the beautiful that can maintain its feature.21 In connection with this feature of apprehension or of revelation, Shelly contrives to present an artistic milieu in which he, as well as readers, might be able to transcend the world of reality and to grasp the force of imagination.
As Novalis reversed the nominal value of light and darkness, and as he
envisaged the brilliance of inner world,22 Shelley provides the reader with an possibility of obtaining imaginative force by the transformation of opposite realms. The poet suggests that thinking in such a realm of reverie as sleep or death, one can see higher reality which people who are awake and busy fail to see.
Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep,-that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.-I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled The veil of life and death?
(line 49-54l3 No one will deny to say that this passage is of importance in order to obtain Shelley's notion. However, it seems there are differences in a degree to which each reader takes the passage in the context of a whole poem.
There is an essay by Minoru Hayashida on "Mont Blanc".24 He explains Shelley's framework of conception, analysing into three patterns of regions.
In his interpretation, the poetic world of "Mont Blanc" is formed by three dimensional views of worlds: The world of experience, the world created by Intellectual Philosophy and the mightier world of Imagination where Power exist. Hayashida elaborately analyses the essence of Power, and states that the two worlds, of Intellectual Philosophy and of Imagination, are compatible. There are several difference between his interpretation and mine. As my point of view has partly been discussed and shall be developed' further, the main arguments of his to which I object shall be introduced here.
He says that Power teaches human beings necessitarian doctrine to which humans have to be absolutely subject, that a sense of terror evoked in the third chapter is originated from people's prejudice, and that Power exists i
away from the universe allowing the poet to get insight into it only by
28
transcendental capacity of dream.
My argument against his interpretation comes from the basic understand- ing that there is adoration in the poet's feeling towards the Power symbolized by the mountain. Therefore, I understand Shelley constructs his frame of concept~on by his Intellectual Philosophy. As for the possibility of reverie or of a sense of terror, it will be clear to see it as'Shelley's technique for developing his theory of the sublime in terms with features of time.
The mountain and the river are inaccessible, therefore, a stern image is created. In the eighteenth century Edmund Burke advocated a theory of the sublime in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of Sublime and Beautiful,25 and it was particularly influential on Shelley. Following Burke's ideas, Shelley uses a sense of terror and depicts obscure and hideous images to evoke moments of sublime experience:
A desart peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, And the wolf tracks her there-how hideously Its shapes are heaped around1 rude, bare, and high, Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.-Is this the scene Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire, envelope once this silent snow?
(line 67_74)26 These lines give the effect analogous to gothic novels. The catalogue of . hideous objects is used to take readers' minds away from their familiar everyday life so that their imagination might be purified, thus readers' perception being sharpened by sense of terror. As if to suggest temporal features of a sublime experience, the poet's eyes quickly move to "The wilderness" that exists in eternity.
None can reply-all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
(line 75_77)27 We have seen that Nature shows its beauty in eternal sense of time while allowing the poet to grasp temporal experiences of the sublime. There is a dual feature in time as well as in natural landscapes. The scene the speaker is gazing on is swiftly replaced by Nature drawn by the poet's imagin.ation.
Therefore, a study on Shelley's style will pave the way to understand his aesthetics much more clearly.
VII
Shelley's Style
Among Shelley's lyrical poems, "Mont Blanc" seems to be less lyrical, being almost prosaic in places. This is achieved by the use of blank verse and also, to a certain extent, by the use of decasyllabic lines. As discussed previously, lines 41-48 are particularly significant in view of the poet's romanticizing, cultivation of the ideal:
The story is told both incrementally and sequentially, narrative rather than lyrical passage. He begins by creating an impression of speedy flight through an extensive use of alliteration: "One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings" (line 41). Then, the combination of short and long vowel sounds, that is, of weak and strong accents, give the rise and fall of wandering wings: "Now float above thy darkness, and now rest" (line 42).
The following three lines have no punctuation in mid-line; the effect of which is conducive to a darker and quieter atmosphere:
Where that or thou are no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pass by
(line 43-45)
30
The glottal "G" and the use of such words as the "Ghosts" and the "shade"
conveys the speaker's mental tension: "Ghosts" of all things that are, some shade of thee" (line 46). Gradually the pitch increases, and the comma at the close of line 46 does not interrupt the mellifluity of the alliterated's' sounds:
... some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou are there!
{line 46-48) The comma after "them" concludes the incremental description and speaks the final statement of the poet's belief: "thou are there!" with its change from alliterated sounds "s" to "t".
Moreover, Shelly's effective stylistic efforts is to reinforce his meaning by the structure of stanzas. In the first stanza, the theme of interchange is established, however as if to show the poet's ambivalent attitude swinging between subjectivity and objectivity, the second stanza ends in pictorial image of fantasy. The speaker, as well as the reader, feels the mystical interchange as if they see it through a veil hanging on.
The aim and the weight of the third stanza is of significance. The speaker experiences initiation into the mysteries of a shadowy realm. Here, the list of hideous objects works in the same effect with it, and only by being liberated from the value of ordinary life, the reader can share the speaker's experience of spiritual regeneration through knowledge of the counter value. By cleansing himself in a different domain of imagination, the speaker acquired the eyes to see the silent and infinite secrets. The forth stanza teaches the poet an impact. The dynamic river appears with its torrent of mighty sound.
In an effective contrast between a dynamic flow of the universal time and the stillness of the universal mind, the final scene of Mont Blanc is painted in monocolour where the brush of Shelley lays stress on snow white.
We remember that Ueda regards Shelley's poetry as a great literature of youth. After studying the poet's cultivation of the ideal, we find that the poet's sincere quest is well expressed in his stanzaic structure. In this sense,
"Mont Blanc" has an affinity with Miltorr's "Lycidas" where the poet's quest is answered by his own journey to an inner mind.28 As Milton left a process of his emotion by the shift of stanzaic meaning, so Shelley left an orb of his initiation. In its sincere spirit of a poet's quest for creative power, we can conclude that "Mont Blanc" is a lyrical poem, per se.
However, the reason why the poem, "Mont Blanc" is esoteric to Japanese readers lies in the fact that "continuous movement in thought" was difficult to be expressed by a traditional poetry because of the limitation on syllabic numbers. Readers are not experienced enough to appreciate the stanzaic movement that develops the poet's philosophical theory. Japanese people's manner towards Nature is neither philosophical nor theoretical, but individualistically psychological. I shall discuss this perspective in relation to Shelley's crie de cour. Each poem shows a different manner of the same poet at different times. However, that enlarged story must wait for another occasion.
NOTES
1 Jerome McGann, "The Third World of Criticism", Rethinking Historicism (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 94.
2 Shelley is concerned about readers' reception. In his letter to Charles Ollier on 16th February, 1821, Shelley wrote: "It [Epipsychidion] is to be published simply for the esoteric few .... "
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L.
Jones, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 2: 263.
3 Samuel H. Monk, The Sublime (Minneapolis: The University of Michigan Press, 1935 rpt 1960), p. 45.
4 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature", The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
introductions and notes by Robert E. Spiller, 4 vols. (Cambridge and Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1971-87), 1: 10.
5 James Thomson, The Seasons, ed. James Sambrook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 178-79.
6 John Dyer, Grongar Hill (Cambridge: The Golden Head Press, 1963), p.8.
7 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's Poetry and Prose, eds. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 90.
8 Ibid., p. 90.
g Ibid., p. 93.
10 Ibid., p. 91.
11 Kazuo Ueda, "Nihonni Okeru Shelley Hyoka" (The Reception of Shelley's Writings in Japan), GAKUTO, 72 (1975), 11-13.
12 Laura Dabundo, ed., "German Romanticism", Encyclopedia of Romanticism, Culture in Britain, 1780s-1830s(London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 228.
13 Shelley, "Preface: Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude", Shelley's Poetry and Prose, p. 69.
14 M. H. Abrams, "ShelIey and Romantic Platonism", The Mirror and the Lamp:
Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958), p. 127.
15 Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen Mackenna, 2nd ed. rev. by B. S.Page (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1956), p. 255.
16 Kenneth Neill Cameron, "Shelley as Philosophical and Social Thinker: Some Modern Evaluations", Studies in Romanticism, 21 (1982), 358.
17 Shelley, Shelley's Poetry and Prose, p. 95.
18 Ibid., p. 90.
19 Ibid., p. 92.
20 Ibid., pp. 91-92.
21 A.C. Bradley, "The Sublime", Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London: Macrnillan, 1909), pp. 38-63.
22 Nicholas Saul, History and Poetry In Novalis in the Tradition of the German Enlightement, vo!. 8 of Bithell Series of Dissertations (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London, 1984), pp. 141-50.
23 Shelley, Shelley's Poetry and Prose, pp. 90-91.
24 Minoru Hayashida, 'A Study of Shelley's "Mont Blanc" (2)', Collected Essays of
Osaka Shoin Women:s College, 6 (1968), 18-40.
25 Edmund Burke, The Philosophy of Edmund Burke, eds. Louis 1. Bredvold and Ralph G. Ross (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1960), pp. 256-67.
26 Shelley, Shelley's Poetry and Prose, p. 91.
27 Ibid., p. 91.
28 John Milton, "Lycidas", Milton: Poetical Works, ed. Douglas Bush (London:
Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 141-47.
