shelley's philosophical perspective and thematic concerns in "the cloud"

SHELLEY'S PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE AND THEMATIC CONCERNS IN "THE CLOUD"Author(s): Beverly TaylorSource: Interpretations, Vol. 12, No. 1 (July 1980), pp. 70-75Published by: Scriptorium PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23240551 .

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SHELLEY'S PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE AND THEMATIC CONCERNS IN THE CLOUD

Shelley's poem "The Cloud" ranks with "Ode to the West Wind" and "To a Skylark," all published in 1820, as "unsurpassed and almost unchallenged, the supreme lyrics of the sky,"1 yet whereas the thematic significance of the other two poems has received extensive critical scrutiny, that of "The Cloud" has been rather

neglected. Even though it is one of Shelley's most frequently anthologized poems, its appeal depends by and large on surface characteristics. Prized for the vitality of its rhythm and the rapid succession of successful images, the poem is indeed a tourde force, displaying effective, evocative figurative descriptions; simple language; pleasing use of internal rhyme; and light, quick rhythm that is relieved by sufficient variety to avoid sing-song tedium. The

deceptively gay and simple surface notwithstanding, "The Cloud" contains serious substance which for two reasons other than poetic showmanship invests the work with importance in the Shelley canon. First, the poem illustrates a philosophical perspective for viewing and interpreting the universe, a perspective that derives its viability from a synthesis between scientific observation and

imaginative coloring. Second, "The Cloud," while fanciful and

seemingly trivial, dramatizes ideals for humanity which Shelley posited with more apparent seriousness in Prometheus Unbound

and much of his work in 1819-20. In "The Cloud" Shelley's combination of factual foundation with

highly imaginative description illustrates his manner of perceiv ing and evaluating the physical universe. Those who have sought serious substance in the airy verse have most typically praised the

poem for its scientific validity. Thomas Jefferson Hogg's recollec tion of Shelley's interest in science during their Oxford days, evoking the amusing image of the poet's demonstrating the

properties of electric current by climbing on a stool and employing his body to conduct electricity "so that his long, wild locks bristled and stood on end,"2 prepares readers of "The Cloud" to delight in

Shelley's fanciful depiction of the life cycle of a cloud as whimsy spun from a skein of scientifically valid observations. Scholars have vigorously emphasized this essential fidelity to fact, even to the extent of listing the kinds of clouds represented by Shelley's descriptions. While it may be interesting—and perhaps even "relevant"—to know that we are reading about altocumulus

radiatus, cirrostratus nebulosus, cumulonimbus capillatus, and stratocumulus opacus clouds,3 recognition of these facts hardly seems sufficient response to the poem. As Richard Harter Fogle has observed, "Shelley's account of the life-cycle of a cloud is said to be entirely in accord with scientific fact, but obviously it would not recommend itself to a meteorologist."4 Nor does a scientific

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reading of the poem fully recommend itself to a student of the poetry and thought of Shelley.

A principal thematic concern of the poem does, however, derive from Shelley's use of scientific truth. The poem demonstrates the desirability of viewing the world with both factual understanding and imaginative perception. Keats' famous condemnation of the damaging effect of scientific analysis on one's imaginative propensities illustrates a serious concern of the age. Having rejected a professional involvement with medical science to devote himself to poetry, Keats lamented in "Lamia" Newton's reduction of the formerly wondrous rainbow to a prismatic spectrum analyzed in "the dull catalogue of common things."5 The intensity of nineteenth-century poets' concern with the steadily increasing emphasis on scientific analysis as a means of interpreting experience can scarcely be overstated in the face of such examples as Tennyson's In Memoriam, published in 1850. His brief lyric "Flower in the Crannied Wall" demonstrates that in 1869 Tennyson still struggled to ascertain the appropriate role of scientific

analysis in one's full exploration of the human experience. The

poem suggests that such analysis is a legitimate—but largely inadequate—means of penetrating the inscrutability of the u niverse. Closely examining the flower, the poet asserts, "Little flower—but if I could understand/What you are, root and all, and all in all,/I should know what God and man is."6 Tennyson's emphatic italicization of the word if underscores the impossibility of his aspiration. Observation of the blossom, while stimulating speculation, finally can do no more than intrigue and bemuse. Shelley's response to the topical concern with science reflects

neither Keats' hostility to material investigation nor Tennyson's apparently resigned acceptance that scrutiny of the physical realm serves ultimately to perplex.

Directly concerned with the relationship between science,

poetry, and ways of knowing, Shelley in the "Defense of Poetry," written the year following composition of "The Cloud," deplored the increasing tendency of man to seek fuller concrete comprehen

sion as a means of mastering his physical environment, at the cost of ignoring his waning imaginative propensities: "The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man,

having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave."7 "The Cloud" stands as testimony to the fact that such a dichotomy, external versus internal worlds, can be successfully resolved by exercise of this "poetical faculty." In the poem Shelley demonstrates a talent perhaps uniquely significant to man in the twentieth century, for the poet is able to employ observation of

physical fact as a stimulus rather than an inhibition to the

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imagination. He implies that factual understanding and im aginative perception can function as complementary methods of interpreting experience which together yield fuller comprehen sion.

Yet "The Cloud" does more than illustrate a meaningful way of perceiving reality by maintaining a synthesis which satisfies the human need to understand on both factual and emotional levels. The poem's kinship to the riddling tradition of Old English poetry8 suggests that the speaker's statement is substantially enigmatic and requires solution. Carlos Baker, to cite one critic who has seriously considered the themes of the poem, somewhat tentative ly suggests, "if one may legitimately assume that some other than a naturalistic meaning is intended, such statements as 'I change but I cannot die' . . . could be accepted as (evidence) of Shelley's belief in some kind of immortality, as well as his yearning towards a supernal status."9 In her study of Shelley's lyrics, Judith Chernaik more vigorously asserts the thematic significance: " 'The Cloud' should be read not as a nature poem but as a mythological poem—nature humanized,"10 and she continues, "all nature is animated by human instincts that are freed from the stain of human self-interest . . . and hence made beautiful" (p. 133). Her comments raise an important issue not specifically addressed by commentators—the relationship between the life cycle of the cloud and specific application to the human condition.

In his "Preface" to Prometheus Unbound, the title poem of the

volume in which "The Cloud" first appeared, Shelley remarked an association between man, nature, and art which suggests the

validity of our seeking in the lyric some human significance. He wrote that "Every man's mind is . . . modified by all the objects of nature and art."11 Critical scrutiny should, then, seek to ascertain

how the human mind is to be "modified by" Shelley's depiction of the cloud, which is simultaneously both nature and art. In"Ode to

the West Wind" and "To a Skylark," the poet explicitly expresses the sort of modification sought in his contemplation of the natural phenomena described. In these lyrics after effectively combining accurate physical detail and imaginative description, as in "The Cloud," Shelley concludes with specific thematic applications to man. The "Ode" becomes a plea for spiritual, creative rejuvenation that would produce in the speaker the power, the unfettered spirit of the wind. Similarly, in "To a Skylark" Shelley moves from describing the lark, to stating human limitations which contrast with the lark's situation: "We look before and after,/And pine for what is not."12 Moreover, he asserts, humanity is marked by scorn,

hate, pride, and fear. Finally Shelley appeals to the symbol of the lark, in much the same way that he beseeches the West Wind, to teach him to exhibit the bird's essential trait, joy.

Despite its obvious similarities to these works, "The Cloud"

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stands apart in its lack of overtly specified application to humanity, in its singular silence about man. When Shelley enumerates the cloud's activities, we are vaguely aware of mankind by inference, for we recognize that beneath the sky mortals are experiencing the benefits afforded by the cloud, the "fresh showers" and "light shade" (11. 1, 3). Perhaps we are more acutely aware that human beings also must endure the cloud's bountiful rain, thunder, lightning, snow, hurricane, and hail, particularly because these less pleasant phenomena are listed at far greater length. This association of the cloud's experience with that of humanity is only dimly present by implication, however, and the emphasis of the poem directs us away from considering the cloud's effects on human beings. Throughout the work, the

protagonist and center of concern remains the cloud. Although its actions may affect mankind adversely while it remains oblivious to the physical plight of man, the cloud resists any association with such unresponding deities as those gods who at the end of Tennyson's "The Lotos-Eaters" remain unmoved—even "smile in secret" (1. 159)—at the agonies their thunderbolts and other marks of carelessness shower on mankind. The rapidity and fancifulness of Shelley's descriptions limit our opportunity—and our inclination—to pause, judge, and assign moral or ethical respon sibility to the cloud for negative aspects of human physical existence. Moreover, the entire life cycle, occurring under a smiling Heaven, on a laughing Earth, depicts all of Nature as essentially harmonious and joyful.

The poem's thematic application to man is suggested most fully through Shelley's personification imagery. The personification of the cloud itself would seem to be an attempt to explain the unfamiliar by relating it to the familiar, the human. But a significant amount of the imagery which describes those elements acted upon by the cloud endows the already familiar world with human attributes. Flowers thirst, leaves dream, buds fall asleep on their mother's breast, the earth dances around the sun and laughs, pine trees "groan aghast" (1.14), lightning loves another being, the moon walks on feet, and so on. The principal effect of the personification is, then, not to make the familiar world more familiar, but to insert man directly into the concerns of the poem. The entire physical realm embodies the human and is necessarily associated with the life cycle of the cloud. Whereas Shelley's West Wind and Skylark are addressed as beings apart from mankind who are endowed with human attributes only by an occasional simile, the cloud is anthropomorphized and addresses the reader directly.

The varied imagery presents the cloud as a series of constantly changing material shapes, including such forms as a dove, a tent.

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and a roof resting on columns. Throughout the poem, however, the cloud reflects human capacities. She is "the daughter of Earth and Water, / And the nursling of the Sky" (11.73-74), and behaves "Like a child from the womb" (1. 83). The cloud constantly acts as an

agent with both thought and will. Most significant, her most

frequently mentioned trait, laughter, is exclusively human. The Cloud's nature, like those of the West Wind and the Skylark, reveals an essential quality relevant to mankind. The poem ultimately becomes a praise of freedom, for it describes a phenomenon that is

subject to nothing but the scientific laws of Nature. Beyond that limitation, she obeys only her own will, following no externally established codes. Such behavior produces as positive results both the maintenance of natural life cycles in the entire world and the individual creation's triumph over time. Freedom to act in accordance with one's nature produces, above all, a thrilling joy. Despite the fact that the poem describes aspects of weather or

physical environment which may seem harsh to man, the poem is

joyful. The beauty of the images, the light rhythm, the repeated references to laughter, and the closing description of a victory over destruction create a sense of buoyant, triumphant happiness. Although all things physical exist inevitably in a state of flux—as the cloud's persistent motion and the series of metaphorical descriptions indicate—the mutability of forms masks a constancy of essence; the cloud is eternal. The cloud's utterance reveals that assertion of one's own will and fidelity to both the self and physical requirements of the universe perpetuate one's essence in a state of

joyousness. Shelley's most important assertion rests in the cloud's final

escape from annihilation. Even though the poem focuses on the various physical forms of the cloud and the material forms

suggested by the metaphorical descriptions, the mutability of these physical guises reveals their ultimate insignificance. The

physical condition is, in terms of the life cycle, totally unstable. Rather than a limitation, this physical mutability becomes for the cloud a kind of unceasing frolic. While man would admittedly find it virtually impossible to embrace his own physical mutability with the same exuberance the cloud exhibits, he should—again using Shelley's language from the preface to Prometheus Unbound—allow his mind to be "modified by" the cloud. He should discern that the only constant factor in all the transformation is the

spiritual essence—and its principal manifestation, joy. When the cloud rises triumphant from the apparent end of its life cycle, laughing at its own cenotaph, it views with delight a monument to its essence, which is not contained or limited by the monument. In

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just such a way, Shelley posits, the human spirit, deriving joy from freedom, should triumph over its physical body, the cenotaph which memorializes a spirit that flourishes elsewhere.

Beverly Taylor University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)

NOTES

Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 244.

2Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: George Routledge, 1906), p. 54.

3Shelley's Poetry and Prose, eds. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 225, n. 4; see also King-Hele, p. 223.

"•Richard Harter Fogle, The Imagery of Keats and Shelley: A Comparative Study (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949), p. 13.

5"Lamia," II, 233, The Poems of John Keats, ed. Jack Stillinger (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1978), p. 472.

6"Flower in the Crannied Wall," 11. 4-6, The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks (London: Longman, 1969), p. 1193.

7"A Defence of Poetry," The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (London: Ernest Benn, 1930), VII, 134.

8See Donald Pearce, "The Riddle of Shelley's Cloud," Yale Review, 62 (1973), 202 20.

"Carlos Baker, Shelley's Major Poetry: The Fabric of a Vision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), p. 202.

•"Judith Chernaik, The Lyrics of Shelley (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972), p. 130.

••"Preface" to Prometheus Unbound, Complete Works (1927), II, 174.

•2"To a Skylark," 11.86-87, The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1904), p. 598. All references to Shelley's poetry follow this edition.

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shelley's philosophical perspective and thematic concerns in "the cloud"

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