David Womersley<\/a><\/p>\n 26 April, 2011<\/p>\n The current political unrest spreading along the southern edge of the Mediterranean has held the attention of the world\u2019s media for weeks. But in all the column inches devoted to discussion of the likely prospects for these uprisings, and of the stance which the West should adopt towards both the region\u2019s dictators (often, of course, our erstwhile friends and business partners) and the people struggling to cast off their governments, it has not been noticed that the shape of these events was strangely foretold nearly two hundred years ago by an English poet writing about the recent European past.<\/p>\n When Shelley composed The Revolt of Islam he thought he was writing a work of philosophic history, not a prophecy. The poem is set in the dejecting aftermath of the failure of the French Revolution, \u201cwhen the last hope of trampled France had failed\/Like a brief dream of unremaining glory\u201d (I.1). The narrator of the poem, haunted by \u201cvisions of despair\u201d as a result of the extinguishing of the revolutionary cause, climbs to the top of a cliff where he sees flying towards him an eagle fighting with a serpent. Eventually the eagle prevails:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0[\u2026]when lifeless, stark, and rent, The wounded serpent is collected by an anonymous woman in a magical boat \u201cof rare device, which had no sail\/But its own curv\u00e8d prow of thin moonstone\u201d. She sails with the narrator and the serpent to a revolutionary Valhalla where \u201csate on many a sapphire throne,\/The Great, who had departed from mankind,\/A mighty Senate\u201d. They are followed by two new arrivals:<\/p>\n [\u2026]two mighty Spirits now return, The story the male Spirit tells is the core of the poem. It is a narrative of a failed revolution in a fictional Levantine state called Argolis. Argolis groans under the oppressive regime of the despot Othman, which Shelley evokes with his characteristic blend of conceptual cloudiness and vivid metaphor:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The land in which I lived, by a fell ban \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0That blasting curse men had not shame \u2014 all vied Shelley\u2019s hero, Laon, an unmistakable proxy for the poet himself, and his moral idealism, determines to lead a revolt against the tyrant:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0It shall be thus no more! too long, too long, The references to altars and idols, dictated by Shelley\u2019s fervent deism, reveal an important difference between his Islamic revolt and the upheavals of 2011, which if not always prompted by Islamic fundamentalism, at least seem not to take issue with it directly. <\/p>\n Laon, assisted by his sister Cythna (with whom he has a rapturous, and morally revolutionary, incestuous liaison), overturns the tyrant in a Shelleyan fantasy of bloodless regime change and spontaneous fraternity:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Lifting the thunder of their acclamation, But the revolution, at first successful, falls prey to a counter-revolutionary revanche. The tyrant Othman is captured in his palace, deserted by all except \u201cone child, who led before him\/A graceful dance: the only living thing\/Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him\/Flocked yesterday\u201d (V.21). Shelley\u2019s imagination here shows an ability, if not to empathise with, then to create scenes which evoke the pathos of, fallen despotism. The rebels call for Othman\u2019s blood:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Then was heard \u2014 \u2018He who judged let him be brought For Othman, substitute Gaddafi or Mubarak, and these have been in recent weeks the natural sentiments on the streets of Alexandria and Tobruk.<\/p>\n But, in a fit of idealistic clemency, Laon persuades the revolutionaries to spare Othman\u2019s life. Othman responds to this generosity in the Shelleyan way of despots, by summoning the poet\u2019s favourite villains \u2014 that is to say, monarchs, prelates, and their attendant lackeys \u2014 to his aid:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe Prefigurations here, surely, of the anxious messages reportedly passing between Tripoli and Caracas? The tyrant returns, and immediately sets about the business of repression in what is again a Shelleyan fantasy of reactionary violence, painted in the most lurid, although not necessarily unrealistic, colours:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Myriads had come \u2014 millions were on their way; Scenes soon to be re-enacted, perhaps, in Benghazi, Tripoli and Bahrain.<\/p>\n In the midst of the violence and ensuing pestilence (evoked by Shelley in what, after many re-readings, I still think of as verse of exceptional imaginative power) Laon offers his life for Cythna, who has been captured by the tyrant. The tyrant promptly has them both burned, in what for Shelley is a stereotypical act of despotic betrayal. But not before Laon has told him that \u201cin the desert there is built a home \/For Freedom\u201d:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0There is a People mighty in its youth, \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze He refers, of course, to America; and it would be interesting now to have Shelley\u2019s thoughts on the extent to which America has either shunned or embraced an imperial destiny over the past two centuries. <\/p>\n The Revolt of Islam is a work of history, because in it Shelley transposes the broad outlines of the course taken by the French Revolution to the vaguely Levantine setting of Argolis. Why did Shelley translate recent European history into the form of the oriental romance? He had read Ruines des Empires, a strange book by the late French philosophe Volney, in which the natural history of political despotism had been expressed as an oriental dream vision.\u00a0 Shelley had evidently been impressed by the Frenchman\u2019s way of fusing the literary form of oriental fantasy and a philosophic interest with the natural history of political processes, and he attempted something similar in his own poem (the sonnet \u201cOzymandias\u201d, written at almost the same time as The Revolt of Islam, is another Shelleyan experiment in the mode of the \u201coriental-philosophic\u201d). There is a calculated affront to an English reading public in this presentation to them of unrepentantly revolutionary sentiments in a form saturated with connotations of French philosophy.<\/p>\n Yet to affront was not, it seems, Shelley\u2019s purpose. In the long preface he composed for The Revolt of Islam he describes it as \u201can experiment on the temper of the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live.\u201d That is to say, after the defeat of Napoleon, the restoration of the monarchy in France, the Congress of Vienna, and the violent suppression of radicalism in England, did the public still have any appetite for Shelley\u2019s brand of progressive idealism, with its inflammatory components of anarchic republicanism, inveterate hostility to monarchy and established religion, deism and free \u2014 if need be, incestuous \u2014 love? Shelley certainly strains every nerve in this poem to embellish the cause of political, sexual and religious radicalism with images of exceptional power, and often of memorable beauty.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, to the poem\u2019s implicit question its first readers seem to have returned a resounding \u201cNo\u201d. The public mind of the early-19th century was resolutely averse to experiments of this kind, and The Revolt of Islam quickly fell into obscurity. Later generations were reluctant to revive its fortunes. Its political, social and sexual commitments, and its narrative form, were incompatible with the ethereal, lyrical Shelley so prized by the Victorians. Only very recently have readers become once more interested in its strange blend of philosophy, radicalism, and oriental romance. Perhaps the poem\u2019s uncanny foreshadowings of current realities in Cairo, Bahrain and Tunis will now gain for it yet more readers.\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n In the wake of the Arab Spring, Percy Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam looks mightily prophetic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Fell to the sea, while o\u2019er the continent,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast. \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(I.14)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Like birds of calm, from the world\u2019s raging sea,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0They pour fresh light from Hope\u2019s immortal urn;
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A tale of human power \u2014 despair not \u2014 list and learn!
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(I.58)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And stabled in our homes, \u2014 until the chain
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Stifled the captive\u2019s cry, and to abide<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(II.4)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In darkness and in ruin! \u2014 Hope is strong,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Justice and Truth their wing\u00e8d child have found \u2014
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Awake! arise! until the mighty sound \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Of your career shall scatter in its gust
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Hide the last altar\u2019s unregarded dust,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust! \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(II.13)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Towards the City then the multitude,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And I among them, went in joy \u2014 a nation
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Made free by love; \u2014 a mighty brotherhood
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Linked by a jealous interchange of good;
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A glorious pageant, more magnificent
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0When they return from carnage, and are sent
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement. \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(V.14)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0To judgement! blood for blood cries from the soil
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Shall they who by the stress of grinding toil
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Or creep within his veins at will? \u2014 Arise!
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And to high justice make her chosen sacrifice.\u2019
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(V.32)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0His countenance in lies \u2014 even at the hour
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0When he was snatched from death, then o\u2019er the globe,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0With secret signs from many a mountain-tower,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0He called: they knew his cause their own, and swore
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven
abhors.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(X.7)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Of hired assassins, through the public way,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Choked with his country\u2019s dead: \u2014 his footsteps reel
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0On the fresh blood \u2014 he smiles. \u2018Ay, now I feel
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I am a King in truth!\u2019 he said, and took
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And scorpions; that his soul on its revenge might look. \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(X.8)<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0A land beyond the Oceans of the West,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Are worshipped; from a glorious Mother\u2019s breast,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0By inbred monsters outraged and oppressed,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Turns to her chainless child for succour now,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom\u2019s fullest flow.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0An epitaph of glory for the tomb
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(XI.22-23)<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/george-eliot.jpg\"\/)
Internal adventures<\/a>
\n
\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Jacques-Emile_Blanche_Portrait_de_Marcel_Proust_1892.jpg\"\/)
In search of \u2018English Proust\u2019<\/a>
\n
\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ian-hamilton-120x120.jpg\"\/)
A knife-fight in a phone booth<\/a><\/p>\nWhat to read next<\/h6>\n
<\/h3>\n
\nInternal adventures<\/a>
\n
\nIn search of \u2018English Proust\u2019<\/a>
\n
\nA knife-fight in a phone booth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"