I’d like to briefly talk about Shelley’s The Cloud. The footnote accompanying the line – “I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone / And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl” – denotes the dynamism of the cloud. In fact, there is not a singular cloud but rather an amalgamation of various clouds. The footnote declares as such: “Shelley’s universalized Cloud changes constantly throughout the poem.” I therefore hark back to Williams essay criticizing static definitions of nature. It is impossible to properly define nature in one description. It takes many faces and forms and is, at least in comparison to man, continuous. Shelley proposes such characteristics in her last line, “I arise, and unbuild it again.” The cloud, or perhaps clouds in general, is amorphous and cyclical such that it is constantly changing form; dissolving and reemerging. They ebb and flow in relation to other natural processes that are foundation upon which Nature, itself, is based. Thus, it is clear from where Shelley's interested arises!
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
The Clouds
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Shelley also compares the cyclical flow of nature to the cyclical flow of human life and reincarnation. He says, "Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb." He personifies the cloud while at the same time comments on nature's constancy in its change. The cloud is a "daughter," the cloud laughs, yet the cloud, as a symbol for all nature, has one thing we do not: "I cannot die." By personifying nature, Shelley connects us to it yet ultimately separates us from it because we, unlike nature, will come to an end.
ReplyDeleteWe might consider this version of immortality in relation to Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" and Shelley's "Skylark." What creates the birds' unalterable alterity from the human speakers? Why can't Shelley know the skylark? Why was the nightingale not born for death? Neither bird is literally immortal, but "No hungry generations tread thee down"--the birds lack a sense of cultural and individual memory. This is why, we might argue, the birds are like the cloud: they are ever changing (no individual bird survives beyond a certain time) but remain constant (each individual bird acts instinctually and sings the same song as it did in biblical times, just as the cloud dissipates to build itself anew). Continual renewal and infinite replication--this is a biological, evolutionary vision of nature--but one that has yet to arrive at C. Darwin's idea of struggle and competition.
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