{"id":966,"date":"2015-12-02T15:58:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T15:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=966"},"modified":"2015-12-02T15:58:48","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T15:58:48","slug":"on-this-day-in-1815-the-shelleys-and-mutability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=966","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1815: the Shelleys and \u2018Mutability\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u2018On This Day\u2019<\/em> blog continues with a short piece by Anna Mercer on the winter of 1815, discussing P B Shelley\u2019s \u2018Mutability\u2019 and the inclusion of this poem in Mary Shelley\u2019s <\/em>Frankenstein. To contribute to this blog series, please contact <\/em>anna.mercer@york.ac.uk<\/a> (we are currently seeking posts for next year that relate to literary\/historical events in 1816).<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Percy<\/a>

Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, from portraits in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;<\/p>\n

How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,<\/p>\n

Streaking the darkness radiantly! – yet soon<\/p>\n

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings<\/p>\n

Give various response to each varying blast,<\/p>\n

To whose frail frame no second motion brings<\/p>\n

One mood or modulation like the last.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We rest. \u2014A dream\u00a0has power to poison sleep;<\/p>\n

We rise. \u2014One wandering thought pollutes the day;<\/p>\n

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;<\/p>\n

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is the same! \u2014For, be it joy or sorrow,<\/p>\n

The path of its departure still is free:<\/p>\n

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;<\/p>\n

Nought may endure but Mutability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

P B Shelley\u2019s \u2018Mutability\u2019 is an example of his extraordinary poetic talent; in particular these lines show his ability to weave together philosophical ideas and striking imagery within a short section of verse. In this way the poem is reminiscent of Shelley\u2019s famous sonnets such as \u2018Ozymandias\u2019 and \u2018England in 1819\u2019. However, \u2018Mutability\u2019 was written before these other works, which were composed in 1817 and 1819 respectively. The exact date of composition for \u2018Mutability\u2019 is not known: the editors of the Longman edition of The Poems of Shelley<\/em> assign it to \u2018winter 1815-16 mainly on grounds of stylistic maturity\u2019. However, the opening lines \u2018suggest a late autumn or winter night, but this could have been equally well a night in 1814\u2019.<\/p>\n

The \u2018On This Day\u2019 blog series thus far has focused on the bicentenaries of events from 1815: if the most likely dating for \u2018Mutability\u2019 places its composition in the winter of 1815, the poem must have lingered in the mind of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who would include lines from ‘Mutability’\u00a0in Chapter II, Vol II of Frankenstein <\/em>(1818). Mary Shelley did not begin writing this novel (her first full-length work) until the summer of 1816, which she spent with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont and John William Polidori in Geneva.<\/p>\n

\"J.<\/a>

J. M. W. Turner, \u201cMont Blanc and the Glacier des Bossons from above Chamonix; Evening 1836\u2033, Tate Britain.<\/p><\/div>\n

It is interesting that we see Percy Shelley\u2019s maturity emerging in \u2018Mutability\u2019, as the editors of the Longman Poems of Shelley<\/em> establish. This maturity can be understood as Shelley\u2019s fine-tuning of his philosophical expressions into a more coherent idealism. The poem\u2019s almost universal application to any \u2018man\u2019 who lives on to the \u2018morrow\u2019 may be why Mary Shelley chose to place two stanzas (ll.9-16) in her first novel. They appear just before Victor Frankenstein reencounters his creation for the first time since its \u2018birth\u2019. He sets off on a precipitous mountain climb to the glaciers of Mont Blanc \u2013 alone \u2013 in an attempt to combat his anxiety and melancholy state of mind:<\/p>\n

The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind, and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. I determined to go alone, for I was well acquainted with the path, and the presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Victor\u2019s view of the valley, the \u2018vast mists\u2019, and the rain pouring from the dark sky, prompt him to lament the sensibility of human nature. As in P B Shelley\u2019s \u2018Mutability\u2019, the narrator considers the inconstancy of the mind. This meditation presents a powerful contradiction that inspires both hope and hopelessness by reminding the reader that a potential for change is always present, whether fortunes be good or bad, whether the individual is positively or negatively affected by his\/her surroundings. Either way, all might be completely altered over a short space of time as the human mind responds to external influences. Just as Percy Shelley writes \u2018Man\u2019s yesterday may ne\u2019er be like his morrow; \/ Nought may endure but Mutability\u2019, Mary Shelley\u2019s protagonist considers how \u2018If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us\u2019. Lines 9-16 of Shelley\u2019s poem are inserted in the novel after this sentence. Percy Shelley read and edited the draft of Mary\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>, and Charles E. Robinson (editor of the Frankenstein<\/em> manuscripts) has described the possibility of the Shelleys being \u2018at work on the Notebooks at the same time, possibly sitting side by side and using the same pen and ink to draft the novel and at the same time to enter corrections\u2019. The inclusion of the lines from \u2018Mutability\u2019 could even have been a joint decision.<\/p>\n

Sir Walter Scott\u2019s favourable review of Frankenstein <\/em>from 1818 (when the novel was published anonymously) assumes this poetical insert to be the same authorial voice as its surrounding prose: \u2018The following lines [\u2026] mark, we think, that the author possesses the same facility in expressing himself in verse as in prose.\u2019 But instead, the implication is that Mary\u2019s prose seamlessly leads into Percy Shelley\u2019s verse, and illustrates the unity of their diction and their collaborative writing arrangement at this time.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A page from Mary Shelley\u2019s journal (1814) showing both Mary and Percy\u2019s hands. Bodleian Library, Oxford.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mary Shelley\u2019s journal shows that the Shelleys read S T Coleridge\u2019s poems in 1815. Lines 5-8 of \u2018Mutability\u2019 indicate the possibility of a Coleridgean interest based on STC\u2019s conversation poem \u2018The Eolian Harp\u2019. As Coleridge describes \u2018the long sequacious notes\u2019 which \u2018Over delicious surges sink and rise\u2019, Percy Shelley writes: \u2018Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings \/ Give various response to each varying blast\u2019. The Aeolian Harp or wind-harp (named after Eolus or Aeolus, classical god of the winds) is an image that reoccurs in Romantic poetry and prose. However it is significant that P B Shelley used it in common parlance with Mary, i.e. when writing letters. On 4 November 1814, he writes to her:<\/p>\n

I am an harp [sic] responsive to every wind. The scented gale of summer can wake it to sweet melody, but rough cold blasts draw forth discordances & jarring sounds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

P B Shelley\u2019s \u2018Mutability\u2019 can, in this way, promote discussion of\u00a0the Shelleys\u2019 creative collaboration. What we know of the Shelleys’ history provides evidence for their\u00a0repeated intellectual interactions, as\u00a0Mary Shelley\u2019s journal shows an almost daily occurrence of shared reading, copying, writing and discussion. The Shelleys\u2019 shared notebooks (not just the ones containing Frankenstein<\/em>) also indicate that they would use the same paper to draft, redraft, correct and fair-copy their works. Beyond the Frankenstein<\/em> notebooks, there are even instances of the Shelleys altering and\/or influencing each other\u2019s compositions in a reciprocal literary dialogue (something my work as a PhD candidate at the University of York is seeking to identify and explore in depth). If \u2018Mutability\u2019 was written in winter 1815 (or even earlier), maybe Mary Shelley looked over it, and kept it in mind in relation to her own creative writing – and therefore the poem found its way into her first novel. These details suggest that the Shelleys\u2019 literary relationship was blossoming in the winter of 1815 (exactly 200 years ago), prior to their most significant collaboration on Frankenstein<\/em> in 1816-1818.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References: <\/u><\/p>\n

S. T. Coleridge, The Complete Poems<\/em> ed. by William Keach (London: Penguin, 1997 repr. 2004) p. 87, 464.<\/p>\n

Charles E. Robinson (ed.), \u2018Introduction\u2019 in Mary Shelley, The Frankenstein Notebooks <\/em>Vol I (London: Garland, 1996), p. lxx.<\/p>\n

Sir Walter Scott, \u2018Remarks on Frankenstein<\/em>\u2019 in Mary Shelley: Bloom\u2019s Classic Critical Views <\/em>(New York: Bloom\u2019s Literary Criticism, 2008) p. 93.<\/p>\n

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein<\/em>: A Norton Critical Edition<\/em> ed. by J. Paul Hunter (London: 1996 repr. 2012) pp. 65-67.<\/p>\n

Percy Bysshe Shelley, \u2018Mutability\u2019 in The Poems of Shelley <\/em>Vol I ed. by Geoffrey Matthews and Kelvin Everest (London: Longman, 1989) pp. 456-7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u2018On This Day\u2019 blog continues with a short piece by Anna Mercer on the winter of 1815, discussing P B Shelley\u2019s \u2018Mutability\u2019 and the inclusion of this poem in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}