Proserpine and Midas | Page 8

Mary Shelley
goodness of God that he should have revealed himself to the Greeks than that he left them in ignorance. Vergil & Ovid not truth of the heathen Mythology, but the interpretation of a heathen-- as Milton's Paradise Lost is the interpretation of a Christian religion of the Bible. The interpretation of the mythology of Vergil & the interpretation of the Bible by Milton compared--whether one is more inconsistent than the other--In what they are contradictory. Prometheus desmotes quoted by Paul [Footnote: Shelley may refer to the proverbial phrase 'to kick against the pricks' (Acts xxvi. 14), which, however, is found in Pindar and Euripides as well as in Aeschylus (Prom. 323).] [--] all religion false except that which is revealed-- revelation depends upon a certain degree of civilization--writing necessary--no oral tradition to be a part of faith--the worship of the Sun no revelation--Having lost the books [of] the Egyptians we have no knowledge of their peculiar revelations. If the revelation of God to the Jews on Mt Sinai had been more peculiar & impressive than some of those to the Greeks they wd not immediately after have worshiped a calf--A latitude in revelation--How to judge of prophets--the proof [of] the Jewish Prophets being prophets.
The only public revelation that Jehovah ever made of himself was on Mt Sinai--Every other depended upon the testimony of a very few & usually of a single individual--We will first therefore consider the revelation of Mount Sinai. Taking the fact plainly it happened thus. The Jews were told by a man whom they believed to have supernatural powers that they were to prepare for that God wd reveal himself in three days on the mountain at the sound of a trumpet. On the 3rd day there was a cloud & lightning on the mountain & the voice of a trumpet extremely loud. The people were ordered to stand round the foot of the mountain & not on pain of death to infringe upon the bounds--The man in whom they confided went up the mountain & came down again bringing them word
The draft unfortunately leaves off here, and we are unable to know for certain whether this Shelleyan paradox, greatly daring, meant to minimize the importance of the 'only public revelation' granted to the chosen people. But we have enough to understand the general trend of the argument. It did not actually intend to sap the foundations of Scriptural authority. But it was bold enough to risk a little shaking in order to prove that the Sacred Books of the Greeks and Romans did not, after all, present us with a much more rickety structure. This was a task of conciliation rather than destruction. And yet even this conservative view of the Shelleys' exegesis cannot--and will not-- detract from the value of the above document. Surely, this curious theory of the equal 'inspiration' of Polytheism and the Jewish or Christian religions, whether it was invented or simply espoused by Mrs. Shelley, evinces in her--for the time being at least--a very considerable share of that adventurous if somewhat uncritical alacrity of mind which carried the poet through so many religious and political problems. It certainly vindicates her, more completely perhaps than anything hitherto published, against the strictures of those who knew her chiefly or exclusively in later years, and could speak of her as a 'most conventional slave', who 'even affected the pious dodge', and 'was not a suitable companion for the poet'. [Footnote: Trelawny's letter, 3 April 1870; in Mr. H. Buxton Forman's edition, 1910, p. 229.] Mrs. Shelley--at twenty-three years of age--had not yet run the full 'career of her humour'; and her enthusiasm for classical mythology may well have, later on, gone the way of her admiration for Spinoza, whom she read with Shelley that winter (1820-1), as Medwin notes, [Footnote: I. e. ed. H. Buxton Forman, p. 253.] and 'whose arguments she then thought irrefutable--tempora mutantur!'
However that may be, the two little mythological dramas on Proserpine and Midas assume, in the light of that enthusiasm, a special interest. They stand--or fall--both as a literary, and to a certain extent as an intellectual effort. They are more than an attitude, and not much less than an avowal. Not only do they claim our attention as the single poetical work of any length which seems to have been undertaken by Mrs. Shelley; they are a unique and touching monument of that intimate co-operation which at times, especially in the early years in Italy, could make the union of 'the May' and 'the Elf' almost unreservedly delightful. It would undoubtedly be fatuous exaggeration to ascribe a very high place in literature to these little Ovidian fancies of Mrs. Shelley. The scenes, after all, are little better than adaptations--fairly close adaptations--of the Latin poet's well-known tales.
Even Proserpine, though
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