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A Major Source of The Revolt of Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Kenneth N. Cameron
Kenneth N. Cameron*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

The influence of Count Volney's Les Ruines upon Queen Mab has long been known to Shelley scholars, but it has apparently been assumed that Shelley's interest in the work ceased shortly afterwards. Such, however, was not the case. The Ruins had made so deep an impression upon Shelley that he derived from it much of the central pattern of The Revolt of Islam, some four years later than Mab, and echoes of it are to be found in Prometheus Unbound, some six years later. In fact, Shelley's debt to the work in The Revolt of Islam is of so extensive a nature that it is clear he must have reread it shortly before, or even during, the composition of that poem. It is the purpose of this paper to indicate the nature of this debt.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1941 , pp. 175 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

Note 1 in page 175 First published in Paris in 1791. English Translation: A New Translation of Volney's Ruins; or Meditations on the Revolution of Empires, made under the Inspection of the Author, Dublin, 1811. Numerous verbal echoes show that Shelley read the English translation. According to Medwin, Shelley became acquainted with Volney shortly after his expulsion from Oxford—Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: T. C. Newby, 1847), i, 155. Hogg informs us that the book was a favorite of Harriet's, from which she was in the habit of reading aloud to Shelley—Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Edward Moxon, 1858), ii, 183, 266. Shelley, himself, does not anywhere mention Volney, but Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, which was written the same year as The Revolt of Islam, writes: “The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney's Ruins of Empires. . . . He had chosen this work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history, and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth”—Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (Everyman edition, n.d.), p. 123.

Note 2 in page 175 L. Kellner, “Shelley's Queen Mab und Volney's Les Ruines,” ES, xxii (1896), 9–40. Kellner's contention that Queen Mab was largely modelled upon The Ruins has been generally repeated by later scholars. See, for instance, Walter E. Peck, Shelley His Life and Work (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927), i, 303–339; and Carl Grabo, The Magic Plant: The Growth of Shelley's Thought (Chapel Hill: 1936), pp. 102–118.

Note 3 in page 175 The only scholar who appears to have noted any similarity between The Ruins and The Revolt of Islam is L. Kellner. At the conclusion of the article already cited Kellner, after an extensive treatment of Queen Mab, goes on to note a few random parallels with The Revolt of Islam, which I shall indicate as they occur. For some reason, however, even these rather cursory, though suggestive, echoes, have not been mentioned by later scholars, although Kellner's contentions with regard to Mab and The Ruins have been generally accepted.

Note 4 in page 176 The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, Julian Edition (New York: Scribner's, 1926–30), ix, 251. This edition has been used throughout. Italics Shelley's.

Note 5 in page 176 Julian Edition, i, 240. Italics mine throughout unless otherwise indicated.

Note 6 in page 176 Volney, p. 93. Volney had given a hint of his purpose some eight pages previously: “Then turning towards the west, Yes, continued he, a hollow sound already strikes my ear; a cry of liberty, proceeding from far distant shores, resounds on the ancient continent. At this cry a secret murmur against oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a wholesome inquietude alarms her respecting her situation; she enquires what she is, and what she ought to be; while, surprised at her own weakness, she interrogates her rights, her resources and what has been the conduct of her chiefs. . . .”—Ibid., p. 85.

Note 7 in page 177 When the States General was summoned in 1789 Volney was elected as representative from Anjou. When he found that he could not there adequately forward his republican and democratic principles he resigned, and was later elected to the Constituent Assembly, where he served during the first years of the revolution. In 1793 he was imprisoned by the Jacobines for his anti-extremist views, but was released after the overthrow of Robespierre the following year, and appointed professor of history at the Ecole Normale.

Note 8 in page 177 Apparently an echo from Volney's remarks on the Turks: “a nation whose characteristics are gloom and misanthropy”—p. 76.

Note 9 in page 177 Julian Edition, i, 242.

Note 10 in page 177 Volney, p. 9.

Note 11 in page 177 Ibid., p. 77 f.

Note 12 in page 178 Ibid., p. 92.

Note 13 in page 178 Ibid., p. 106.

Note 14 in page 178 Julian Edition, i, 241.

Note 15 in page 178 Volney, p. 101.

Note 16 in page 178 Ibid., p. 103.

Note 17 in page 178 Ibid., p. 105.

Note 18 in page 179 Revolt of Islam, v. 37.

Note 19 in page 179 Ibid., v. 48. Shelley's choice of a woman as “lawgiver” indicates a striking feature of the poem for which there is little hint in Volney—the emancipation of women and their position in society. For this Shelley is mainly indebted to the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, which he read avidly, and, to a lesser degree, to Sir James Lawrence's Empire of the Nairs.

Note 20 in page 179 Ibid., v. 40, 43.

Note 21 in page 179 Ibid., v. 49, 50.

Note 22 in page 180 Shelley's ultimate ideal of an equalitarian society will be found outlined in Acts iii and iv of Prometheus Unbound. In A Philosophical View of Reform he writes: “Equality in possessions must be the last result of the utmost refinements of civilization. . . . We derive tranquillity and courage and grandeur of soul from contemplating an object which is, because we will it, and may be, because we hope and desire it, and must be if succeeding generations of the enlightened sincerely and earnestly seek it”—Julian Edition, vii, 43. That the masses had a similar object in mind he indicates in Swellfoot the Tyrant (see, for instance, ii. ii. 52–60), though he feared that their violent methods might thwart the very ends for which they were striving.

Note 23 in page 180 Shelley indicates his meaning in the following stanzas (1–3 of Cythna's speech).

Note 24 in page 180 See, for example, the last sentence of the preface to The Revolt of Islam: “Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world”—Julian Edition, i, 247.

Note 25 in page 180 Volney, pp. 103–104.

Note 26 in page 180 Ibid., p. 104.

Note 27 in page 181 Ibid., p. 104, n.

Note 28 in page 181 Revolt of Islam, v. 3 of Cythna's speech (following stanza 51).

Note 29 in page 181 Ibid., v. 54.

Note 30 in page 181 Ibid., iv. 25.

Note 31 in page 182 Volney, p. 106.

Note 32 in page 182 Revolt of Islam, v. 41.

Note 33 in page 182 Ibid., v. 45.

Note 34 in page 182 Ibid., v. 2 of Cythna's speech (following stanza 51).

Note 35 in page 182 Volney, pp. 109, 110.

Note 36 in page 182 Revolt of Islam, v. 45.

Note 37 in page 182 Volney, p. 112.

Note 38 in page 182 Revolt of Islam, v. 4, 5 of Cythna's speech (following stanza 51).

Note 39 in page 182 Volney, p. 99.

Note 40 in page 183 The parallel between the pyramid scenes in Volney and Shelley is noted, although only in a general way, by Kellner, op. cit., p. 39.

Note 41 in page 183 Volney, p. 107.

Note 42 in page 183 Ibid., p. 108. It is interesting to note too that in both Volney and Shelley the kings' ear of the spread of the doctrines of the people is depicted in similar language. In Volney, contemplating the slogan of equality, liberty, and justice, they cry “What a swarm of evils are included in those three words!”—Volney, p. 107. Shelley seems to echo this in the tyrant's fear: “millions yet live,/Of whom the weakest with one word might turn/The scales of victory yet”—Revolt of Islam, x. 9. Volney's concept here illuminates Shelley's meaning.

Note 43 in page 184 Volney, p. 109.

Note 44 in page 184 Revolt of Islam, vi. 2.

Note 45 in page 184 Shelley's “Disquiet on the multitude did fall” is possibly a recollection of Volney's earlier passage (quoted above) at the onset of the revolution: “At this cry a secret murmur against oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a wholesome inquietude alarms her respecting her situation. . . .”—Volney, p. 85. The fact that Shelley's description, like Volney's, places an emphasis on cry: “Then rallying cries of treason and of danger Resounded. . . .” may indicate that Shelley had (although probably subconsciously) Volney's passage in mind.

Note 46 in page 185 Revolt of Islam, x, 4, 5.

Note 47 in page 185 In both Shelley and Volney the Tyrant or tyrants utilize and intimidate the kings. Shelley remarks of the Tyrant, “the power of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,/He called”—Revolt of Islam, x. 7. Volney's tyrants exclaim: “We must frighten the kings, that they may join us in the cause”—Volney, p. 108.

Note 48 in page 185 Prometheus Unbound, i, 648–654.

Note 49 in page 186 Shelley, I believe, indicates such an intention in the following remark in his letter of October 13, 1817: “I have attempted in the progress of my work to speak to the common elementary emotions of the human heart, so that though it is the story of violence and revolution, it is relieved by milder pictures of friendship and love and natural affections” —Julian Edition, ix, 251. He emphasizes the point again in his preface: “The poem, therefore (with the exception of the first Canto, which is purely introductory), is narrative, not didactic”—Julian Edition, i, 239. The message of the poem as a whole is the same as that of the first canto, but Shelley feared that unless this message were presented in the form of a romantic narrative, the poem would not appeal to the reading public. For this narrative story, I might add, he owed little to Volney.

Note 50 in page 186 “Before the Turks took the name of their chief Othman I, they bore that of Oguzians” —Volney, p. 74, n. See The Revolt of Islam, v. 32. Othman was, of course, a general name, but Volney's mention of it in connection with the Islamic war may have made a special impression on Shelley.

Note 51 in page 186 Volney, p. 62.

Note 52 in page 186 Revolt of Islam, vi. 3.

Note 53 in page 186 Ibid., vi. 5.

Note 54 in page 187 Volney, p. 61.

Note 55 in page 187 Revolt of Islam, v. 8.

Note 56 in page 187 Volney, p. 60.

Note 57 in page 187 Ibid., p. 61.

Note 58 in page 187 Revolt of Islam, vi. 25.

Note 59 in page 187 It may be that these images remained as late as 1821 and are unconsciously reechoed in Hellas: “Over the hills of Anatolia,/Swiftin wide troops the Tartar chivalry/Sweep. . . .” —Hellas, 329–331; and “Another proudly clad/In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb/Into the gap. . . . ”—Hellas, 837–839. Barb in the sense of Barbary horse is noted in Webster's New International Dictionary.

Note 60 in page 188 Volney, p. 71.

Note 61 in page 188 Revolt of Islam, iv. 14.

Note 62 in page 188 Volney, p. 70 f. These hints from Volney on the Sultan's seraglio seem to have combined in Shelley's mind with hints from The Empire of the Nairs. For the possible influence of this book on Shelley see Walter Graham, “Shelley and ‘The Empire of the Nairs‘” PMLA, xl (1925), 881–891.

Note 63 in page 189 Volney, pp. 12–14.

Note 64 in page 189 Revolt of Islam, x. 17.

Note 65 in page 189 Ibid., x. 20.

Note 66 in page 189 Ibid., x. 24.

Note 67 in page 190 Ibid., x. 11.

Note 68 in page 190 Ibid., x. 18.

Note 69 in page 190 Ibid., x. 13.

Note 70 in page 190 Volney, p. 13.

Note 71 in page 190 “History of a Six Weeks' Tour,” Julian Edition, vi, 95–96.

Note 72 in page 191 Further recollection from this section of Volney's work may also be present in Shelley's description of the fish rotting with the drought: “. . . on the shore/The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown”—Revolt of Islam, x. 18. This may have come from a turning over in the poetic imagination of the simple phrase “the water with fishes,” which immediately precedes an image of “a ravaged and desert earth”—Volney, p. 14. It is possible also that the fine stanza on peace which begins “Peace in the desert fields and villages,” results from a similar imaginative development of “wasted the plains which peace had peopled”—Revolt of Islam, x. 12; Volney, p. 13.

Note 73 in page 191 Revolt of Islam, x. 38.

Note 74 in page 191 Volney, p. 143.

Note 75 in page 191 Julian Mition, i, 151.

Note 76 in page 192 Volney, p. 93.

Note 77 in page 192 Revolt of Islam, ix. 12.

Note 78 in page 192 Volney, p. 93.

Note 79 in page 192 Revolt of Islam, v. 16. See also Ibid., vi. 4: “And saw the throng below/ Stream through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls/ Fed from a thousand storms.”

Note 80 in page 192 Ibid., ix. 14.

Note 81 in page 192 Ibid., ix. 16.

Note 82 in page 193 Volney, p. 108.

Note 83 in page 193 Revolt of Islam, ix. 14.

Note 84 in page 193 Volney, pp. 95–96.

Note 85 in page 193 Ibid., p. 97.

Note 86 in page 193 Revolt of Islam, ix. 16, 18.

Note 87 in page 193 Volney, p. 108.

Note 88 in page 193 Revolt of Islam, v. 11.

Note 89 in page 193 Volney, p. 97.

Note 90 in page 194 Revolt of Islam, viii, 5,6. Shelley originally wrote God, but later changed this to Power.

Note 91 in page 194 Volney, pp. 175–176.

Note 92 in page 194 Ibid., p. 177.

Note 93 in page 195 Revolt of Islam, viii. 8. Shelley originally wrote God, but later changed this to Power.

Note 94 in page 195 Volney, p. 215. See also “and religion consecrated the crimes of despots: and perverted the principles of government”—Volney, p. 202.

Note 95 in page 195 Revolt of Islam, viii. 9. See also Ibid., ii. 8:

For they all pined in bondage; body and soul,
Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent
Before one Power, to which supreme control
Over their will by their own weakness lent,
Made all its many names omnipotent;
All symbols of things evil, all divine;
And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent
The air from all its fanes, did intertwine
Imposture's impious toils round each discordant shrine.
The idea is common throughout the poem.

Note 96 in page 196 Volney, p. 231 f.

Note 97 in page 196 Revolt of Islam, viii. 27.

Note 98 in page 197 Volney, p. 280.

Note 99 in page 197 Revolt of Islam, x. 30, 31.

Note 100 in page 197 See, for instance, Brama, Volney, p. 124; Ormuzd, p. 123; Moses, p. 121; Budd, p. 126; Fot, pp. 126, 156 ff.; Christ, p. 132; Mahomet, p. 133 ff.; Zoroaster (Zerdusht), pp. 122, 204 ff., 241. Shelley uses the New Persian form for Zoroaster, apparently for metrical reasons.

Note 101 in page 197 Volney, p. 114.

Note 102 in page 198 Ibid., p. 131 f.

Note 103 in page 198 Ibid., p. 176.

Note 104 in page 198 Revolt of Islam, x. 30.

Note 105 in page 198 Ibid., i. 55.

Note 106 in page 198 Volney, p. 10.

Note 107 in page 199 Revolt of Islam, i. 56. Cf. also “whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep/ A glimmering o'er the forms on every side”—Ibid., i. 51.

Note 108 in page 199 Volney, p. 10.

Note 109 in page 199 Revolt of Islam, i. 57.

Note 110 in page 199 Volney, p. 2.

Note 111 in page 199 Revolt of Islam, i. 53.

Note 112 in page 199 Some later parallels between the description of the ruins and Shelley's poem, viz. ii. 10–12; and vi. 27 are noted by L. Kellner, op. cit., p. 37.

Note 113 in page 200 Revolt of Islam, i. 25, 26.

Note 114 in page 200 Ibid., i. 8–14. See also The Assassins, Julian edition, vi, 165–166.

Note 115 in page 200 Volney has numerous references to Zoroaster and gives a brief outline of his beliefs —p. 241. Shelley refers to Zoroaster in Prometheus Unbound, i, 191 ff.

Note 116 in page 200 Volney, pp. 203–204. As a result of this belief in contending forces men came to imagine that one part of the skies represented heaven and another part hell: “. . . and beyond were the hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to the tropics) where reigned an eternal night. From these stories, badly understood, and doubtless confusedly related, the imagination of the people composed the Elysian fields, regions of delights placed in a world below, having their heaven, their sun, and their stars; and Tartarus, a place of darkness, humidity, mire and frost”—Volney, pp. 212–213. This conception is echoed by Shelley, when he speaks of the spirit of evil's domain in “the hell,/ His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies”—Revolt of Islam, i. 30. Shelley's friend J. F. Newton seems also to have expounded some of these Zoroastrian notions, and Shelley may have taken some of them from him. See Thomas Love Peacock, Memoirs of Shelley ed. H. F. B. Brett-Smith (London, 1909), pp. 30–32.

Note 117 in page 201 Volney, pp. 204–207.

Note 118 in page 201 As in Revolt of Islam, i. 40, 41. The idea of the blood-red comet may have come from Volney's footnote from Plutarch on the constellation Typhon, which the Egyptians took as the symbol of the power of evil: “‘The Egyptians,’ says Plutarch, ‘only offer bloody victims to Typhon. They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal immolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sins of the people’ ”—Volney, p. 209, n. Possibly this fused in Shelley's memory with an earlier footnote from Porphyry, also in connection with Typhon: “‘The Egyptians,’ says Porphyry, ‘employ every year a talisman in remembrance of the world; at the summer solstice they mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposing that on that day the whole world had been set on fire”—Volney, p. 207, n.

Note 119 in page 201 Volney, p. 208.

Note 120 in page 201 Ibid., p. 250, n.

Note 121 in page 202 See preface to “Prometheus Unbound,” Julian Edition, ii, 171–172; and “A Defence of Poetry,” Julian Edition, vii, 129.

Note 122 in page 202 As in John E. Cooke, Stories of the Old Dominion (New York, 1879), p. 210.

Note 123 in page 202 The Mask of Anarchy, 226–229.

Note 124 in page 202 Hellas, 425 f.

Note 125 in page 202 See, for instance, “A Philosophical View of Reform,” Julian Edition, vii, 10–13; Ode to Liberty, 151–169; Hellas, 64–71.

Note 126 in page 202 The Revolt of Islam, xi. 22–24.

Note 127 in page 202 One further use of the snake symbol was that of a dismembered snake with the caption “Join or Die” believed to have been designed by Benjamin Franklin and first used in his paper The Pennsylvania Gazette of May 9, 1754. This device continued in use for some twenty years among the colonies. See Frederic Austin Ogg, Builders of the Republic (“The Pageant of America,” viii; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927), pp. 36–37; 329, n. Shelley's interest in Franklin is evidenced by his remark to Elizabeth Hitchener in a letter of April 16, 1812: “The ‘Declaration of Rights’ would be useful in farm-houses: it was by a similar expedient that Franklin propagated his commercial opinions among the Americans”—Julian Edition, viii, 308.

Note 128 in page 203 It is interesting to note that Jupiter's fall in Prometheus Unbound is compared to that of an eagle—iii, ii. 11 ff. See also iii. i. 70–74, where Jupiter declares that he and Demogorgon will “sink on the wide waves of ruin, Even as a vulture and a snake outspent.”

Note 129 in page 203 See A Philosophical View of Reform, in which Shelley speaks of the Roman Empire as “that vast and successful scheme for the enslaving of the most civilized portion of mankind”—Julian Edition, vii, 5. In this attitude Shelley seems to have been influenced by Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (London, 1796), i, 105 f.

Note 130 in page 203 Volney, p. 233.

Note 131 in page 203 It is possible also that Shelley was acquainted with a cartoon, “The Flight of Congress,” published in a London paper in November, 1777, in which a snake labelled Independence is battling in mid air with an eagle, which represents Hessian mercenaries fighting on the side of the British—Ogg, op. cit., p. 114.

Note 132 in page 203 Volney, pp. 222–223.

Note 133 in page 203 Revolt of Islam, iv. 4. A similar reference occurs in The Daemon of the World, i. 100 f.: “Where the vast snake Eternity/ In charmed sleep doth ever lie.”

Note 134 in page 203 “A similar symbolization occurs also in Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Gods, where the cave of eternity is represented as surrounded by a serpent—Henry G. Lotspeich, ‘Shelley's Eternity and Demogorgon,’ Philological Quarterly, xiii (1934), 309. Shelley, however, had not read Boccaccio at the time of writing The Revolt of Islam (1817), as the following remark by Leigh Hunt in a letter to Mary Shelley on August 4, 1818, indicates: ‘Shelley told me once he would read Boccaccio. Pray make him do so now. . . . ’—The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt (ed. by Thornton Hunt, London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1862), p. 123. Shelley's own first reference to Boccaccio occurs in a letter of Sept. 27, 1819, in which he speaks as though he were reading him for the first time—Julian Edition, x, 86. As Shelley had read Volney before writing Queen Mab, he could not first have encountered this symbolism in Boccaccio. It is probable, however, that when he later came upon it in the Genealogy of the Gods, he recalled the similar concept in Volney and the two combined in his images of Demogorgon and the serpent in Prometheus Unbound (1819).”

Note 135 in page 204 Revolt of Islam, i. 9.

Note 136 in page 204 Ibid., i. 8, 10.

Note 137 in page 204 Julian Edition, vii, 52. Here again it is possible that Shelley was influenced by American snake symbols. There appeared in the New York Journal or General Advertiser of December 15, 1774—reprinted in Ogg, op. cit., p. 92—an emblem of a wreathed snake, almost “devouring his tail.” Upon the coils of the snake are inscribed the following verses:

United now alive and free,
Firm on this basis liberty shall stand,
And thus supported ever bless our land
Till time becomes eternity.

Note 138 in page 205 Prometheus Unbound, ii, iii. 94–98.

Note 139 in page 205 Ibid., iv, 565–569.

Note 140 in page 205 Ibid., iv. 562.

Note 141 in page 205 See “A Philosophical View of Reform,” Julian Edition, iv, 14–15. See also the preface to The Revolt of Islam.