Shelley's miching mallecho

The always excellent Carol Rumen has chosen Shelley's 'To Wordsworth' published in 1816 as her poem of the week for the Guardian.

Wordsworth had written 'Peter Bell' in 1798 but published it only in 1819. It attracted execration from Hunt, Byron, Shelley- even Lamb, a friend of Wordsworth.

Was this a case of posh Southron bastids (Byron went to Harrow, Shelley to Eton. Both inherited titles) looking down on a plain Northern lad who had attended the local Grammar School & whose early Radicalism was tempered by common sense & such Christianity as is common amongst even commoners with little sense and less scholarship?

Shelley writes-

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

Pathei Mathos? No. Wordsworth learns from an artless child that 'We are Seven!' though Death is the double Sabbath of the workaday week of even the most heavily burdened. This is the doctrine of univocity unknown to Scholastic Dunces. 

The first mention of tears in Wordy has to do with the vapours of a female novelist slightly less vacuous than Shelley, Schelling, 

That things depart which never may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

Wordsworth was a poet of the people of the landscapes he describes. But they were his own people by birth or oikeiosis. Since those landscapes were relatively unpeopled. 'Nature' predominates. But Wordsworth isn't the poet of Nature anymore than he is the poet of Geology or Botany.

 Wordsworth, it seems, was given to peripatētikós- going walk about- and what he learnt while walking with and talking to the hoi polloi was that the true peripatetic pathei-mathos- the true pathos of such learning as is love- is that everything that departs returns, by the iron law of palingenesis or re-birth, richer for the change, and all Mourning itself dies along with Death at the time of the true Eschaton- the day of a Wrath not of some currently howling mob but the curtained, or mobled, Lord of all that is mortal.

Dreams may sometimes be sweet- even for those heavily burdened- but in this our common, intersubjective, 'world which is', the sad truth is that the 'sweet dreams' of the leisured aristocracy- even if they extend to chopping off crowned heads & enjoying a Saturnalia more splendid than that enjoined on visiting angels in Sodom- are very different from that of such lowly folk as populate picturesque landscapes & make them comfortably traversable for tourists, by their diligence & decency of character.

The fact is, for working class people (or declasse drinking class people like me) the world of Wordsworth's Preludes is

the world of all of us, and where

We find our happiness, or not at all.

There is happiness in knowing of God's Justice. Even if we are predestined for despair in this life and damnation ever after, some are not. Mum, Dad, Sister, Granny- Woofy the Dog- if even one wins hits the jackpot, there was for all, an albeit stochastic, Jubilee. 

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.

Whatever might be the woes of a wealthy Old Etonian due to inherit a Baronetcy, they were very uncommon indeed. Shelley lost nothing. He got a chance to put the boot into an older poet and gain some publicity for himself. Nowt wrong in that. Poetry simply doesn't matter enough for us to apply any sort of ethical standard to its practitioners. 

Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:

Shelley, mate, thou art writing fustian. Fuck is wrong with you?

Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battling multitude:

Like the mob that stormed the Bastille? Wordsworth went walk-about in France a year after it happened.  He wasn't the fucking Rock of Gibraltar repelling the forces of the Revolution. 

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, —

Guys who inherit a shitload of money can be very censorious of those who rise by their own efforts. The truth is 'Liberty' is a set of Hohfeldian incidents or immunities which are costly to get remedies for under a vinculum juris. Productivity must rise if this is to happen

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

To mock, calumny and mock-crucify. 

Thus having been, that thou should cease to be.

Wordsworth outlived the little shit by 28 years. Apart from Ozymandias- actually written by some other dude but turned into great verse by Shelley- the Old Etonian died when he died. Wordsworth didn't. Cumbria didn't. It will be conserved as a corner in what is merely Cosmic. 

There is a 'babu' quality- Bengali 'ucchvaas'- to Shelley. He was influenced by fellow Old Etonian, Lawerences' 'Empire of the Nairs' & influence Bharati.

A temple elephant killed that Tambram shithead. I guess this shows his poetry was good. Mine isn't. The last temple elephant I met was very affectionate to me even though I, not Bharati, am a genuine drunkard. 

Still, like Wordsworth's Peter Bell's donkey, I'm safely stabled in St.Augustine's stable- or, to be more brutally honest about my IQ, a kitten swatting at Manjara Nyaya. 

This is from Shelley's prologue to 'Peter Bell the Third'

Peter Bells, one, two and three,

O'er the wide world wandering be. --

First, the antenatal Peter,

i.e the foetus created in 'antarabhava' or 'bardo'- i.e. subject to 'karmic' birth-determining particles or forces. This, in Hinduism, is the realm of the Gandharvas- with whom Vak- Speech- went off in vagabondage to create the various lyric forms. Shelley, like Southey or Moore, fed promiscuously on Sanskrit fewmets though, no doubt, they had Greek antecedents. 

Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,

The so-long-predestined raiment

Clothed in which to walk his way meant

This is Swiftian- Latinate & Ciceronian when it ought to be Clerical. Shelley goes astray when he quits Arcadian groves to pose as the Juvenal of the jeuness dorre. 

The second Peter; whose ambition

Is to link the proposition,

As the mean of two extremes --

        (This was learned from Aldric's themes) 

Henry Aldrich's outdated book on Logic (it follows Phillip of Spain) was used at Oxford- from which Shelley was expelled. In Cambridge- from which Wordsworth graduated- Isaac Watts's more recent book was used. 

                         

Shielding from the guilt of schism

The orthodoxal syllogism;

Don't try to be Swiftian if you don't fucking know Logic & Theology. Anglicans have no 'orthodoxal syllogism'. There were 39 Articles. The thing was Contractual, not Logicist. 

 

The First Peter -- he who was

Like the shadow in the glass

Shelley thought Wordsworth started off as a 'Rock'- (as in St. Peter being the rock on which built the Church)- and was a shadow in the dark glass of the Apocalypse. 

Of the second, yet unripe,

His substantial antitype. --

i.e. not a Platonic form but a concrete universal of the Coleridgian type- i.e. an 'educt of the imagination actuated by pure reason'. 

Then came Peter Bell the Second,

Who henceforward must be reckoned

The body of a double soul,

Coleridge had spoken of himself & the Wordsworths as three people with one soul. He also had a tri-partite theory of the soul. He truly was as boring as shit. 

And that portion of the whole 

Without which the rest would seem

Ends of a disjointed dream. --

This is Coleridge's 'esemplastic power' unifying thesis & antithesis in the manner of Schelling & Schlegel & the equally boring Shelley. 

And the Third is he who has

O'er the grave been forced to pass

To the other side, which is, --

Go and try else, -- just like this.

Drown yourself by all means you boring prig. 

Peter Bell the First was Peter

Smugger, milder, softer, neater,

Like the soul before it is

      Born from that world into this.     

i.e. the poet whose topic is otherworldly and fantastical.                               

The next Peter Bell was he,

Predevote, like you and me,

To good or evil as may come;

His was the severer doom, --

For he was an evil Cotter,

And a polygamic Potter.

Wordsworth decides to take a humble, human, theme for his poem. Peter Bell is a hawker. He is sinful. One day he comes across an ass which he beats so as to be able to ride away upon it. It does not budge. Peter sees that it is gazing at its owner- who has drowned. He fishes the corpse out of the water after which the ass is content to carry him away. Peter hears a scream from behind him. It is the dead man's son finding his corpse. Peter reflects on his hard-hearted & sinful life. He passes a Methodist prayer-meeting & his heart is touched by the preacher's words. The ass reaches the home of the dead man, whose wife is waiting for him. She learns that she is a widow, and her children orphans:

And now is Peter taught to feel
That man's heart is a holy thing;
And Nature, through a world of death,
Breathes into him a second breath,
More searching than the breath of spring

In other words, this rough fellow is on the path to repentance. Sadly, this does not involve his becoming an Old Etonian & inheriting a Baronetcy.

And the last is Peter Bell,

Damned since our first parents fell,

Damned eternally to Hell --

Surely he deserves it well!    

Because he doesn't inherit lots and lots of money. True, the fucker might get into a more profitable line of business & end up a very rich man. But he'd still be as common as muck- like Wordsworth who, when all is said and done, was a Grammar School oik. 

Joya Chatterji's senile shadows at noon.

 In latitudes between the tropics of Cancer & Capricon, there is a day on which you throw no shadow at noon. Delhi is some 500 km north of the tropic of Cancer & thus there are shadows at noon- albeit not very long ones in Summer.

Joya Chatterji is a year younger than me and was born in Delhi. She says her brother, at Modern School, was bullied because his mother was British. I was surprised by that. More surprising was her contention that she thought there was something fake about the Republic Day parade she witnessed in 1970. She asks why Indians had to be persuaded that India was a nation two decades after Independence? No doubt, she would have been equally puzzled by the American celebrations of their bicentennial in 1976. Why did the US have to be persuaded it was a nation two centuries after it had declared Independence?  The answer is that nobody needed to be persuaded of anything. They simply liked celebrating being a nation. On the other hand, it is true that the only reason we celebrate birthdays is because we need to be persuaded that we are still alive. 

Joya, even at the age of 6, was so astoundingly stupid that the only subject she could be a Professor of was History- that too in England where nobody knows or cares about Indian history. If Britain ruled that country it must be because Indians were stupid. Indian economists or historians are given Professorships in British Universities so that white kids come to understand how & why their ancestors came to rule over India. To be clear, it is because Indians have shit for brains. They don't understand why birthdays are celebrated. 

Joya also expresses puzzlement at the partition of India. She doesn't get that Muslims don't like kaffirs. Kaffirs are willing to hang together if the alternative is getting killed by Muslims. 

Joya's ignorance of Indian history is quite astonishing given that she was raised in Delhi and got her first degree there.

She says Indians didn't have a common language. They did. Hindustani was the lingua franca. People who travelled for work or who interacted with others in towns knew it well enough.

She says people in the Congress party before the Great War might know two or three languages but could read only one. Yet, if they had been to school, they were obliged to know the vernacular language plus one classical language (Sanskrit or Persian) written in the traditional script. If they were advocates, they also needed to be able to read the 'shikast' script. 

She says India had few roads & serious roadbuilding only happened during the Second World War and that too only in the East. This is nonsense. Road building picked up from the 1830s onward when the Grand Trunk road was repaired. When India gained independence there were 221, 690 miles of motorable roads out of which 126,374 were motorable throughout the year. In 1920 the figure was 121,000 miles thought little of this was 'surfaced'. As cars & trucks became more widely available, metalling of roads was undertaken by the PWD. There may been about 200,000 miles of road in 1940. Some 10,000 miles of road through harsh terrain was constructed in the North East as part of the War effort. 

She says that till the 1880s the fastest route between Bombay & Calcutta was by Sea. Actually, they were connected by rail in 1870. The sea journey- by steam ship might take one or two weeks. The rail journey might take 2 days. Joya thinks that people in 1885 would take the sea route to Bombay because the rail route was only for soldiers. She is utterly mad. Rail companies want to maximise their profits. They like transporting people- even darkies- because they like money. Rich Indians could travel in great comfort. The special carriages for the rich were splendidly equipped. Servants went ahead to set up luxurious camps. The middle class, on the other hand, couldn't afford such facilities. 

Joya mentions Gandhi's astonishment that Tamil Brahmins had separate cooking facilities at Congress meetings. Somehow, she has got it into her head that this had something to do with railways and that Indians of different castes could only 'meet face to face' in London! She doesn't seem to be aware that people could maintain their ritual purity while chatting face to face with almost everybody save particularly low sub-castes associated with insanitary or inauspicious activities. But then, the British King didn't make it a practice to dine with Jack Ketch- the executioner. 

Why is Hinduism the religion of the vast majority of Indians? The answer is that Hindu Acharyas- like Sankara- walked or took boats or wagons across the length and breadth of India one thousand years before the invention of the steam engine. Joya says her own picture of India came from train journeys. But if this is true of her, it must be true of every Indian ever. Since there were no trains in India till about 1850, it follows that no Indian could have had a picture of India prior to that time. Even after trains were introduced, Indians could not come 'face to face' with each other because of caste regulations. Thus, to meet an Indian of another caste, you had to go to London. Incidentally, prostitutes tend to be of a different caste to their clients. In order to have sex both had to go to London. Moreover, barbers belong to a different caste to those they served. That is why they were constantly travelling to London where they would shave the client who lived down the road from them back in India. 

Joya thinks the Indian students in London in 1865 were very important because, for the first time, they were able to meet other Indians of different castes 'face to face'. Yet, they had been doing so at School & College, not to mention the Bazaar & the Sports maidan back in India. 

More worrying is her extraordinary ignorance of basic Indian history. She says RC Dutt was a 'model bureaucrat' who 'sought a meeting with Lord Curzon' to argue the case for tax reform. Dutt resigned from the ICS in 1898 & went to London as a lecturer at UCL. Curzon came to India in 1899. Dutt wrote an 'open letter' to him in 1900 but he himself was in London at that time. Joya seems to think that Curzon was Viceroy at the time of the Nadia famine which Dutt witnessed. But that was in 1874 when Curzon was a schoolboy of 15! 

There are innumerable howlers on every page of Joya's book. She says Aurobindo's father- a poorly paid civil surgeon- employed an English nurse & butler! It isn't that she hasn't read books about Aurobindo. She simply can't understand what she reads. Instead she confabulates English nurses & butlers! If British District Collectors could not afford such things, how could an Indian Doctor in Government employ? 

Joya says Gandhi's mother was Jain. She wasn't. She belonged to the Pranami (Vaishnav) sect. She says Gandhi's first direct engagement with Indian politics came when he wrote 'Hind Swaraj'. It wasn't. He had attended the INC Calcutta session in 1901 and spoken there of the grievances of the Indians in South Africa. She says there is an 'influential definition' of nationalism as a political movement which seeks to capture state power. This is clearly nonsense. A Communist or a religious fanatic or a bunch of gangsters may want to capture state power. A Nationalist may also be an Anarchist who believes that there is no need for a State. Gandhi, pace Joya, was a Nationalist of this type. His argument against militarism & industrialisation was that India would become like England if it took that road. To retain its Indian identity it should embrace celibacy, non-violence & an austere life-style. 

Joya thinks Lala Lajpat Rai was beaten to death by the police in 1919 'in broad daylight'. Actually he died in 1928. That's what provoked Bhagat Singh to take revenge. Bizarrely, Joya couples his name with Bagha Jatin who was killed in 1915 some three years before Bengalis had heard of Mahatma Gandhi. 

Joya may be in poor health. Her memory may be failing. But her editors at Penguin should have gone through her manuscript and corrected the more obvious blunders. What nobody can correct is her stupidity. She thinks 'moneyed men' got Gandhi to call off the Non-Cooperation movement which, she says, he described as a 'Himalayan miscalculation'. She has confused the anti-Rowlatt agitation, which commenced on April 6 1919 & which Gandhi called off after the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre and which he called a 'Himalayan miscalculation' with his unilateral surrender in 1922 after the Chauri Chaura violence. 

Joya thinks 'violence became embossed on the nation's fabric'. She is wrong. Both violence and non-violence fell by the wayside. People fought elections & formed Governments if their side won. In other words, India followed the path that the Brits had set down for them. Why? There was no alternative. In a poor country, guys who get paid a regular salary to kill people prevail over amateurs who do it for fun. As for non-violence- it either means 'money power'- in which case it should be used for buying vote or bribing officials- or it means sulking in jail. 

Shadows at noon is a shit book but, it may be, its author suffers some form of premature senility. What is inexcusable is that no editor at Penguin corrected the more glaring factual errors.