Ramji Lall :
Alastor is the Greek name for a revengeful demon who was believed to drive his victims into desert places. Shelley used this title for this poem which ‘describes the Nemesis of solitary souls.’ This was the first serious poem published by Shelley. He had inspiration for it from the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor forest. It was the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his genius. All that Shelley had observed of natural beauty is presented to us in a series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion.
The deeper meaning of Alastor is to be found, not in the thought of death, nor in the poet’s communing with nature, but in the motto from St. Augustine placed upon its title-page. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing for some mortal realisation of his love. Alastor, like Epipsyodion reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that the idea of beauty could become visible to him in some earthly shape, though the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty shows his realisation that this is impossible. Shelley states the mistake in a letter: “I think one is always in love with something or other; the error and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.” But Shelley wrote this letter towards the end of his life, which means that the realisation of his misconception carne too late.
Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, Alastor has great autobiographical value. It was written under the exception of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment resulting from the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which runs through its sublime descriptions.
The versification of this poem shows the influence of Milton and Wordsworth in certain passages, but it is largely Shelley’s own. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music. The blank verse is tremulous with lyrical vibrations. As a specimen of this blank verse, reference may be made to the passage that expresses that kinking for perfect sympathy in an ideal love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in Shelley’s heart:
At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste.
Of putred marshes …………. (Lines, 272-295)
The general meaning of Alastor is that ‘self-centred seclusion’ is punished by the evil demon of ruin and frustration. At the same time, Alastor is an elegy uttered for a dream. The word ‘Alastor’ means an evil genius.
Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever,
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
It is also a narrative poem, and as such it obeys no ordinary rules and has serious defects. The theme is cloaked with description until it hardly moves. The poet’s delight in the marvelous overcomes him and a new magical voyage leaves the intellectual purpose of the poem forsaken too long.
An imperfect command of the diction is also betrayed in such details as the repeated application of an adjective, ‘wild,’ ‘strange,’ ‘solemn,’ and so on, until particularity is lost. Having written ‘vacant brain,’ he writes ‘the vacant woods’ and of gazing ‘vacantly,’ within a few lines.
Nothing, however, could deprive the work of its pervading beauty and its melancholy grace. Other poets have excelled in the revealing of forest, rock, and river, but Shelley’s Nature-poetry is not the same. It was from his traveling that he drew this search of the lonely soul, from his own dear Thames, especially that he took the setting; the final fate of his wanderer was what might have been his own. n
Alastor is the Greek name for a revengeful demon who was believed to drive his victims into desert places. Shelley used this title for this poem which ‘describes the Nemesis of solitary souls.’ This was the first serious poem published by Shelley. He had inspiration for it from the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor forest. It was the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his genius. All that Shelley had observed of natural beauty is presented to us in a series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion.
The deeper meaning of Alastor is to be found, not in the thought of death, nor in the poet’s communing with nature, but in the motto from St. Augustine placed upon its title-page. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing for some mortal realisation of his love. Alastor, like Epipsyodion reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that the idea of beauty could become visible to him in some earthly shape, though the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty shows his realisation that this is impossible. Shelley states the mistake in a letter: “I think one is always in love with something or other; the error and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.” But Shelley wrote this letter towards the end of his life, which means that the realisation of his misconception carne too late.
Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, Alastor has great autobiographical value. It was written under the exception of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment resulting from the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which runs through its sublime descriptions.
The versification of this poem shows the influence of Milton and Wordsworth in certain passages, but it is largely Shelley’s own. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music. The blank verse is tremulous with lyrical vibrations. As a specimen of this blank verse, reference may be made to the passage that expresses that kinking for perfect sympathy in an ideal love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in Shelley’s heart:
At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste.
Of putred marshes …………. (Lines, 272-295)
The general meaning of Alastor is that ‘self-centred seclusion’ is punished by the evil demon of ruin and frustration. At the same time, Alastor is an elegy uttered for a dream. The word ‘Alastor’ means an evil genius.
Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever,
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
It is also a narrative poem, and as such it obeys no ordinary rules and has serious defects. The theme is cloaked with description until it hardly moves. The poet’s delight in the marvelous overcomes him and a new magical voyage leaves the intellectual purpose of the poem forsaken too long.
An imperfect command of the diction is also betrayed in such details as the repeated application of an adjective, ‘wild,’ ‘strange,’ ‘solemn,’ and so on, until particularity is lost. Having written ‘vacant brain,’ he writes ‘the vacant woods’ and of gazing ‘vacantly,’ within a few lines.
Nothing, however, could deprive the work of its pervading beauty and its melancholy grace. Other poets have excelled in the revealing of forest, rock, and river, but Shelley’s Nature-poetry is not the same. It was from his traveling that he drew this search of the lonely soul, from his own dear Thames, especially that he took the setting; the final fate of his wanderer was what might have been his own. n
