Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

The opening two stanzas introduce the narrator, who admits to his own lifelong search to touch the supernal beauty of nature. He recounts in voluptuous and ornate lyricism how each season has graced his grateful soul. He addresses directly the “Mother of this unfathomable world” (Line 18) and professes his undying love for her “deep mysteries” (Line 23). It is crucial here that the narrator, unlike the naïve and headstrong Poet whose story he is about to share, is happy surrounded by the ineffable wonders of the world, content to never be permitted access to nature’s “inmost sanctuary” (Line 38), content to be a part of the “motions of the forests and the sea” (Line 47). What is never entirely resolved here is the nature of the relationship between the narrator and the young poet who so recklessly and wantonly decides he will secure access to those very mysteries. Is the narrator Shelley himself arguing passionately for moderation to his own inner poet, to prevent his own dissolution into regret and alienation, lost to the very world that so inspires him? Or is the narrator perhaps Shelley addressing like some wizened mentor (ironically, Shelley is all of 22 years old) the tight gathering of would-be university poets eager to forsake the dreary everyday world around them to pursue the world of stunning light and graceful shapes that beckoned to their imaginations and to their souls? Whichever the case, the opening sets up the narrator as one who has found contentment in embracing limits, in accepting that nature will forever sing free of the poet’s most intense efforts to engage its mysteries.

In Line 50, the narrator then introduces the Poet, and the story begins. First, he tells us, the Poet is dead. “He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude” (Line 60). It is a sobering opening. Before the Poet even begins his grand adventure to find the heart of nature, the narrator reveals how it will end, the same poet buried, “gentle, and brave, and generous” (Line 58) perhaps, but forgotten, “moldering bones” beneath “moldering leaves” (Lines 54-55). The narrator returns the Poet to his earliest days when he first responded to the lure of nature, “Every sight / And sound from the vast earth and ambient air” (Lines 68-69). Driven by his imagination, the young Poet was to discover nothing less than the universal truths manifested in the gorgeous sensual delights of nature, its lines, its colors, its shapes. Initially, the Poet finds joy sufficient in the daily discovery of these new wonders. His communion with nature then propels him to wander the European continent, lingering amid the colossal ruins of great civilizations, touring the most exotic and remote corners of Western cultures, among “the ruined temples there / stupendous columns, and wild images” (Line 115-116). It is a breathtaking education. In touring the ruins, the Poet begins to yearn for something greater than the world around him. The ruins testify to the ephemeral nature of humanity’s best efforts. He yearns to get beyond such limits, to tap “the thrilling secrets of the birth of time” (Line 127). Because the poem is a cautionary tale, the narrator never intrudes to point out the problems with such a naïve and futile ambition even as the Poet grows more restless and discontented. If the Poet’s senses celebrate the world around him and all its evident wonder, his imagination and his mind grow weary of the inundation of things bound to become ironic, lost in the grueling inevitability of time.

The narrator reveals dissatisfaction when the Poet refuses the coaxing charms of the beautiful Arab maiden who serves him food and wine with love in her eyes, who nightly watches the Poet as he sleeps, her eyes lingering in the fullness of his lips. The Poet is indifferent to her—she thus symbolizes how the Poet yearns to be free of the shackles of the earthly. At best he is quixotic and idealistic, at worst he is self-centered and unfeeling.

Later, when his quest takes him to Kashmir in Asia, he has the dream of the perfect, ideal woman, “pure mind kindled through all her frame” (Line 163). Her dark locks cascading about her “beamy, bending eyes” (Line 178), her arms outstretched to the Poet, she speaks to him through music, the “beating of heart was heard to fill / the pauses of her music” (Lines 169-170). It is an intoxicating vision, and when the Poet awakens he is determined to find her in the real world. The narrator sees what the brash Poet does not: the sheer impossibility of finding such supernal beauty in the world. The search is doomed to end in glorious, heroic futility, heroic, in the end, only because it is futile. Too caught up in the visionary epiphany, the Poet fails to see the irony of finding his way literally into the “delightful realms” (Line 219) of sleep.

So begins the epic journey of the Poet, restless and frantic and growing increasingly more despondent. The landscape he wanders about now reflects his own increasing despair. The world that at one time so inspired him and gave him joy seems now a desolate wasteland. “Day after day weary waste of hours” (Line 245) as the Poet himself begins to age, his skin sagging, his once flowing hair now matted and “scattered” (Line 249). As he journeys, he is alone, forsaking the company of lovers and even his own family. The swan that he sees only reminds him of his own desolate state. The bird, whose song the Poet snidely remarks is nowhere near as eloquent and musical as his poetry, nevertheless has found a home and contentment with a mate. That insight indicates the tragedy that begins to emerge: the Poet is actually embracing his outsider status, making heroic his self-marginalization.

When, in his self-imposed gloom, the Poet takes his epic journey on the tiny boat he finds along the edge of the sea, the narrator veers more into pure allegory. The tiny boat represents the Poet’s fragile sense of self, how vulnerable he is despite his resistance to accepting that very fragility. The sea, with its churning waves and its compelling currents, symbolizes the nature that the Poet seeks to contain, control, and direct through his brazen endeavor to discover its mysteries. The fragile seems to move on its own power. The whirlwind sweeps the Poet along in his fragile little boat even as the Poet imagines calmly, serenely that he is directing the boat’s course. Nature is too big, too powerful for such a meddling Poet: “The little boat/ Still fled before the storm” (Lines 344-345). The sea then leads the Poet toward his inevitable, painful epiphany, performing the same function as Alastor in Greek mythology, the wild and powerful black stallion who drew lost souls into the Underworld, suggesting the doomed nature of the Poet’s quest, which the Narrator recognizes but the Poet does not. The Poet, however, begins to glimpse the dimensions of his situation even as the waves swell and the little boat is driven into a dark and creepy cave. He grandiloquently despairs that perhaps sleep is not the way to tap into the sweet mysteries of Nature but rather death. His death, then, is the better path, and he cries aloud “Sleep and death / Shall not divide us long!” (Lines 367-368).