Prometheus Unbound

“FOURTH VOICE. And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin

To frozen caves our flight pursuing

Made us keep silence—thus—and thus—

Though silence is a hell to us.”

The rhyming passages in Prometheus Unbound are representative of song. Here, a chorus of voices from the ether sings in AABB rhyme about how the tyrannical Jupiter has forced them to “keep silence.” This is symbolic of Shelley’s political argument that monarchical rulers enforce censorship, repression that he hyperbolizes as “a hell.”

“PHANTASM OF JUPITER. Why have the secret

powers of this strange world

Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither

On direst storms?”

The Phantasm of Jupiter, “a frail and empty phantom” contrasts sharply with the presumed strength and power of the deity himself. He is called forth by Prometheus’s “secret powers,” foreshadowing that as representative of knowledge, Prometheus heralds Jupiter’s fall.

“PHANTASM OF JUPITER. I curse thee! let a sufferer’s curse

Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;

‘Till thine Infinity shall be

A robe of envenomed agony;

And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,

To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.”

The Phantasm of Jupiter recites back to Prometheus the curse Prometheus set upon Jupiter. Prometheus’s language suggests that absolute power is harmful not only to a tyrant’s subjects but also to the tyrant, whose seemingly beneficial “Omnipotence” is actually “a crown of pain.” This reflects Shelley’s republican, anti-monarchical values.

“FURY. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;

And all best things are thus confused to ill.”

A key theme of the work is Love as a Revolutionary Force. Shelley believed that love and wisdom must be united for there to be harmony in the world. Here, a Fury describes how the world has fallen into a dystopia because these two forces have been separated.

“FIRST SPIRIT. From the dust of creeds outworn,

From the tyrant’s banner torn,

Gathering ‘round me, onward borne,

There was mingled many a cry—

Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!

Till they faded thro’ the sky;

And one sound, above, around,

One sound beneath, around, above,

Was moving; ‘twas the soul of love;

‘Twas the hope, the prophecy,

Which begins and ends in thee.”

In this AAABBBCCCDD rhyming stanza, a spirit sings the prophecy that Prometheus will rally all the elements of the Earth to bring about freedom, hope, and victory. This foreshadows Cosmic Harmony as an Ideal of Human Progress that the action of the play is moving toward. The promise is fulfilled in Acts III and IV when all the elements of the cosmos join together to sing.

“PROMETHEUS. How fair these air-born shapes! and yet I feel

Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,

Asia! who, when my being overflowed,

Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine

Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.”

Although Prometheus is surrounded by beautiful “air-born shapes,” the spirits, he is unable to fully appreciate their beauty because he has not been reunited with his beloved, Asia. The thought of her has sustained him through his long punishment, illustrating Love as a Revolutionary Force.

“PANTHEA. I lift them tho’ they droop beneath the load

Of that they would express: what canst thou see

But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?

ASIA. Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless

heaven

Contracted to two circles underneath

Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,

Orb within orb, and line thro’ line inwoven.”

This exchange between Panthea and Asia emphasizes that their connection exists at a microcosmic level that reflects the macrocosm: The eye is an “orb within orb” that reflects the “boundless heaven.” This illustrates the all-encompassing nature of Cosmic Harmony as an Ideal of Human Progress.

“PANTHEA. Methought

As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds

Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond-tree,

When swift from the white Scythian wilderness

A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:

I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down.”

Prometheus Unbound is full of idealized nature. In the Romantic tradition, this imagery is highly figurative and full of symbolic significance. Here, Panthea describes wind from the “Scythian wilderness” creating a frost and blowing away the “blossoms” of an almond tree. The Scythians here represent barbarity and violence: They destroy the buds of beauty, gentleness, and civilization.

“SEMICHORUS I. There those enchanted eddies play

Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,

By Demogorgon’s mighty law,

With melting rapture, or sweet awe,

All spirits on that secret way.”

Although Shelley rewrites some of Demogorgon’s traditional divine associations, the figure remains an underworld deity who draws “all spirits on that secret way,” i.e. into the afterlife. Shelley combines this with the aspect of Demogorgon as the Demiurge, or a being of primordial power whose “mighty law” set forth all aspects of the material world.

“PANTHEA. Hither the sound has borne us to the realm

Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,

Like a volcano’s meteor-breathing chasm,

Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up

Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,

And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,

That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain

To deep intoxication; and uplift,

Like Mænads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!”

In ancient Greek mythology, the Maenads were the female followers of the god Dionysus, or Bacchus in Roman myth, the god of wine and religious ecstasy. Here, Panthea compares the Maenads’ famously unbridled worship to the “intoxication” of “lonely men” who turn to the “maddening wine of life,” or the spiritual essence of Demogorgon, representative of “truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy” that can be found in the power of the people.

“ASIA. He gave man speech, and speech created thought,

Which is the measure of the universe;

And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,

Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind

Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song.”

This passage illustrates how Shelley viewed the role of language in the development of human progress and civilization. He felt that speech, and language more generally, was key to the development of thought and, subsequently, of the Enlightenment knowledge of “science.” Shelley wanted Prometheus Unbound to be the “all-prophetic song” that develops “the harmonious mind” of its readers.

“DEMOGORGON. For what would it avail to bid thee gaze

On the revolving world? What to bid speak

Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these

All things are subject but eternal Love.”

Demogorgon’s advice to Asia is to make full use of her power as the personification of love. Love is the only force in the world that can escape the demands of “Fate, Time” and other seemingly intractable forces. This means that it cannot be overpowered by the tyrannical rule of Jupiter.

“VOICE in the Air, singing. Life of Life! thy lips enkindle

With their love the breath between them;

And thy smiles before they dwindle

Make the cold air fire.”

This rhyming passage is an ode to Asia, a symbol of beauty, and it implies that love is the essential vital force, the “Life of Life.” That this ode comes from a “Voice in the Air,” suggests that all of nature and the cosmos reflects this essential truth.

“JUPITER. Our antique empire insecure, though built

On eldest faith, and hell’s coeval, fear;

And tho’ my curses thro’ the pendulous air,

Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,

And cling to it.”

In contrast with the protagonists in the work, especially Prometheus, Asia, and Demogorgon, who lead with love, Jupiter, the epitome of a tyrant, rules with “hell’s coeval, fear.” However, fear is a brittle power, which has made his empire “insecure.” This self-awareness presages Jupiter’s fall.

“DEMORGON. Descend, and follow me down the abyss.

I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn’s child;

Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together

Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.

The tyranny of heaven none may retain,

Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee.”

In service of his Myth Rewritten as Political Allegory, Shelley seeks to address the failures of previous republican efforts such as the French Revolution, which resulted in the installation of a new absolute monarch after the fall of Louis XVI. Here, Demogorgon emphasizes that no one will resume “the tyranny of heaven”; in Shelley’s utopia, all hierarchies will be destroyed and equality will prevail.

“JUPITER. The elements obey me not. I sink

Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down.

And, like a cloud, mine enemy above

Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!”

This passage depicts Jupiter’s precipitous fall as he loses control over his dominion. As he is ousted, his fall is darkened by his “enemy above,” presumably the looming form of Demogorgon, here a representation of the spirit of the people. This is part of the play’s political allegory showing the people dethroning the monarchy.

“PROMETHEUS. And lovely apparitions, dim at first,

Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright

From the embrace of beauty, whence the forms

Of which these are the phantoms, casts on them

The gathered rays which are reality,

Shall visit us, the progeny immortal

Of Painting, Sculpture, and wrapt Poesy,

And arts, tho’ unimagined, yet to be.”

In his Preface, Shelley describes how the arts, including poetry, are a form of mimesis which both reflect and shape the world around them. In this passage, he expands on this idea by associating it and other art forms with the ability to “embrace […] beauty” by transforming “phantoms” of the mind and reflecting “the gathered rays [of] reality.”

“THE EARTH. It is deserted now, but once it bore

Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths

Bore to thy honour thro’ the divine gloom

The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those

Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope

Into the grave, across the night of life,

As thou hast borne it most triumphantly

To this far goal of Time.”

The Earth describes the temple of Prometheus where “emulous youths,” that is young people who imitate Prometheus, honor his light as a symbol of the knowledge Prometheus shared with humanity. This is an allegory for the young people, like Shelley himself, who see themselves as maintaining Enlightenment ideas of revolution in the face of oppressive monarchy.

“SPIRIT OF THE HOUR. Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man

Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,

Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king

Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man

Passionless; no, yet free from guilt or pain.”

Following Jupiter’s fall from power, the Spirit of the Hour, or the zeitgeist, expresses Shelley’s vision of the ideal republic. Shelley describes a world where people are “equal,” not divided by class, nation, or tribe, and not governed by an absolute monarch.

“SEMICHORUS 1. We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep,

We have known the voice of Love in dreams,

We have felt the wand of Power, and leap—.

SEMICHORUS 2. As the billows leap in the morning beams!”

This excerpt is an example of polyphony, or overlaying multiple voices and sounds, that is used to illustrate unity. This passage illustrates Cosmic Harmony as an Ideal of Human Progress by showing that the different sections of the chorus of all the elements of the universe are so closely intertwined with one another that they are capable of finishing each other’s phrases.

“CHORUS OF SPIRITS. From the temples high

Of Man’s ear and eye,

Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;

From the murmurings

Of the unsealed springs

Where Science bedews his Dædal wings.”

This passage illustrates how all aspects of human expression, from the senses (“ear and eye”), to the arts (“Sculpture and Poesy”), to science and technology, are given free rein to soar and develop when not held back by a tyrannical ruler. The “springs” of water here symbolize life and the transmission of knowledge, as does water imagery throughout the play. “Dædal wings” refers to the mechanical wings that Daedelus, a master craftsman, made for himself and for his son Icarus to escape imprisonment; the idea is that scientific and technological achievements break free from the repression of knowledge by despotism.

“CHORUS OF SPIRITS. And our singing shall build

In the void’s loose field

A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;

We will take our plan

From the new world of man,

And our work shall be called the Promethean.”

This lyrical ode celebrates the ultimate triumph of Prometheus in setting loose the power of knowledge, joined with love, to create a “new world of man,” a utopia. They use song to herald this new age, illustrating the power of the arts to both express and maintain the new paradigm.

“THE MOON. Music is in the sea and air,

Winged clouds soar here and there,

Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:

‘Tis love, all love!”

In this passage, Romantic natural imagery recasts the Moon, a formerly cold and airless celestial body, as newly lush and verdant, covered in “rain” clouds that lead to the blossoming of new life. The medium for this fantastical transformation is “love,” an omnipotent force that can transform the cosmos.