The Maternal Landscape

Abstract

An infant, a savage, and a solitary beast is selfish, because its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate intimation o f the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling itself. Selfishness thus is the offspring of ignorance and mistake; it is the portion of un—reflecting infancy, and savage solitude. Shelley, ‘Speculations on Metaphysics and Morals’

Shelley‘s prose fragment ’On Love’ provides a good opening into his poetry. Written in late July of 1818, it sums up a conception of love that he held until that time.¹ He seems to have written it directly after he translated Plato’s Symposium, and it may have been intended as part of a speech by another participant at Plato’s banquet who was responding to Plato’s ideas on the nature of love.² Here, Love is seen as the search for the mortal who will correspond to the inner ideal, and the essay illuminates Shelley’s poetry of the earlier years in significant ways. It was written just before the terrible chain of events that began with Shelley’s manoeuvrings in August to return Allegra from Byron to her mother Claire Clairmont. These events in late 1818 and 1819 deeply affected Shelley, and marked a change in the direction of his poetry as well.