Percy Shelley and the Arab Spring

A recent essay at Big Think looks at the political might of a poem, showing how radical Romantic Percy Shelley's "The Masque of Anarchy" might have inspired—through a series of other texts that include Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You, and Ghandi's recitations—current political change. Recalling Shelley's famous line “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” and Auden's comeback “‘The unacknowledged legislators of the world’ describes the secret police, not the poets,” the piece attempts to give Shelley his due credit. (Incidentally, Shelley was also much inspired by his wife's father: William Godwin's tract, Political Justice, 1793, was revered by Romantic poets.)

"Masque" was written in response to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, and urged the "Men of England" to stand up against tyranny. An excerpt:

Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,

And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armed steeds
Pass a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.

A protest poem, to be sure. The piece continues in generous strokes:

The rest is history—and the present. From Gandhi’s work followed Indian independence, the American civil rights movement, Lech Walesa’s Solidarity...and in our own time, the predominantly peaceful protests that have toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Not a bad legacy for a poem that even some English professors wouldn’t know offhand.

Now, I’m not suggesting that all historical events stem directly from poetry, or that we should start scouring anthologies for potential solutions to world crises. (Actually, many well-known poets have been notorious political wingnuts—Ezra Pound creeps to mind.) I would argue, though, that Shelley's "Masque" is far from an isolated case. Literature is often seen as a quaint academic pursuit, or a noble but remote spiritual undertaking, or a single specialty "genre" among many. Think of it instead as an underground cultural wellspring that bubbles up everywhere, from Hollywood (quick, name five great movies that aren’t adapted from books or plays) to political oratory, from our everyday turns of phrase to the extraordinary events of Tahrir Square.

And speaking of: An upcoming festival in London will consider the Arab Spring, the protest poetry surrounding it, and what the movements mean for literary life in Arab countries.