Hymn to Intellectual Beauty - Questions/Analysis

 

 

 

 

 

 

07 Feb. 2005

 

Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”

Response topics:

 

 

1. What is the relationship between the Intellectual Beauty and the speaker?

 

           Intellectual Beauty is a perfect beauty that the speaker knows it can be felt in the spiritual world, yet he frets himself to death that the perfect beauty can’t be kept in this various mutable world all the time. The speaker thinks Intellectual Beauty is an aught that it gives him its grace and truth of universal immortality, yet it suddenly departs from him to feel fear in a dark reality. Intellectual Beauty can’t be seen like summer winds, but it gives a powerful strength to the speaker in mystery ways. Intellectual Beauty is the ruler of the idealistic world beyond the earthly world to the speaker.

 

 

2. What is the Intellectual Beauty-that is, what role does it serve? Put another way, what does it do or will it do for the speaker?

 

 

           Intellectual Beauty is ‘Elysium’ like blessed paradise beyond the everyday earthly world. And it serves natural harmony to all human kind. Whenever the speaker faces in dark realities such as hate, hurt, and despondency, Intellectual Beauty gives him calm, solemn and serene mind through opens his heart to the spiritual beauty.

 

 

3. In what way is the Intellectual Beauty Platonic?

 

           In his words, “This world from its dark slavery” infers that in this world is nothing but slavery of the rules and no one can be free from the ruler. In contrast, Intellectual Beauty is the spiritual beauty that leads mankind to be free from their dark realities into the idealistic world. He said, in this earthly world, “remain the records of their vain endeavour,” and fall into the dark world with “as inconstant wing,” but Intellectual Beauty, in his words, “gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream,” to the speaker. Intellectual Beauty is purely spiritual as Platonic.

 

 

4. How is the speaker’s quest for the Intellectual Beauty different from what Plato describes about one becoming enlightened? Does Shelley’s poem offer a different model for enlightenment? Explain.

 

 

           Plato’s description for becoming enlightened is that “Men should ascend to the upper world, but they should also return to the lower.”  It means Plato tried to achieve the idealistic world in the earthly world. In contrast, Shelley’s poem, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” expressed that the enlightenment is that “Thus let thy power, which like the truth… Its calm – to one who worships thee,… to fear himself, and love all human kind,” the speaker wants to live with free spirit with experimenting in earthly world yet tries to communicate with Intellectual Beauty so that he can sense the ideal world to serene him.

 

 

5. How would Plato’s idea about the prison house apply to the speaker in Shelley’s Poem?

 

 

“The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato’s idea about the prison house gives the idea that prisoners only see the shadow as the real, so they never have a chance to see the real world. As the same structure of Shelley’s poem, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” illustrates to the speaker that “The awful shadow of some unseen Power” adapts from Plato’s shadow of the prison. Intellectual Beauty is behind the shadow that the speaker can’t see the spiritual beauty behind the earthly world.