A Defence of Poetry(Shelley) Distinction between reason and imagination

P. B. Shelley, a great Romantic poet and critic, defends poetry by claiming that the poet creates human values and imagines the forms that shape the social and cultural order. Unlike Peacock, for Shelley, each poetic mind recreates its own private universe and poets, thus are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. For Shelley, Poetry is the vehicle to reach the ideal world or platonic world. He argues that all forms of arts and science depend upon nature but poetry improves nature and creates better than it. Here, his views share similarities with Aristotle, who said that a poet is not only an imitator but also a creator.

             Shelley divides the mental faculty into two parts: reason and imagination. Reason implies a kind of logical process that enables one to connect ideas together and determine their relationships to one another. It is a passive thing. Imagination, meanwhile, acts upon those thoughts. It enables creation; it is the source of our artistic desires.

          For Shelley, poetry generally tends to point to an expression of what is imagined. Man is dynamic and due to this, the internal and external forces of the environment are bound to affect him much like a lyre exposed to wind. Due to this interaction of forces we have a melody. However, reason exercises principles and so unlike the lyre we don’t merely have melody but also harmony. This means, man adjusts the vastness of his imagination to a rational and logical outcome. The wind striking a lyre and causing melody is a metaphor for the imagination of a poet while the harmony realized through accommodation of poetic inspiration within the limits of reason can be metaphorically realized by the illustration of a musician accommodating his voice to the sound of the instrument. Like the motions of a child at play, that takes delight in movement and continues repeating it, Poetry in itself is an expression of delight and pleasure. The catharsis experienced through expression is what poetry gives to the poet.

        The distinction between reason and imagination is akin to the distinction between quality and quantity. We acknowledge the significance of each, all the while holding one in higher regard compared to the other. Reason is a lesser faculty, but it is necessary and instrumental to imagination. Reason implies a mechanical knowledge of things. However, until the imagination allows us to recognize the importance of such facts, they hold no value. It is the soul to the mere vessel of the body. One is inextricably linked with the other.