Sounds of "Mont Blanc"

          In “Mont Blanc” Shelley refers to sound talking about his own mind, the poet and narrator seeming to act as one, as well as the scene around him. This focus on the auditory spans from the first stanza through to the “Silence” (144) of the final line. And with all of these instances, Shelley seems to draw out the main dichotomy of the piece, that of the mind’s vision of nature and nature itself, from the philosophical (his reference to Plato comes in lines 41-48) all the way to the sensory. His comparison of the two caves points to this exactly, with the outer one “echoing to the Arve’s commotion,/ A loud sound no other sound can tame;” (30-1) and his own mind, “the still cave of the witch Poesy,/ Seeking among the shadows that pass by/ Ghosts of all things that are” (44-6). The caves are not only inherently different, one of action and the other of death, but different because of their sounds, the former “A loud sound no other sound can tame,” and the former “still.” But one of the most interesting instances of sound is in section 2 where Shelley describes the trees near the river.

[...]—thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear—an old and solemn harmony; (19-24)

          Here, sound is both heard and made, yet none of this seems to be tainted by the human psyche. There is no human observer, only the wind “drinking [the tree’s] odours” (23) and coming “[t]o hear” the branches swinging. And yet nature does not revel in its own creation and adoration, but creates “an old and solemn harmony” (24). And yet nature as nature can have no sense of time for it is endless; the wind continues to fly without age. So here’s the downfall of Shelley’s nature, it is all in conversation with the human. The wind is personified with the ability to hear and taste, and thus is also left to understand these sensations in a human way. And in some ways it seems the wind understands this sensory blend as a man would understand his 20-year-old daily routine. And this reaction seems at odds with the grandeur and power in the rest of the poem. A point of dread in the midst of wonder.