Both
“Mont Blanc” and “To a Skylark” are poems that emphasize the inability of
humans to define the world around them.
Both poems fail to resolve their central mysteries. The narrator in “To the Skylark” attempts to
understand how a bird can feel inexhaustible joy, while the narrator “Mont
Blanc” attempts to separate nature from mind’s conception of it. Both poems end in the narrators acquiescing
to nature’s enigma.
The
narrator of “To a Skylark” exalts the bird as a “blithe Spirit!” (1) – a creature who knows no sadness. However, the narrator struggles to directly
define the winged creature, instead relying on diverse comparisons. He notes the bird’s similarity to such disparate
phenomena as “a cloud of fire” (8) and “a star of Heaven” (18). He finally admits of the bird, “What thou art we know not” (31).
The narrator directly inquires to the bird, “What is most like thee?” (32), suggesting that the bird is wiser than he
in this respect.
The narrator questions whether the skylark is
similar to humans (a “Poet” (36) 0r “maiden” (41) specifically), other animals (a
glow-worm (46)) and even plants (a “rose” (51)). The bird has so many diverse characteristics
it is difficult to coalesce into one creation. Shelley not only identifies the limitations of
humans, but also those of poetry itself.
Being unable to
define the skylark, the narrator questions how the bird maintained its
happiness, which seems to trump the efforts of humans to celebrate happiness
(examples being the “Chorus Hymeneal, / Or triumphal chant” (66-67)) in
sheer joyous power. The narrator
searches for logic in the bird’s capacity for seemingly unlimited delight,
comparing the bird to humans whose happiness must always be tempered by
“saddest thought” (90). This is similar
to the father in “Anecdote for Fathers” and his attempts to extract logic from
his son’s childish musings. The
undertaking in “To a Skylark” ultimately proves futile, for the narrator cannot
relate to the animal just as parent cannot relate to child.
In
“Mont Blanc,” the narrator demonstrates how his view of nature is entirely a construction
of his mind. Therefore, nature itself is
indeterminate. The narrator emphasizes
this through the narrator’s own description of Mont Blanc, which he imbibes
with all his senses. The narrator states, “I seem as in a trance sublime and
strange / To muse on my own separate fantasy, / My own, my human mind” (35 - 37),
directly articulating that his vision of nature is an individual conception and
the world as he knows it would not exist if it were not for his mind. This even includes religion, for “The secret
Strength of things / Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome / Of
Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!” (139-141).
“Mont Blanc” is a poem that accentuates how nature (like the intentions
of the Skylark) is unknowable, because we as individuals are responsible for
creating it.
As a possible solution to the
question of why he cannot find the same happiness as the skylark, the narrator
of “To the Skylark” looks to
the bird itself for guidance. He says to
the bird, “Teach me half the gladness / That thy brain
must know” (101-102). By evoking this
impossible exchange of knowledge between a bird and a human, Shelley
demonstrates how true understanding is unattainable. The curse of the poet, and of humanity, is
living with unresolved mysteries. We do
not know the inner-mechanisms of the mind of a small child or of a skylark,
just as we do not know what exists after death. A poet's courage is revealed when he or she is willing to contemplate these issues.
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