The Triumph of Life by Percy Bysshe Shelley

First published: 1824, in Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

Type of poem: Lyric

The Poem

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Triumph of Life is a long fragment of 547 lines (ending abruptly in the middle of line 548) written in terza rima, an interlocking three-line stanza form employed by Dante and Petrarch. The poem’s title is taken from Petrarch, who wrote a series of Triumphs, or Trionfi (1470), each one presenting the triumph of an allegorical figure. For example, Petrarch’s Triumphus Amoris celebrates the triumph of love. In Shelley’s poem, Life is the triumphant figure, but its “triumph” is far from positive.

The poem begins with a description of the sun rising and nature awakening. The recumbent speaker of the poem, whose “thoughts must remain untold,” is turned away from the dawn. As the sun rises behind him, the poet falls into a trance and “a Vision [is] rolled” on his passive brain. In his “waking dream,” he finds himself sitting “beside a public way” and watching multitudes of confused people going past like gnats or fallen leaves. A chariot appears bearing a deformed “Shape”; the chariot is driven by a four-faced charioteer who has all of his eyes banded. The “Shape” presides over a triumphal pageant which has enslaved everyone except “the sacred few.” This free group is not specified, although Socrates and Jesus (“they of Athens and Jerusalem”) are said to be in it.

Dismayed by the sight of the frenetic and helpless captives following the chariot, the poet wonders aloud about the Shape and the pageant. His questions are answered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), a deformed figure who has holes for eyes. As Vergil guides Dante through the Inferno, Rousseau, whose works inspired many of the Romantics, interprets for the poet Life’s hellish triumph. It is Life, Rousseau explains, who leads the procession; among his prisoners are bishops, warriors, kings, philosophers, Napoleon, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Immanuel Kant, Catherine the Great, and Leopold II. According to Rousseau, even Plato was conquered by Life through his love for a young man, and Aristotle fell because of his association with Alexander the Great. The poet asks Rousseau to explain where Rousseau came from, where he is going, and how and why his journey began. Although Rousseau cannot answer all these questions, he tells his own story in the hope that both he and the poet will learn from his experience.

Rousseau’s narrative begins with Rousseau asleep in a cavern under a mountain. Through this cavern runs a rivulet whose waters (like those of the river Lethe) induce forgetfulness, so Rousseau has no memory of his life before awakening. As the day progresses, Rousseau rises and sees “A shape all light”—the reflection of the sun in the water of a well. This female shape bears a crystal glass full of the drug nepenthe and her passage through nature suggests “silver music.” The shape is associated with nature and represents natural beauty, but her feet blot out the thoughts of those who gaze upon them, an action that seems oppressive rather than inspirational.

Rousseau asks this shape essentially the same questions the poet had asked him: “Shew when I came, and where I am, and why.” Instead of answering him, the shape offers him a drink from her cup of nepenthe, and Rousseau’s “brain [becomes] as sand.” After his lips touch the cup, Rousseau’s vision of the “shape all light” is abruptly replaced by the bright, glaring vision of the deformed shape of Life and his triumph. The “shape all light” fades into a dim, glimmering presence. Much of the remainder of the poem is devoted to Rousseau’s description of Life’s pageant, in which the dancers are phantoms and “dim forms.” The fragment ends with the poet’s question, “Then, what is Life?,” and Rousseau’s incomplete response to that question.

Forms and Devices

Much of the ambiguity of The Triumph of Life stems from the fact that it is a fragment. Some critics suggest that it would have ended positively if Shelley had lived, or that it would have been followed (in the Petrarchan manner) by another poem in which Life would be triumphed over (perhaps by Love). Other students of the poem have argued that the conclusion would have confirmed its pessimism, or that Shelley would have been unwilling or unable to finish the poem. Shelley’s untimely death by drowning make all such theories speculative—readers of the poem can never know what changes Shelley may have intended. The fact that Shelley left the poem in manuscript, with many revisions (and drawings of sailboats), has also created problems for editors of the poem, who must interpret lines which are often close to scribbles.

The structure of The Triumph of Life is repetitive: The poet’s visionary experience is basically repeated in Rousseau’s narrative. At the beginning of the poem the poet faces the starlit night, which is soon obscured by the sun. The next vision that comes is the “cold glare” of Life’s triumph which, in turn, overcomes the sunlight. Similarly, Rousseau awakes in the shadows of a cave, but soon the “gentle trace/ Of light” is obscured by the “Sun’s image radiantly intense.” As was the sunlight of the poet’s narrative, the “shape all light” of Rousseau’s story is soon erased by the harsh light of Life. Moreover, in both sections of the poem key questions are asked: The poet wants to know where Rousseau came from, where he is going, and why and how his journey began. Rousseau queries the shape all light in the same manner: “Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why.” Rather than progressing toward an answer, the poem seems to repeat itself, and the reader is left to wonder if any resolution would have been possible, even if Shelley had lived to “complete” the work. Characteristically, the poem ends with the poet asking yet another question, to which Rousseau only begins to respond: “Then, what is Life?”

The allegorical nature of The Triumph of Life adds to its complexity. The shape all light in particular has been interpreted in a variety of ways. Her associations with nature and beauty suggest her potential to inspire, but her effect on Rousseau is to turn his brain into half-erased sand and introduce the glaring vision of Life. Is she, then, a muse or a sinister seductress? In contrast, the allegorical figure of Life is much less ambiguous, although the fact that the poet must ask about Life at the end of the fragment suggests that this abstract personification is not easily defined. Life’s deformity and the deforming effect of his cold light are, however, clearly negative, and Life’s charioteer, who is four-faced but blinded, guides the car badly. Moreover, the insane dance of the followers of Life’s chariot, which recalls the mad festivities of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Walpurgisnacht, is shown to be compulsive, tragic, and humiliating. Thus the allegory presented in the fragment, in which Life is a deforming force which destroys as it disfigures, portrays the human will as weak and ultimately helpless, for only the “sacred few” can escape Life’s complete domination.

In order to emphasize human frailty, Shelley uses historical figures, including men who wielded considerable power in their lives. Napoleon, who was once so powerful that his “grasp had left the giant world so weak,” follows Life’s chariot tamely, his “hands crost on his chain.” Even “The Wise,/ The great, the unforgotten” have been subdued, for “their might/ Could not repress the mutiny within.” Life’s power dominates everyone, The Triumph of Life suggests, except for Socrates and Jesus (“they of Athens and Jerusalem”), who escaped Life through execution. The poem uses allegory and historical personages in order to suggest that only superhuman or transcendent beings can resist Life.