Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

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Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

"Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem" by Percy Shelley (1815)

Published two years before Alastor, Queen Mab is a jubilant mirror argument to the later poem’s moody, emotional feel. Like Alastor, Queen Mab is an extended philosophical meditation of the power of the poet and the poet’s interaction with the imperfect world around him. Nothing here reins in the poet. Queen Mab moves into a dreamy un-real reality, played here for inspiration and grand affirmation. Queen Mab is a giddy fairy-tale like conjuring of a utopian world of sensual immediacy, aesthetic rightness, and perfect harmony; a dazzling world without selfish monarchs or the oppressive wealthy class; a tantalizing, defiant universe created entirely by the energy of the poet’s soul (or imagination) without Alastor’s caveat about the poet moving too far from any anchorage in the imperfect real.

"Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni" by Percy Shelley (1817)

Published two years after Alastor, Mont Blanc is a far more mature work, the work of a poet who has come to understand the thrill and rush of the natural world. Mont Blanc is a quiet meditation that recounts the stunning wonder when the poet first sees the magisterial sweep of Mont Blanc in the Swiss Alps. Read against the fantasy of Alastor, as the Poet dangerously abandons anchorage in the imperfect real to conjure a breathtaking world of his own, only to find that world ultimately betrays his naïve hopes, this poem represents a balanced engagement with the real-world and the reward of tapping into the sublime without coopting nature and reprocessing it as a poet’s creation. Mont Blanc, the thing itself unreconstructed by the poet, stuns the poet into a rushing irresistible feeling of both hushed awe and genuine terror. Nature, the poem argues, is sufficient; the highest, greatest poem is a transcription of that tectonic experience.

"Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth (1798)

Early on, Shelley was aware of the immense, iconic presence of William Wordsworth, who had led the bold and uncompromising revolution in British poetry a generation earlier. With the brash arrogance of youth and Shelley’s own compelling anti-authoritarian mindset, Shelley regarded Wordsworth’s groundbreaking verse as a necessary first step but too timid to realize that generation’s ambitious vision of returning poetry to the world, celebrating the power of the emotions, and elevating the poet to the status of priest. Tintern Abbey can be read as Alastor’s quiet forebear. In the poem, the poet returns to his childhood home after some years away and finds himself engaged in the powerful dynamic of nature and his memory of his innocent and irresistible communion with its sights and sounds as a boy. Against the opulent heaviness of Alastor, with its celebration of the poet’s power to engage nature only as a first step toward the exploration of the soul, for Wordsworth the open-eyed, full-hearted engagement with nature is the exploration of the soul.

Further Literary Resources

Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Himself by Ann Wroe (2008)

A nontraditional sort of biography—it is non-chronological—this study uses the major works of Shelley, including Alastor, to build a comprehensive definition of his perception of the visionary role of the poet, a perception that emerged through his own experiences in college and in Italy, his relationships with the other Romantics, and his tempestuous love affairs. The study places Alastor within Shelley at his most visionary and hence at his most difficult. Alastor thus reflects Shelley’s own corrective to himself not to drift too far into the realm of the ideal.

Selected Poetry and Prose of Percy Shelley edited by Jack Donovan (2017)

More than 700 pages of Shelley’s work, this definitive collection is particularly helpful because of its Introduction. The Introduction places Alastor as an apprentice work that does not play to wide audience. It is a poet’s poem, a work that exhibits Shelley’s gothic and morbid persona that celebrates, rather than cautions against, the too-liberal indulgence of the creative spirit. The text of the poem itself provides many helpful annotations to clarify Shelley’s diction, his poetic devices, and his allusions to a wide range of literature from Antiquity, as well as positioning the poem within Shelley’s own evolution.

“Poetic Quests and Questioning in Shelley’s Alastor” by Neil Fraistat (1984)

One of the few comprehensive readings of Shelley’s allegory of the poet and still regarded as indispensable, this article uses the three stages of the poem—the discontented Poet wandering the earth for meaning; the tempestuous sea crossing; and the exploration of the wondrous cave—to show how Shelley, still a poet learning the powers of the calling, sees in the quest itself a series of knotted and related questions. The article uses the tension between the narrator and the Poet to suggest that the Poet comes to see the quest as an end, directed toward certainties and reliable truths, whereas the narrator, who perhaps reflects Shelley himself, sees the quest as a way to interact with the world, to engage its wonders and its sorrows, rather than understand it through the vehicle of the expansive imagination.

Listen to Poem

"Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude" LibriVox Library, Free Recordings of Works in the Public Domain.

There are only two complete recordings of Alastor. This version, available as well on YouTube, is just under 50 minutes. Without devolving into cheap theatrics, the recording captures the languid feel of the Poet’s early gloomy ruminations, the intensity of the Poet’s near-death experience in the sea, and then the hushed wonder of the Poet’s initial awe over the world he discovers in the cove. Parts of the poem are available in other forums, particularly the sweeping opening two stanzas in which the narrator proclaims his own intimacy with nature and celebrates the poet’s creative interaction with nature.