Miall -- Shelley's "Mont Blanc"

Shelley's "Mont Blanc"

Letter to Peacock / "Mont Blanc"

Note. The first subtitle of the poem was "Scene -- Pont Pellisier in the vale of Servox." (Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, Eds., Shelley's Poetry and Prose. New York: Norton, 2002, p. 97).

The Cascade de l'Arpenaz

The first fell from the overhanging brow of a black precipice on an enormous rock, precisely resembling some colossal Egyptian deity. It struck the head of the visionary image, and gracefully dividing there, fell from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than water, imitating a veil of the most exquisite woof. It then united, concealing the lower part of the statue, and hiding itself in [146] a winding of its channel, burst into a deeper fall Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which, when the voices of the desert fail,
Wraps all in its own deep eternity; (25-9)

Approach to Servox

As we proceeded, our route still lay [149] through the valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains whose immensity staggers the imagination. Thus thou, ravine of Arve -- dark, deep ravine --
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams (12-15)

Ravine of the Arve

the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above -- all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest. The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark, now glittering, now reflecting gloom,
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, with a sound but half its own (1-6)

View of Mont Blanc near Servox

Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew -- I never imagined what mountains were before. The immensity of these aeriel summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the [150] sight, a sentiment of extatic wonder, not unallied to madness. Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? Or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy, and serene. (53-61)

Cf. Bourrit: "Mount Blanc especially produces a sensation which is very difficult to express. . . . the mind is almost lost in the sublimity of its own idea, and no tongue whatever is capable of describing, and conveying justly to others, the humiliating, elevated, awful feelings of the soul upon the sight of such an object." M. T. Bourrit, A Relation of a Journey to the Glaciers in the Dutchy of Savoy. Translated from the French by C. and F. Davy (Norwich: Richard Beatniffe, 1775), 7-8. (see Romanticism: The CD-ROM for text.)

Bosson Glacier

where the ice has once descended, the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some extraordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a foot each day . . . They drag with them from the regions whence they derive their origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense accumulations of sand and stones. the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost

Mont Blanc region

Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his reign Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy, and serene.
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone (61-7)

At the Mer de Glace

One could think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood for ever circulated through his stony veins. And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

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Document revised August 9th 2003

Approach to Servox
As we proceeded, our route still lay [149] through the valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains whose immensity staggers the imagination.	Thus thou, ravine of Arve -- dark, deep ravine -- Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale, Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams (12-15)

Ravine of the Arve
the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above -- all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest.	The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark, now glittering, now reflecting gloom, Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters, with a sound but half its own (1-6)

At the Mer de Glace
One could think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood for ever circulated through his stony veins.	And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy?