The Revolt of Islam
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Revolt of Islam (1818) is a poem in twelve cantos composed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817. The poem was originally published under the title Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century by Charles and James Ollier in December, 1817. Shelley composed the work in the vicinity of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire, northwest of London, from April to September. The plot centres on two characters named Laon and Cythna who initiate a revolution against the despotic ruler of the fictional state of Argolis, modeled on the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Despite its title, the poem does not have anything to do with Islam in particular, though the general subject of religion is addressed. The work is a symbolic parable on liberation and revolutionary idealism following the disillusionment of the French Revolution.
Plot
In the first canto, the poet climbs a mountain from which he observes an eagle and a snake battle. The eagle prevails. A woman takes the poet and the wounded snake in a boat. The poet is placed for a time in the regions of eternal repose, where the good and great of mankind are represented as recounting, before the throne of the Spirit of Good, their earthly sufferings and labours. Among these are two, a man and a woman of the country of Argolis, who, after rescuing their country for a brief time from the tyranny of the house of Othman and accomplishing this great revolution by the force of persuasive eloquence and the sympathies of human love alone, without violence, bloodshed, or revenge, saw the fruit of all their toils blasted by foreign invasion, and the dethroned but not insulted tyrant replaced upon his seat. Finally, amidst all the darkness of their country's horizon, Laon and Cythna died, without fear, the death of heroic martyrdom, burned alive at the stake, gathering consolation, in the last pangs of their expiring nature, from the hope and the confidence that their faith and example might yet raise up successors to their labours, and that they had neither lived nor died in vain. In the persons of these martyrs, Shelley has striven to embody his ideas of the power and beauty of human affections, and, in their history, he has set forth a series of pictures, illustrating the efficacy of these affections in overcoming the evils of private and of public life.
As the poem opens, Laon and Cythna live in daydreams of delight. This tranquility is soon shattered. The troops of Othman, a tyrant, come and seize Cythna for Othman’s harem as food "To the hyena lust, who, among graves, Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony, raves." Laon reacts by killing three of the attackers. The remaining troops drag him away to await his punishment in a prison. Laon suffers from thirst and hunger, but seeks to find Cythna. A white sail is set on the bay below him, and he feels that the vessel is destined to bear Cythna from the shore. The thought of this meeting drives him to near madness. On the fourth day he is raging on the summit of his pillar, when there arrives an old man, a hermit, who has heard of the cause of his affliction, of his generous nature and lofty aspirations. The kind elderly man frees him from his chain and conveys him to a small bark below, while entirely insensible to what is passing around him. Laon learns later that the old man's eloquence has subdued his keepers, who have consented, at their own peril, to his escape. He is conveyed across the sea to a lonely island, where for seven years he is tended by this aged benefactor, whose kind and compassionate wisdom is sufficient to win back the mind of Laon to self-possession.
After Laon recovers, the old man tells him that during the years of his illness the cause of liberty slowly gained ground in the "Golden City", modelled on Constantinople, and that he himself would gladly assist in the Revolution which has now actually started there. The old man, however, considers himself too old and too subdued in his spirit and language to be an effective leader.
Laon accepts with eagerness the proposal of the old man and they depart in their bark for the revolutionised city. On their arrival they find the work apparently almost completed. An immense multitude of the people, men weary of political slavery and women sick of domestic abuse, are assembled in the fields outside the walls. Laon and his friend walk into the encampment and are received as friends. The host already acknowledged a leader and a presiding spirit in the person of a female, whom they reverence under the name of Laone. Laon and this heroine are attracted to each other by some unknown sympathy. The tones of her voice stir up all the depths of his spirit, but her countenance is veiled.
The palace of Othman is subsequently surrounded by the crowd, and entering it, Laon finds the tyrant sitting alone in his hall, deserted by all but one child, whose affection he has won by commendations and caresses.
The monarch is quietly removed from his palace with none following him but the child. On this consummation of their triumph, the multitude join in holding a high festival, of which Laone is the priestess.
Laon sits near her in her pyramid, but he is withheld, by a strange impulse, from speaking to her, and he retires to pass the night in repose at a distance from where she sleeps. At the break of day, Laone is awakened by sounds of tumults. The multitude, lately so firm and collected, are seen flying in every direction. He learns that the cause of their disarray is the arrival of a foreign army, sent by some of his brother princes to the relief of Othman. Laone, and a few of the more heroic spirits, withdraw to the side of a hill, where, ill-armed and outnumbered, they are slaughtered by their enemies. They take up their abode in a lonely retreat.
They remain for some time in this retreat, communicating to each other the long histories of their suffering. Cythna, according to her own wild tale, was carried away from Laon at the moment when he killed three of the captors that surrounded her, had been conveyed to the tyrant's palace, and had suffered all the insults, and almost all the injuries, to which its inmates were exposed. Her high spirit had, however, offended at last her oppressor, and she was sent to a Submarine cavern, or undersea cave, near the Symplegades, to which strange dungeon she was borne through the waves by a slave, "made dumb by poison, A Diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral sea."
In this dungeon, she was supplied with a daily pittance of food by an eagle, trained to hover over the only crevice through which the air had access to the captive. She sank into a melancholy frenzy and was aroused to consciousness by strange feelings which taught her to expect that she was about to be a mother. It is so, she gives birth, and for a while all the sorrows of her prison are soothed by the caresses of her child. But the child disappears suddenly and the bewildered mother half suspects that its existence has been but a dream of her madness. At last an earthquake changes the position of the cavern and Cythna is released by some passing mariners, who convey her to the city of Othman. The sailors are persuaded by her discourses during the voyage to take a part in the insurrection, which Cythna arrives in time to lead.
It is the custom of Laon to ride every night on the Tartar horse to procure food for Cythna. By this means their retreat is at last discovered, Laon is seized, led before the tyrant, and sentenced to be burned alive before his eyes, on the very scene of his treason. The guards, the priests, and the slaves, are gathered around the throne of Othman. Both Laon and Cythna are burned alive at the stake. "A Shape of light is sitting by his side, A child most beautiful. In the midst appears Laon, exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears." Finally, Laon and Cythna undergo a miraculous transformation. In the final scenes, their spiritual odyssey of transmogrification is recounted.
