Percy Shelley and Bad Jubies

Percy Shelley took it upon himself to defend poetry. Yet it was not poetry in the most literal sense that he was defending, but language, and by extension, art in all its various forms. A Defense of Poetry comes across at first as mystical gobbledygook. It is just the sort of thing one might expect from a romantic poet; but when we discard the flowery, transcendental attempt at describing the euphoric episodes of the poet and we dig into the substance of Shelley's argument, we will find that the distinction he is attempting to make is not between poetry and other forms of art, but rather between art and entertainment; substance and appearance; revelation and mere distraction.

It is true that art can and indeed must be in some way entertaining; but entertainment does not necessarily need to be art. No artist will tell you that they do it for the money, even if they do manage to scratch out a living at it. Artists perform in spite of themselves. Art is not only something they create, it is something that happens through them, and they are never more fulfilled than when they are in the throes of the impulse to create.

Secondary to the question of what is art and what is not, however, is the purpose which art serves to the greater good of humanity. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” Shelley remarks. What can he mean by this?

He means that artists are the ones who define the psychological makeup of the coming age. Long after their bodies have passed into oblivion, their work may live on to inspire future generations, for good or ill; and they cannot themselves know what fruit their work will bear, nor should they necessarily be concerned about it. They can only do what their nature impels them to do, and allow the world to receive their ministrations as it will.

Of course, the utility of the artist to society is hardly apparent to the casual onlooker. While their fellows are working the fields and building the cities; while their aching bodies and dirty hands toil, it may seem to them that the artist is only daydreaming away valuable time, making up nonsense, and sponging off of his or her contemporaries.

I have read A Defense Of Poetry numerous times. Each time I begin reading, I feel the same cynical disdain, the same tendency to scoff at this notion of the importance of art to the betterment of society. Even being an artist myself (and a poet at that!), I feel a twinge of irritation at Shelley's proclamations about poetry being the record of the thoughts of the happiest and brightest souls. I know damn well that Shelley was neither the happiest nor the brightest in his own time, though I respect his work a great deal and have been heavily influenced by the record he left; but I am inclined to agree more with Hermann Hesse's description of the creative process: as something draining, almost a form of compulsory self-torture.

Shelley did not mean, however, that the poet's mind was ever in this perfectly exalted state. He understood that the mind itself, and all that we consider thought, is a transitory physical experience; that the poet is not always a poet, but a mere human being; but that there are times when the transitory physical experience happens to be ignited with some indefinable element, a latent inspiration, a divine spark, and that some individuals are, for whatever reason, predisposed to have this experience more than others, even if they happen to be by every other convention of their age the most insouciant vagabonds, as has been known to occur.

He means to point out that these people deserve space to work this craft for which they alone among their peers are fitted, and that a society that fails to consider and accommodate this will be the poorer for it in every respect.

Yet even as the finest art filters down through to the very dregs of social consciousness, strains of its original glory make its way into the cheapest and most common forms of entertainment; and so here in this essay do I intend to show that the spirit of Percy Shelley's Defense yet still thrives in the cultural consciousness, by comparing it to and finding it within a modern day work of the most vulgar sort: a children's cartoon.

I had taken it upon myself to compile the preceding poetic work with Shelley's Defense in mind; but this time, instead of reading through his essay at a white heat in a single sitting I made myself slow down and digest it, paragraph by paragraph, in daily fifteen minute meditations, insofar as my busy, workaday life allowed me.

As I was drawing to the end of this tedious exercise, I was still having trouble shaking my cynicism and frustration at what I felt was Shelley's overly romantic view of the poet, the poet's life and the effect that the poet has on society. It's such a thankless job, I kept thinking, and how can we be sure that when we see what we believe to be the benign influence of bygone artists on the culture of our day that we aren't just confusing causation with correlation?

Then, in the form of a casual Sunday morning with my two youngest children, who at this time were four and six years old, I was given an epiphany, like manna from Heaven, in the form of an episode of Adventure Time With Finn And Jake entitled “Bad Jubies”.

The episode is unique in the Adventure Time cannon, as it is the only episode of the show which is done in the style of stop-motion animation with clay. My understanding is that it took a year to make. This fact alone can help to disavow us of the notion that artists are just daydreamers with no work ethic. The episode went on to win an Emmy and other awards.

The four primary characters in the episode are Finn, the human adventurer, Jake, a shape-shifting dog, BMO, a robot who looks like a walking Nintendo Gameboy, and LSP, which is short for Lumpy Space Princess. Her character is a talking purple cloud. The episode begins with LSP and Finn talking about how some people just have bad jubies, an energy that throws others off.

BMO wanders into the conversation, and her screen lights up to warn that a deadly storm is on its way. Finn galvanizes everyone to build a bunker where they can hide from the storm, and sets everyone a task. Except for Jake, who has wandered away up a hill and is looking off into the distance.

Finn goes to Jake and asks how he would like to help. Jake replies that he just needs some time, he's working on something. Throughout the episode, as the other three characters work their tails off to get the bunker ready, Jake is off in the distance, meditating and watching nature. LSP is furious and accosts Jake as he stands at the edge of a cliff watching the setting sun. Again, Jake says he's working on something, and isn't this a beautiful sunset? LSP gives up on him, and, in anger, turns back to the task of preparing for the oncoming storm.

The storm hits and Jake enters the bunker last. Finn asks him what he was working on and Jake says it's a surprise. Finn is disappointed in his best friend, seeing that Jake has produced nothing of value to their adverse situation.

While in the bunker the inhabitants get bored and start arguing. Jake remarks that he thinks the storm is more than a storm. He thinks it is bringing a lot of negative energy with it. Jake finally brings out his notebooks and reveals what he was working on. He starts to sing the sounds of nature, making a little song out of bird chatter. The others are enthralled, no longer arguing or upset.

At one point the strong winds break through the boarded up doorway, and the storm bursts in. It's a personified storm, a big, dark cloud with a face. It mutters something to the effect of only feeling good when it tears others down. Jake reiterates his previous point about the storm having an attitude. Finn says that it does indeed seem to have bad jubies and the only thing to fight bad jubies is good jubies. Jake starts to sing his song, and the storm shouts him down. Jake exhorts the others to join in. Finn protests at first, saying they can't make sounds like Jake. Jake tells them to stop being self-conscious and just do it. Hearing them all singing together gives the storm pause.

The storm stops the singers and asks Jake to sing the bird part alone. “I haven't heard that since I was a little breeze,” says the storm. It had forgotten what it was like to stop and listen to the world, to be a part of nature rather than a storm raging through it. Jake offers the storm his notebook, with the sheet music for his little song, and the storm takes it with gratitude, and departs peacefully to reflect on its new perspective.

Shelley: “The story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

Truth be told, life is a story of particular facts, an obstacle course of difficult choices and unavoidable consequences. We human beings don't have the supernatural agency of an elastic dog in a fantasy world, like Jake in Adventure Time. We by no means have a firm grasp of all the facts anyway. Barely a glimmer, really; but why shouldn't we achieve some sort of serendipity with respect to what we do know?

Yet there is a need to look at the plight of the ones who do the work to prepare and protect us from the worst of life's unavoidable consequences. There is a time to dream by the light of the setting sun, but only when we have worked through the day to ensure our survival. Our continued ability to hear the birds sing, to be a little breeze, or a raging storm, as we will, depends on it.

I have always hoped in writing my own thoughts to reflect the whole variety of human experience, to distill the spirit of my age into a timeless vessel fit to nourish the ages. I cannot know if I accomplished this. It is not for the artist to decide. Much like with my children. I can relay my knowledge to them, but how they interpret and act on my fatherly advice or the greater message to which their culture exposes them is ultimately their fading sunset, elegant birdsong or raging storm to discover. At least I should hope by then to be long gone, as no parent wants to outlive a child, and I want my children to live long and happy lives.

So it is for those idle moments, after the shelters are built and the food is stored, that the words and deeds of artists can be manna for the souls of those who must press themselves to the rigors of a new day on the morrow. Perhaps we will give them something to think about, or some tune to cherish, or some faint glimmer of hope that serendipity will, after all of their hard work, grace them with the bedazzling enlightenment of a new perspective.

***** * *****

Afterword:

This is an excerpt from my book This Tree: Poetry, As Defended by Shelley which can be found on Kindle and most other major outlets.