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Updated: June 10, 2025
This habit, as we shall see in the sequel, determined Shelley's fate on two important occasions of his life. In return for the help extended to him at Eton, Shelley conferred undying fame on Dr. Lind; the characters of Zonaras in "Prince Athanase," and of the hermit in "Laon and Cythna," are portraits painted by the poet of his boyhood's friend.
Yet no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or the lovely fifth, without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had here tried the full strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth was by no means recognized when "Laon and Cythna" first appeared before the public.
That is to say, it was not a mindless triviality, but the genuine child's power of investing little things with imaginative interest; the same power, though differently devoted, which produced much of his poetry. Very possibly in the paper boat he saw the magic bark of Laon and Cythna, or That thinnest boat In which the mother of the months is borne By ebbing night into her western cave.
If "Alastor" had expressed one side of Shelley's nature, his devotion to Ideal Beauty, "Laon and Cythna" was in a far profounder sense representative of its author.
The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the self which he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitely feminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and of grappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp.
Laon and Cythna reissued as The Revolt of Islam. An epic of revolution and emancipation in the Spenserian Stanza. Rosalind and Helen, a modern Eclogue, and other Poems. The character of 'Lionel' is an evident idealisation of Shelley himself. The Cenci, a Tragedy. Has generally been regarded as the finest English tragedy of modern date. " Prometheus Unbound, a Lyrical Drama, and other Poems.
As in the case of other poems by Shelley especially those in which he attempted to tell a story, for which kind of art his genius was not well suited the central motive of "Laon and Cythna" is surrounded by so radiant a photosphere of imagery and eloquence that it is difficult to fix our gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess of splendour.
The indignation against the revolting subjugation of womanhood comes out still more distinctly in the preceding canto, where Cythna relates the horrors to which she was subjected. "One was she among the many there, the thralls Of the cold tyrant's cruel lust; and they Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls; But she was calm and sad, musing alway On loftiest enterprise, till on a day
The most notable illustration of this phase of Shelley's thought is The Revolt of Islam, wherein the poets, Laon and Cythna, are put to death by the priests, who regard them as their worst enemies. Burns, also, took a certain pleasure in unorthodoxy, and later poets have gloried in his attitude. Swinburne, in particular, praises his daring, in that he
But realism is required, and Shelley was constitutionally incapable of realism The personages of the story, Laon and the Hermit, the Tyrant and Cythna, are pale projections of Shelley himself; of Dr. Lind, an enlightened old gentleman with whom he made friends at Eton; of His Majesty's Government; and of Mary Wollstonecraft, his wife's illustrious mother.
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