Percy Shelley

The concept of love in Shelley is a redeemer of the negative aspects of self, as surely as Christ represents the redeemer of men's souls in Christianity. It is also a communion, or a commingling, of I and Other in a selfless, sympathetic, mutuality. When Shelley is writing on love, he is writing on a concept that absolutely denies egocentrism. Only the selfless identity can love, a martyr who claims to be love-devoted and not self-devoted. Love represents the total mingling of the self and the other, an absolute communion wherein the two lovers basically become the same energy like the components of an electro-magnetic force. We see this in Shelley's lyric, Love's Philosophy. Within the poem we see that there is a complete fusion of the physical, emotional, spiritual and natural:

The fountains mingle with the river,

This type of complete fusion of the energies of the two lovers is not meant to represent passionate love, for Shelley believed there was selfishness in sexual desire. However, it does suggest that nature be the guide for the type of commingling Shelley's love of other aspires to. It is an idealized, genuine fusion, a loving mutuality in which the two lovers completely selflessly become one energy force like those i

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