ABSTRACT
In the third chapter of The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan says, “man’s desire is the desire of the Other.”1 Shelley’s poetics can be approached in these terms. The principal “Other” in Shelley’s field of view would be Power, a creative force that finds endless expression in the world and in the human mind. In A Defence of Poetry, he refers to Power or its operation, for example, as the poet’s apprehension of a “certain rhythm and order,” as the poetic faculty, as “eternal music” and as “that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man” (SPP 512, 515, 513). James Chandler raises the notion that the Power to which Shelley refers in A Defence amounts to the “spirit of the age,” a temporal constellation of creative energy and expression that determines at the same time it is determined by great poets, such as Milton and Dante.2 In lyrics Shelley devoted to the creative process, Power expresses itself through Mont Blanc and the River Arve, through the West Wind, through the skylark’s song, in the form of Intellectual Beauty and, most importantly, through the conceptions and then words of the poet. Shelley’s desire to be desired by Power establishes a fantasy formation within his writing that confers upon him the poet’s everlasting vision and insight. Coupling with Power during moments of inspiration confirms for Shelley that he possesses a secret treasure, in this case the authority of a poet, and at the core of his fantasy lies the desire to overcome the ephemeral nature of such moments, stretching them out into an endless line, so that he might become, in terms he articulates in the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” “immortal, and omnipotent” (SPP 39).
