Anarchy 62/Some libertarian aspects of English poetry

Some libertarian aspects of English poetry JEFF ROBINSON Probably the best known English poetic rebel is Lord Byron, romantic revolutionary, hater of conventional social mores and of whom it was said that he had three interests in life—poetry, adultery and insurrection. The depth of Byron's revolutionary ideas can be summed up from this extract from his “The Isles of Greece”.

    “—He served—but served Polycrates— 
    A tyrant; but our masters then 
    Were still, at least, our countrymen. 
    The tyrant of the Chersonese
    Was freedom's best and bravest friend; 
    That tyrant was Miltiades! 
    Oh, that the present hour would lend 
    Another despot of the kind! 
    Such chains as his were sure to bind.—” 

In other words Byron believed that home-grown tyrants like Polycrates, the fraticide and pirate, and the warmaker, Miltiades, are in some way preferable to the imported variety. Byron never said what the difference was to their victims. But just as the most celebrated poetic rebel never broke through the thought barriers and arrived at anarchism, so the declared anarchists among poets—John Henry Mackay, Oscar Wilde, Herbert Read — have never produced detailed expositions, in poetry, of their libertarian beliefs. For anarchism is a social theory, and any attempt to explain it

But if the actual philosophy of anarchism cannot be expressed through poetry, the form has three aspects of a decidedly libertarian nature; it can be an assertion of individuality, a vehicle for the disgust with and opposition to the society in which the poet finds himself; it can serve as a mirror of reality, not just the passing social scene but the whole backcloth against which human life is lived; and, lastly, the very act of writing poetry is libertarian because it is spontaneous. The act of poetic creation is one of the most anarchic things imaginable. Never self-consciously, usually at some quite unexpected moment, ideas and images, sometimes phrases and whole lines, well into the mind of the poet. All poetry worthy of the name is such a spontaneous product. It may be that the poet has deliberately sought a