Intermitted Song

Abstract

Chapter 4 turns to the intellectual and technical sophistication of his first major production, Alastor, for which the earlier chapters have been a preparation. In Alastor, Shelley first outlines and enacts his conception of what he terms therein ‘intermitted song’ — a type of poetry capable of articulating the idea of thought as substance, and the value of intermediate modes of being. In Alastor such intermediate states are to be celebrated as the most intense form of living; in pauses we are truly said to live.