I have to agree with what Amy had posted about the struggle of Romantic poets to create a place for themselves, somewhere between the natural world and logical transcendence, where these two ideas could be one in the same. The conflict reflected in Romantic poetry derives from the painful realization that man-made logic defies nature, and that the two cannot be reconciled. Percy Shelley's Mont Blanc spoke to this idea, but due to its later arrival in the Romantic forum, I feel the idea is more refined, the appeal to nature more sincere, and the sentiments deeper reaching. As we said in class, the poet is confused about whether he is projecting perceptions onto Mont Blanc, or if the mountain itself has the power to project impressions upon him. We addressed a "larger power," a sort of universal mind which acts in the lives of man, yet is inaccessible. This "everlasting universe of things/ flows through the mind" is the same entity, the same place from "where secret springs/ The source of human thought its tribute brings" (1-4). I would argue that nature itself is this "source" or "power," we of course cannot exist without nature, but Shelley speaks of our perception, our imagination not being able to exist without nature to reflect our perceptions back to us.
Yet, there is that inevitable conflict, the human inability to sincerely feel the gravity of or to be Mont Blanc--a disconnect, "Power dwells apart in its tranquility/Remote, serene, and inaccessible," and "The limits of the dead and living world/Never to be reclaimed" (96-97, 113-114). Our imaginations have grown past the harmonious connect of man and nature, Shelley is looking in on this from the outside, he knows that we cannot go back. I like to think about how this very same landscape would have inspired Shelley and his wife Mary, how they would have discussed such ideas, and how this all was reflected in their writings. The scenery is fantastic, breath-taking, overwhelming, yet it makes one feel alone, left behind. As we will later read Frankenstein, I would like to carry my thread about the setting of the story and this poem, how the imposing mountain faces alienated the writers' imaginations, and how man, in an effort to reconcile this severance from his source, continues to make horrible mistakes.