“What then art thou?”: Demogorgon, Son of God and Savior of the World in Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound

ABSTRACT

At the climactic fall of Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound, the deposed tyrant god asks his destroyer—the mysterious Demogorgon—“What then art thou?” This article seeks an answer to that question by uncovering the linguistic and theological contexts of Demogorgon. Specifically, I position Prometheus Unbound among historical arguments on Christology in the early nineteenth century, in which traditional arguments for the divinity of Christ were bolstered by Christian apologetic readings of classical myth. However, against these apologetic syncretists, novel reconsiderations of classical mythology and biblical hermeneutics in the period coincided with challenges to Christ’s divinity and Trinitarian theology. Amid the resulting Christological instability, Prometheus Unbound synchronizes Christian religious belief with pagan mythical figures, most notably recasting Demogorgon—the destroyer of gods—as Christ Himself. By rewriting the symbol of Christ, Shelley is free to reimagine Christian eschatology in terms that transvaluate the teachings of the English state church. This article sheds light on the religious implications of Prometheus Unbound’s enigmatic figure Demogorgon, and also contributes to critical conversations on Shelley and Christianity, and the development of Christian doctrine in the early nineteenth century.

Notes

1 For recent analyses of Shelley’s interactions with the Bible, see Fortier; and Balfour.

2 See Korshin, esp. chap. 6, and the role of typology played in understanding classical mythology in the period. See also Gentry and Wellum, esp. 101–08, for a full discussion of the function of typology in biblical hermeneutics.

3 “What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason” (Hooker 2.22).

4 As exemplary bookends from antiquity to the late Middle Ages, see Justin Martyr’s First Apology, and at the obverse end, Dante’s “Epistola X.” See also Roubekas, esp. chap. 6–7.

5 See Feldman and Richardson, Rise of Modern Mythology; see also Feldman and Richardson, Myth, for reprinted editions of many mythographical collections from the Romantic period, published in 50 volumes.

6 Feldman and Richardson note the impact Banier’s book had on Christian apologetic readings of mythology, and claim “Banier was probably the best known, most widely cited, and least controversial” in the period (Rise of Modern Mythology 86). It is unknown whether Shelley read Banier, though Godwin mentions reading him 4 April 1833.

7 See, for example, Banier 2: 282.

8 G. S. Weidemann connected Prometheus to all three—Adam, Abraham, and Moses (49).

9 Justin had recently re-emerged as a major figure in nineteenth-century apologetics following Priestley’s A History of the Corruptions of Christianity in 1782 (which posited the divinity of Christ originated in Justin’s writing). See, for example, “Part Eight, Section IV” in Simpson 480–90, which launches a thorough defense of Justin’s work, especially the First Apology.

10 Higher Critical readings of the life of Jesus would not have significant impact on English Christology until later in the nineteenth-century, but the search for a “Historical Jesus” had already begun in Germany nearly a century earlier. See Schweitzer.

11 “Downe in the bottome of the deepe Abysse, / Where Demogorgon in dull darknesse pent, / Farre from the view of Gods and heauens blis” (Spenser 4.52–54).

12 Amid the spirits beneath the earth, “by them stood / Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name / Of Demogorgon” (Milton 2.963–65). Callaghan argues Demogorgon is modeled on Milton’s representation of Death in Paradise Lost (487–88).

13 Cox suggests Thomas Carew’s Coelum Britannic may be in the background of Shelley’s Demogorgon: the character Momus—who opposes Jupiter’s messenger Mercury—declares himself “Momus-ap-Somnus-ap-Erebus-ap-Chaos-ap-Demogorgon-ap-Eternity” (143).

14 The original Latin does not render the final sentence nearly as clearly as Solomon’s modern translation: the Latin reads “Verum iste aliam ob causam terribili est, nam ille ob integritatem iustitie male agentibus in iudicio est terribilis, iste vero stolide existimantibus” (38). While Solomon’s translation clarifies Boccaccio’s more Christian intention, the ambiguity of the Latin allows for more confluence—and less difference—between Demogorgon and the Christian God. Given this ambiguity, it could be possible to read Demogorgon as the one “terrible” for his “judgment” and “his justice against those who are evil.” It is uncertain whether Shelley read Boccaccio in Latin or Italian, though either translation available to him would afford the same ambiguity. He tells Hunt in a letter on 27 September 1821 (the same letter that contained the “very heroic” poem “Peter Bell the Third”) that he is again reading Boccaccio, who “often expresses things lightly … which have serious meanings of a very beautiful kind” (qtd. in Goslee xxxv).

15 Taylor directs his argument against Thomas Gale’s discussion of Demogorgon in his reading of Thomas Farnby’s 1618 edition of Lucan. The error, then, is just as likely to be Farnby’s. See Solomon 44n64.

16 For this reason, in classical mythology, Zeus pawns Thetis off on the mortal Peleus: that the son of a simple farmer should supersede his father should pose no challenge to the king of the gods. On the contrary, Achilles gives the Olympians some good entertainment.

17 For example, Matthew Henry’s Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1710)—a commentary that has remained influential into the twenty-first century—begins the explication of Proverbs 8:12–21 with a standard reading, “Wisdom here is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; it is Christ in the word and Christ in the heart, not only Christ revealed to us, but Christ revealed in us” (1557, original emphasis).