“And he bought / With his voice and his gentle eyes, say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay from Wild Men, / His Rest and Food. - Percy Shelley's AlastorIn Shelley's Alastor, the poet is first introduced as a "young man" relying on his "sweet" words for sustenance. In an effort to satisfy his appetite for the "deep mysteries" of nature, the poet travels across a vast wilderness and wholeheartedly indulges in the many beautiful scenes that nature has to offer. The Poet also partakes of his “bloodless nourishment,” revealing a vegetarian diet that adds to his harmonious relationship with Nature (129). Guided by a healthy appetite for Nature's most intimate secrets, the Poet is able to nourish himself adequately. However, this once normal feeling of hunger becomes permanently disrupted after a fascinating dream awakens in him an insatiable hunger for the impossible - a supernatural ideal. This dangerous corruption of hunger is what renders the poet's aesthetic abilities useless and results in his final, passive abandonment as an artist. Throughout Alastor, the poet's hunger acts deceptively to drain his energy, manipulating his lifelong journey toward the desperate pursuit of the intellectual. beauty until the final abandonment to death. The first misdeeds of the poet's hunger are visible immediately after the perception of the visionary girl: after his fleeting but euphoric contact with the supernatural, the poet cannot find an adequate substitute to match the joy experienced in the world of dreams. Longing for “sweet human love,” the poet impatiently contemplates suicide in order to achieve union with this ideal: “Does the dark door of death lead to your mysterious paradise, O sleep? (211-213). After a few more passages detailing his sullen existence, the Poet then flirts with death a second time, shouting: “Vision and Love! I saw the path of your departure. Sleep and death will not divide us for long! (366-368). The constant state of misery felt due to endless dissatisfaction with the material world accelerates the poet's acceptance of death as a favorable consequence - this reveals hunger as a seriously disturbed impulse in the poet. Hunger, in the biological sense of the term, is a fundamental survival mechanism. In this regard, hunger is an exciting force: it signals the body to seek out the food source essential for the organism's survival. Yet the poet's natural feeling of hunger changes for the worse: the poet's hunger becomes extremely defective, leading him not to a period of eating that induces satiety, but rather to an endless cycle of dissatisfaction. This hunger, now dysfunctional, does not benefit him as it should. Instead of acting as a force awakening survival, hunger in the Poet of Alastor acts as a malignant and degenerative force - his hungry gaze causes him to consider death as a viable solution for, "He searched the lair for the dearest of Nature, a bank, her cradle, and her sepulcher (429-430). Hunger has transformed into a completely treacherous force. that the poet becomes dissatisfied with the once beloved images of nature; hunger squanders his artistic potential, once again acting to the poet's detriment, willing to abandon everything in his unrealistic quest for ideal beauty, the poet actually sacrifices his. vital element: the ability to perceive and appreciate the aesthetics of nature After witnessing the flight of a swan, the poet.reflects: “And what am I to linger here, / With a voice far sweeter than your dying notes, / A mind larger than yours, a frame more in harmony / To beauty, wasting these surpassings. powers / In the dull air, towards the blind earth and the sky / This does not echo my thoughts? (286-290). The poet laments his existence in the earthly realm, which does not reflect the irresistible visions of his dreams. Doomed to be dissatisfied throughout his life with the physical beauty presented to him, the poet cannot help but feel dysfunctional as an artist. While Shelley once describes at the beginning of the poem how "the springs of the divine philosophy of nature did not escape from his thirsty lips", the poet, after the significant reversal of hunger, cannot seem to be satisfied with the same source of subsistence (71). Whereas once “every sight and every sound of the vast earth and surrounding air sent to his heart its choicest impulses,” now nothing in the natural world can suffice (68–70). When he comes across a bed of flowers, he feels a sudden desire to “adorn his withered hair with their bright hues” (413-414). But once again, under the intense scrutiny of a newfound appetite, "in his heart his solitude returned, and he abstained from it", what was once satisfying is now unworthy, and he resists the aesthetic value of “yellow flowers” ​​(414). -415). How can the artist (who once loved nature so much) refuse the sunny richness embodied by Shelley's yellow flowers? The youthful, vibrant energy of the yellow flowers provides a striking counterpoint to the poet's withered state: the color is that of joy, stimulating an individual's creative energies. All rationality and artistic dynamism are lost when possessed by deranged hunger. The fact that the poet is able to renounce and “abstain” from the simple beauty presented to him testifies to the iron grip that hunger has over his desires (414). All previous joyful experiences fail: the poet's natural taste for aesthetic cues, once touched by dreams, becomes hopelessly disturbed. Instead of inspiring the poet to assimilate the wealth of beautiful images found in his natural surroundings, the thirst for a beauty corresponding to the ethereal forms of his dreams compels him to reject the more familiar beauties placed before him. Without his art to pursue and appreciate, the poet no longer finds his diet sustainable. With his life's primary source of aesthetic joy ruined, the poet sinks deeper into solitude, allowing hunger to effectively divert his being toward passivity and make him relinquish control. during his life. By earlier recognizing death as the only solution to his longing for beauty, the poet could easily have ended his miserable and aimless wandering. But the Poet, "obedient to the light that shone in his soul," is convinced, or rather deceived, by his malevolent hunger to continue his fatal pursuit until he is sufficiently weakened (493-494). Just as a parasite must keep its host alive to survive, the poet's hunger cannot kill it immediately either. Hunger feeds on the Poet, “like restless serpents, dressed / In rainbow and fire, these parasites” (438-439). The poet is attracted by light; here, hunger pretends to be the positive and shining “light” of one’s soul, when it is quite the opposite. "At night passion came", and hunger is also described as "Like the fierce demon of a disturbed dream, which shook him from his rest and led him/Into darkness", bestowing on the forces an almost satanic quality. of hunger present in the Poet (224-227). Additionally, the specific choice of the word “conduit” highlights that/30210143>