Mutability

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

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Related Poems

Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1813)

Queen Mab is one of Shelley’s longer poems, and like “Mutability,” it functions as a work of cultural criticism. The title refers to a fairy in William Shakespeare’s tragic romance Romeo and Juliet (1597), and the poem features the voice of the fairy, a spirit, and an unidentified speaker. The poem explicitly adds to the melancholy situation of “Mutability” when Queen Mab calls the human condition a “melancholy tale” (Book 2, Line 117). Part of what makes humans forlorn is mutability and the “earthquakes of the human race.” As in “Mutability,” humans lack power, and the poem uses a simile to compare their precarious state to nature: “Man’s brief and frail authority / Is powerless as the wind / That passes idly by” (Book 3, Lines 220-23). Shelley also delves into purity and corruption and sees commerce as a poisonous factor. To try and ward off mutability, people stockpile wealth and goods. As “Mutability” argues, there is no overcoming mutability, so all greedy people are doing is causing more misery.

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

“Ozymandias” is one of Shelley’s more famous lyrics, and it, too, stresses the theme of mutability and change. In keeping with the abstract and misty Romantic tradition, the unidentified speaker meets an unidentified “traveler from an antique land” (Line 1) who tells a story about a sculpture. As the traveler delves into the details of the sculpture—there’s a “wrinkled lip” and “sneer of cold command” (Line 5)—the poem uses imagery. The poem also features a fair amount of alliteration. As it turns out, the traveler is talking about a ruined monument to “Ozymandias, King of Kings” (Line 10), and its “decay” (Line 12) highlights the power of mutability. Not a king, not even a “King of Kings” (Line 10) can stop mutability. In the end, mutability wrecked Ozymandias and his memory. His land is now “boundless and bare” (Line 13) so, as with “Mutability” and Queen Mab, “Ozymandias” presents volatile human nature in a melancholy tone.

“under the chiming bell” by Jenny Zhang (2021)

Jenny Zhang is a 21st-century Chinese American poet, and her poem arguably shows how mutability functions from the perspective of someone a part of a historically marginalized group. Shelley’s privileged upbringing makes it possible to argue that he sought mutability because he ostensibly had the option to leave a secure, stable life. Zhang’s speaker, on the other hand, has to change and “move as ghosts do” (Line 2) because they were “born wrong” (Line 36) or not into the dominant group. As with Shelley, Zhang sees commerce as producing an excess of mutability and misery. A person adopts a flexible identity and becomes “in love with nothing and no one” (Line 7) to serve as a “kind of armor” (Line 8) against “capitalism,” which is then no longer “contagious” (Line 9). Whether through capitalism, personal identity, or another variable, Zhang’s poem shows how mutability can manifest in the 21st century.

Further Literary Resources

“The Negative Capability Letter” by John Keats (1817)

John Keats is a famous English Romantic poet who lived around Shelley’s time. Like Shelley, Keats died young—he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. Like many writers, Keats wrote plenty of letters, which people collected and published. One of his most famous letters comes from 1817. The letter addresses his brothers. He details a conversation with two friends, and the impromptu discussion leads to his idea of Negative Capability. As Keats explains, “I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Shelley’s mutability and Keats’s Negative Capability complement each other. They reinforce the Romantic preoccupation with elusiveness and opacity. The best way to live in the world is to do so negatively, which becomes a positive because it’s pointless to try and hold onto something forever—mutability or Negative Capability will inevitably snatch it away.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

Mary Shelley’s gothic novel focuses on Victor Frankenstein, a chemist who creates a living creature out of dead body parts. Frankenstein’s experiment highlights the unpredictability of the world. The creature turns into a monster (albeit not an entirely unsympathetic monster) beyond Frankenstein’s control. Mary Shelley places her story in conversation with Shelley’s poem because she includes the final two stanzas of “Mutability” in the narrative. More so, in the context of the poem, the novel shows what happens when people try to play God or usurp Mutability and produce unnatural transformations. As Frankenstein learns, Mutability always wins.

“A Defence of Poetry” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)

Originally written in 1821 as a response to a friend’s essay on poetry, Shelley’s famous essay wasn’t published until 1840. Shelley makes many bold declarations in the now famous essay. He calls poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the universe” due to their ability to articulate the “indestructible order of life.” Paired with “Mutability,” the order that poets express and legislate is mutability. Somewhat paradoxically, poets see the order in the disorderliness of human life. Poetry is “the root and the blossom of all other systems of thoughts,” so a genuine poet changes with their environment and highlights the organizing principle of life: Mutability.