Alastor and Laon and Cythna, written in 1815 and 1817 respectively, reveal Shelley's self-conscious attempt to fashion a portrait of the poet's mind as it develops. In a letter to William Godwin, Shelley writes: ‘If any man would determine sincerely and cautiously at every period of his life to publish books which should contain the real state of his feelings and opinions, I am willing to suppose that this portraiture of his mind would be worth many metaphysical disquisitions’ (Letters: PBS I. p. 242). In Alastor and Laon and Cythna, Shelley puts his observation into practice by translating ‘the real state of his feelings and opinions’ into poetry that draws strongly on his personal experiences without resorting to crude confession. The germ of Alastor is contained in Shelley's letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, where he speculates on ‘the perverted energies of the human mind’ (Letters: PBS I. p. 429) that lead people to reject the world in favour of fantasy. The ambivalence of Shelley's appraisal of such a choice foreshadows his artistic efforts in his poem, and this chapter views Shelley's choice to replace the missionary of the letter with a poet as a means to explore the contours of his own mind. Such exploration forms the ground of Laon and Cythna. Shelley's ambitious poem conceptualises the ideal relationship between man and woman, bringing together his previous experiences with male and female relationships, including his epistolary relationship with Elizabeth Hitchener. His letter to Mary Godwin of 28 October 1814, in its despair at their separation, desperately delineates his yearning for their reunion, prefiguring how Laon and Cythna explores the painful separation between his protagonists and their eventual reunion. Laon and Cythna become idealised lovers based on the blueprint of Mary and Shelley's intense connection. Alastor and Laon and Cythna are, as Judith Chernaik argues, ‘idealized self-portraits’ that grow out the selves fashioned in Shelley's letters.

Alastor forms an artistic testimony to the importance of enshrining preoccupations in poetry, and the above quoted letter to William Godwin offers a vital insight into his artistic practice in the poem (Letters: PBS I. p. 242). Alastor's self-divided nature, whereby the preface and the poem seem to depart fundamentally from one another, gains poetic strength from Shelley's sense of ‘the real state of his feelings and opinions’ as the bedrock of his writing.