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RomanticismColeridge, Wordsworth and Keats
The Romanticism was part of a period of profound social changes. The French and Industrial Revolutions gave the romantic poets a chance to see a huge transformation of the Occidental world from an agricultural society into an industrialized one. Many philosophers such as Locke, Franklin and Paine were focused on the individual rights, influencing a great deal of poets. The publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 178, written by Wordsworth and Coleridge is considered the official beginning of the Romanticism and that end around 180. The first generation of Romantic poets includes Blake, who anticipated the Romanticism, Wordsworth and Coleridge; the second generation includes Byron, Shelley and Keats.
This movement was responsible for a revolt against the rules of Classicism, it was also based on a rejection of the scientific ideals of the age, in general, according to Cevasco and Siqueira in Rumos da Literatura Inglesa, its poets use a simple language, they relate their feelings defending the free expression, although they are always individualists, they do not lose a social view. Besides, if they get disappointed, they look for a imaginary and supernatural world. This paper is going to focus on the similarities and differences of three Romantic poets Coleridge, Wordsworth and Keats.
Coleridge that helped to found this movement was more than a poet, he was a political radical that became one of the most important writers of England. As we are going to analyze in some of his poems, Coleridge gave privilege to the natural speech and the emotions, he saw the simplicity of the nature and the feelings in the middle of a chaotic and materialistic world. Moreover, his emphasis on imagination and on the exotic is also a great point to be discussed; his poetry is full of magic and mystery.
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Although Coleridge and Wordsworth were very close friends that wrote together the Lyrical Ballads, they have some differences, for instance, Coleridge as well as Wordsworth believed that the artificial style imposed by the Classicism should be rejected; however, he did not agree with Wordsworth's idea that the best language to be used was the language used by ordinary people in usual conversations.
Analyzing two of his most famous poems (Frost at Midnight and Kubla Khan), it is possible to notice some of these characteristics. In Frost at Midnight we can find a great use of the natural speech in which Coleridge discusses the fragility of children's innocence using the contact with nature and with the urban childhood. As most Romantic verse, this poem has a simple language, the lines are unrhymed and have as rhythm the iambic pentameter, this way he presents the relation children have with the natural world.
Frost at midnight
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlets cry
Came loud--and hark, again ! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musingssave that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village ! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O ! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor mans only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come !
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams !
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptors face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the strangers face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike !
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought !
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain cragsso shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
The presence of nature is evident since the title of this poem ("Sea, hill, and wood"), as Bostetter claims, uses the "nature imagery very deliberately as sign and symbol of abstract ideas" (P. 86). It is a windless night and the speaker is alone, he is just with a baby by his side ("a cradled infant", "dear babe, the spleptest cradled by my side"), like Wordsworth it is normal to find in Coleridge's poetry the image of children. At time same time he talks to the baby ("But thou, my babe !/ shalt wander like a breeze"), he celebrates the nature, affirming that all seasons are going to be sweet to his child ("all seasons shall be sweet to thee").
Therefore, the poem clearly shows a main characteristic of this poet showing the relation of children and nature. Nevertheless, different from Wordsworth, Coleridge contrasts the natural setting with the city, maybe because he grew up in London, he believes that he could not feel the extraordinary connection between childhood and nature, so, he indicates the fragility of the child's innocence. The religious connotation is another Romantic characteristic ("Of that eternal language, which thy God/ Utters, who from eternity doth teach").
Kubla Khan is another example of Coleridge's work. The first three stanzas make us realize how imaginative the poet was, he says that he wrote this poem after a fantastic vision he had when he was sleeping, it was probably an opium dream, once the poet was an opium addict. It is a musical poem written through the use of the iambic tetrameter with different rhyme schemes. It is a fantastic story full of magic and imagery that shows the poet's interest for bizarre tales, which may represent a certain influence by the gothic tradition. This is one more difference between him and Wordsworth that prefer rustic, simple places.
Kuba Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As eer beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the threshers flail
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean
And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
While in Frost at midnight he uses the silence, it is a very quiet poem, in Kubla Khan, he has a very excited state of mind, in this case the source of his poetry is the emotion find within the emotion. The use of unconscious and miraculous dream makes Coleridge the poet of imagination. According to Bostetter,"The immense, fantastic schemes he constantly and effortlessly projected are almost too numerous to mention" (P. 8) the use of supernatural world is thus evident, the poet wanted the freedom of the imaginative.
Nevertheless, Coleridge also uses the nature in this poem ("Down to a sunless sea", "It flung up momently the sacred river") which is also responsible for the supernatural atmosphere of the text. Further, the music is also present ("Her symphony and song") as we are going to see in Wordsworth's poetry.
Wordsworth, just as Coleridge, shows the idealization of nature, he grew up in a simple society and learned to appreciate nature, that is why it is easily found in his poetry scenes of rural life and poor people. As Bostetter says, Wordsworth has a "sense of the gravitational bond between man and nature. The interaction man and nature was to him not merely an intellectual and abstract concept but something seriously apprehended, physically experienced" (P. 14).
He also uses a simple language, denying the rules imposed by the Classicism, further, one frequent theme is the childhood, which he considered a very important period of life, however, as children get older they are influenced by the world experiences and lose their innocence. Usually his meter is regular providing a musical melody to his verse; he mainly emphasizes on the feeling and its simplicity, his normal natural scenery is sometimes connected to religious symbols.
According to him, in the preface of Lyrical Ballads, which was more his own project than Coleridge's, "the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over all time". Moreover, this preface shows that, in general, his poetry was based on actions of common life, he always tried to use the language used by men, considering poetry a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". Therefore, it is possible to say that while Coleridge was focused on the importance of the poet's imagination, Wordsworth preferred to focus on natural and everyday situations.
The Solitary Reaper is a famous poem wrote after the Lyrical Ballads. As describe above, Wordsworth used a simple situation in which he show a rustic girl singing in a natural scenerya field; the language is also simple, the meter is regular, he uses the iambic tetrameter following a rhyme scheme (ABABCCDD), which brings to his poetry a musical melody. This regular meter regulates the excessive emotions, and also elevates the simple language style, it makes the poem much more plausible.
The Solitary Reaper
BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands
A voice so thrilling neer was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago
Or is it some more humble lay
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whateer the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And oer the sickle bending;
I listend, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
As the child reaps ("Alone she cuts and binds the grain,"), she sings ("And sings a melancholy strain") the poet wants to discover what her song is about, he cannot understand it (Will no one tell me what she sings?), even so, he likes it, he sees beauty in it, thinks it is about "old, unhappy, far-off things", about "matter of today" that shows Wordsworth's focus on everyday activities. Again, like in Frost at midnight the aloneness theme is used. After the speaker passes the girl, the music continues with him. In fact, the poet was able to find what he calls "the human music" within the nature. Wordsworth also privileged the memory, the final two lines show the effect memories have over human thoughts.
Like Coleridge, according to Bostetter, Wordsworth sees in childhood something of the base "on which man's 'greatness stands'", further, he was concerned with "the interaction of mind and nature". (P. 1) To Cevasco and Siqueira, Wordsworth saw God in each element of nature, the celebration of it, would teach man moral lessons and bring his lost happiness back, as he says in the Preface of Lyrical Ballads, differently from Coleridge, the emotion in poetry should be "recollected in poetry", as said before Coleridge recollected it inside the emotion itself.
A second example of Wordsworth poetry is London, 180 on which he speaks with the dead poet John Milton, it is a sonnet written in iambic pentameter. The speaker is crying Milton's soul, the very beginning shows his cry "Milton!", he wants Milton to return to Earth saying that this poet was able to correct England (it shows a nationalist character). Unlike many Romantic sensualists, such as Keats, Wordsworth was worried about the morality, therefore this sonnet that present an angry tone, shows this side of the poet emphasizing on feelings and wanting a more social perspective to the Romantic poetry.
The use of London shows the historical context once this place was suffering huge changes due to the Industrial Revolution.
London, 180
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee she is a fen
Of stagnant waters altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on lifes common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Keats is part of the second generation of Romantic poets, as most of Romantic poets, he prefers emotion than reason, he focuses on imagination and is against the Classic rules. "Keats was to a degree influenced by the first-generation Romantics, particularly Wordsworth. He admired what he saw as Wordsworth's ability to incorporate the miseries of the world into a transcendent vision, but was often wary of what he called Wordsworth's 'egotistical sublime'. For Keats, the poet's function was not to impose a vision or interpretation upon the world, as he thought Wordsworth did, but rather to immerse and lose the self in what was perceived". Cevasco and Siqueira show that Keats' work is based on his happiness and on his love. Besides, he has elegant verses and is widely influenced by a sensual perspective, although some authors affirm that Coleridge had also sexual ambiguities, Keats is the most famous Romantic poet that uses them.
Keats also has some dream poems like Coleridge's Kubla Khan, furthermore, he also uses a common language, admiring the simplicity. Keats has great imaginative qualities, very little was enough for him to create poetry, in his source it is possible to find the emotion and imagination focusing on the beauty of natural world. However, unlike other Romantic poets, he uses widely implicit sexual allusions, the "mellow fruitfulness," "ripeness to the core" and "clammy cells" involve a sensorial atmosphere showing a certain sexual desire.
Wordsworth wrote some poetic theory, although Keats did not do that, he wrote informally the ideas that made his mind frenzied, the imagination and the poet's identity (the individual self) are some of them. In To Autumn Keats addresses directly the autumn, just like Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper, Keats, uses a rural scenery, more specifically a field, there he personalizes the autumn as a reaper. The nature is represented through concrete images, such as "To bend with apples the mossd cottage-trees", "And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core".Thus it is possible to notice a resemblance between Wordsworth and Keats since both of them use the image of a reaper girl working in the field, both are also connected with music ("Where are the songs of Spring? /Ay, where are they?/Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--). The seasons in this poem can be applied to the mind and life of man, as nature, life starts, decays and reaches the death, it is a full cycle like the natural seasons. By personalizing the autumn Keats expresses fully his imagination, jus as Coleridge did.
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the mossd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has oer-brimmd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reapd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Repeating Romantic characteristics, Keats' poem is written in blank verse, against the Classicism, it has various rhyme schemes, and uses regularly the iambic pentameter. The language used is quite simple as well as its theme.
Ode to Melancholy also appropriates these ideas. There is use off a concrete imagery where the poet shows that joy and pain are dialectic, it means that they are inseparable, to reach the joy is necessary to experience the melancholy. As well as To Autumn there are three stanzas with different kinds of rhymes, and using the iambic pentameter. While all Keats's odes are written in the first person, this ode is not; it is constructed with the imperative form, which gives the impression that the poet is showing his own experiences. Through the exploration of nature it is possible to realize Keats's implicit sexual connotations, he shows that pleasure and pain are linked.
"The literary critic Jack Stillinger describes the typical movement of the romantic ode The poet, unhappy with the real world, escapes or attempts to escape into the ideal. Disappointed in his mental flight, he returns to the real world. Usually he returns because human beings cannot live in the ideal or because he has not found what he was seeking. But the experience changes his understanding of his situation, of the world, etc.; his views/feelings at the end of the poem differ significantly from those he held at the beginning of the poem."
Ode on Melancholy
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrows mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veild Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joys grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
These three poets here discussed are examples of the importance Romanticism had to the literature. By the use of a popular poetic form, the Romantics were able to reach a great part of the population, although they differ in some aspects, they have clear similarities, for instance, they prefer the emotion instead of the reason, using the spontaneity and the nature. Moreover, the childhood is a usual theme, as well as the use of dialectic thought, once, as Blake said, "without contraries there is no progression".
Bibliography
BOSTETTER, Edward E. The Romantic ventriloquistsWordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 16.
CEVASCO, M. Elisa. e Siqueira, Valter L. Rumos da Literatura Inglesa. São Paulo, Ática, 188.
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Select poetry & prose. Ed. by Stephen Potter. London, Nonesuch Press.
GITTINGS, Robert. The Keats inheritance.London, Heinemann, 164.
WALSH, William. Introduction to Keats. London ; New YorkMethuen, 181.
WORDSWORTH, William. Lyrical Ballads. London, Methuen 16.
Sites
www.longman-yorknotes.com/media/pdf/johnkeats.pdf
http//academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/keats.html
http//www.nortexinfo.net/McDaniel/-10kaut.html
www.sparknotes.com
Bibliography
BOSTETTER, Edward E. The Romantic ventriloquistsWordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 16.
CEVASCO, M. Elisa. e Siqueira, Valter L. Rumos da Literatura Inglesa. São Paulo, Ática, 188.
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Select poetry & prose. Ed. by Stephen Potter. London, Nonesuch Press.
GITTINGS, Robert. The Keats inheritance.London, Heinemann, 164.
WALSH, William. Introduction to Keats. London ; New YorkMethuen, 181.
WORDSWORTH, William. Lyrical Ballads. London, Methuen 16.
Sites
www.longman-yorknotes.com/media/pdf/johnkeats.pdf
http//academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/keats.html
http//www.nortexinfo.net/McDaniel/-10kaut.html
www.sparknotes.com
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