Romanticism is not essentially an idea but an historic centre of
gravity which falls in between 1790-1830;Northrop Frye feels and so
also the readers.Whereas,Lovejoy sees romanticism as a general term
for a range of related ideas: poetic,philosophic and social.His
refuters would lay more stress on the characteristic images which
haunt for the romantic imagination.But the central distinctive
feature of the romantic mode is the search for the reconciliation
between inner vision and outer experience expressed through a creative
power greater than his own,because it includes his own or the
synthetic imagination which performs this reconciliation and the
vision it produces of a life drawing upon a sense of continuity
between man and nature ;of course in the presence of the Almighty God
too.But what comm denominator links Burns,Blake,Coleridge,Wordsworth,
Scott, Lander, Byron,Shelly,Keats and such lesser poets as
Southey,John Clare,Crabbe together? To search for it ,a reader has
to go into the fullest statement of the romantic creed;Biographia
Literaria (1817), Keats’Letters,Wordsworth’s Preface to the second
edition of the Lyrical Ballads and Shelly’s De-fence of Poetry along
with Hazlitt’s lectures on English poetry.it will certainly reach at
a denominator that is new and intense faith on Imagination.
The many related symptoms are familiar:the turning from reason to the
senses,feeling,imagination and intuition, from the civilized modern
and sophisticated to the primitive medieval and natural,from urban
society to the rural solitude,from preoccupation with human nature to
preoccupation with the aesthetic and spiritual values of external
nature,from mundane actuality to visions of the mysterious,the ideal
and the infinite,from satire to myth,from the expression of accepted
moral truth to the discovery of beauty that is truth, from realistic
recognition of things as they to the faith in progress,from belief in
God and evil to the belief in man and goodness,from established
religious and philosophical creed to individual speculations and
revelation from normal, generic abstractions to the variety of
concrete particulars from impersonal objectivity to subjective
vision,from public to private themes,from formal correctness to
individual expressiveness,from the ideal of order to the ideal of
intensity,from poetry to prose statements leading to image and
symbol,from poetic diction to common language,from self conscious
traditionalism to self conscious originality,from the rational
sobriety of Latin literature to Romantic Hellenism.
However,romanticism is an intellectual orientation
characterizing many works of literature,
painting,music,architecture,criticism Western civilization.It is a
rejection of the precepts of order,calm,harmony,balance,idealization
and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 19th
century Neoclassicism in particular.
This intellectual movement gained strength in reaction to the
Industrial Revolution and partly too as a revolt against aristocratic
social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment.It was a
reaction against scientific rationalization of nature as
well.However,this movement validated STRONG EMOTION as an authentic
source of aesthetic experience emphasizing intuition,imagination and
feeling caring not a little for the brand—they were accused of-as
irrationals.
Anyway while Industrial Revolution was inaugurating the romantic
movement in England the poets then estranged themselves from the
society and its abominable profile and wanted to listen to an old
Treton blowing conchs or Proteus rising and wanted to become a Pagan
to suck the mammal i from the Nature.Trying to sympathize themselves
the romanticists first found the reactionary suppression in
liberty.However,on such a ground, temperature,and atmosphere; the
germination of romanticism took place.Wordsworth and Coleridge stood
affront to hold the scepter of this culture.They were the Newtons of
this scientific pursuit and the Gandhi's to execute any such hypothesis
in the practical life of writing poetry.
In his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” the manifesto of English
romanticism-you may call it the prospectus- Wordsworth brands his
poems as experimental ones but later it is considered the central work
of Romantic literary theory.He sees the elements of a new type of
poetry there being based on the real language of men avoiding the
poetic diction of the 18th century poetry.He also gives his famous
definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings,it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
Oh! yes Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge become friends and
form partnership that would change both poets’ lives and alter the
course of English poetry.They,together,break the decorum of the
Neoclassical verse.
In Lyrical Ballads (1798), which opens with Coleridge’s “The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner” and closes with Wordsworth’s “Tintern
Abbey”-the poems are dramatic in form designed to reveal the character
of the speaker have a new a style too,new vocabulary and new subject
as well.He turns not only nostalgic but also introspective
gradually.The Recluse,The Prelude and The Excursion are hued with the
romantic colour.
Wordsworth sings ,here,of “ Five years, five old summer
parted”beside a Tintern Abbey or on a very paradoxical poem” Upon the
Westminister Bridge” to abnegate the sophisticated society;its
corruption and hypocrisy.He wants to live in the bosom of Nature and
loves “a single solitary highland lass” whose mournful songs of a
distant war tunes in him and echoes in him recurrently too;he loves
the baffling daffodils against the silhouette of the verdure sky and
sings on the long drapery of grasses.Most often he is found—like a
child-he loves to live under the brotherhood of nature,under the
fatherhood of God,under the motherhood of imagination and under the
sisterhood of love.He discloses then the memories which make him a
poet in The Prelude through the growth of a poet.
Wordsworth is the gardener who not only planted the seed of
romanticism in English literature-leave apart the conditions and
situation there around-and manured to develop it along with a co
gardener Coleridge.He paved the path for others to realize its
essence.However,in this;there is the juxtaposition of deep social
consciousness and philosophical idea,inter fusion of revolutionary
spirit and struggle against this desire;and a blending of idealism and
realism.All these ingredients are all the time found in the hands of
romanticism and Wordsworth as like as the balls rotating in between
the two hands of a juggler—nowhere constant and nowhere
temporary.Wordsworth was interested in sociopolitical question for
every enigma and a solution beside it.Taking up a topical issue he
transcended it to impart it a universal meaning.It may be the problem
of technology or industrialization or the bookish knowledge of human
being.He sings:
Sweet is the love which Nature brings
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things
We murder to dissect.(Poetical Works)
Alas! Such a great poet whose blood is a gift of romanticism and in
whose vein this blood flows sighs and says:
The sea that bares her bosom to the moon
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers
For this,for everything,we are out of tune
It moves us not.(Poetical Works)
Lastly,not elongate the essay more let us recollect the lines of
John Wilson;one early critic of Wordsworth:” To you,Sir< mankind are
indebted for a species of poetry,which will continue to afford
pleasure while respect is paid to virtuous feelings and while
sensibility continues to pour forth tars of rapture.The flimsy
ornaments of language,used to conceal for a short time captivate the
ignorant and unwary but true taste will discover the imposture…the
real feelings of human nature expressed in simple and forcible
language,will,on the contrary,please those only who are capable of
entertaining them…The poetry;therefore,which is the language of
Nature ,is certain of immortality.
And you-revered Wordsworth- will be/must be immortal for all the
eras to come.Romanticism is an ingredient in all the poetry down from
that time.It has split over to painting ,philosophy,politics and many
other aspects of our lives and angles of thought.Who else will think
English romanticism and Wordsworth are not connect or complimentary
to each other rather English romanticism is Wordsworthian
Romanticism.Oh! yes,but for Wordsworth romanticism would not have been
what it is now or in future.
Golaka behari Acharya;Lect.in Eng.KAM Rekutia,Kushaleswar, Keonjhar.
Odisha 758025 Ph.No 099381751
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