To what Extent are Romantic Attitudes towards Poetry and the Role of the Poet Evident in the work of Blake, Shelly or Keats?
A disscussive essay on Blake's role as a Romantic poet and adherence to Romantic ideology.
Romanticism, almost by definition, is difficult to clearly define. As Eric Partridge argues, ?We know what poetry is for all practical purposes, yet few are so full hardy as to attempt a rigid definition of it: the same applies to romanticism ?. We can, however more broadly define the movement?s ideology, if it may accurately be called such. A pantheistic adoration of nature, a desire to break free from the conscripts of traditional literary form, passionate support for revolutionary causes, and possibly most importantly a focus on the imagination as a unique creative force and exultation of individual emotional experience are all prominent features of Romantic literature. As with any movement, it shows a progression of intellectual ideas and corresponding literary works. William Blake, whose work I will seek to discuss is certainly one of the earliest Romantics and is widely regarded as the first poet to fully express the Romantic idea of how poetry should be composed. Along with Wordsworth and Coleridge, he was to greatly define the Romantic values and style. Where Byron, Shelly and Keats would follow with distinction, Blake helped to lead. In many senses he can be seen as the pioneering member of the movement, casting from the poetic ship all that may weigh it down; stifling the incalculably valuable imagination.
Perhaps Blake?s most enduring work is his Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Defying the conventional stylistic form and traditions of highbrow poetry, Blake writes poetry of such a radically different nature that contemporary critics questioned whether it should even be regarded as such. Yet, this has become, since Blake?s death this collection of poems has been regarded as one of the greatest pieces of Romantic literature. The dramatic opposites of first dismissal, then deference are surely intriguing for the critic. Are literary attitudes so vastly different in this age than in the Eighteenth century? Many critics have placed Blake in the role of a visionary; a master of his art whose sole blunder was to be born into a social and intellectual landscape which was unprepared for his genius and consequently robbed him of the acclaim he deserved. Other critics, most notably Matthew Arnold, have viewed the simplicity of such Romantic poetry not as a deliberate, deceptively simplistic style, but as the result of a marked lack of ideas within the movement. This is ironic, given the emphasis Romantics placed on creativity and the imagination.
We must always remember that Blake primarily viewed himself as an artist and engraver and it is of immense testimony to his myriad abilities that he is regarded as one of the best engravers Britain has ever produced. For Blake, the interdependence of his pictorial illustrations and the written verse was so intense he regarded them as inseparable. It is unlikely he would have approved of modern versions of his text which omit the poetry?s artistic accompaniment. As such, he holds a unique position in English Literature, regardless even of the nature of his poetry. A study of the plates reveals the same Romantic ideas pervade even his art. Pastoral scenes of beauty and serenity such as that of The Lamb and The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Innocence contrast with gloomy, mystical and foreboding images of The Tyger, London and The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Experience. Blake also wrote some philosophical and intellectually challenging prose, which aids our understanding of his poetry.
This gloominess when the Romantic ideal appears distant and unachievable is an absorbing facet of Romantic poetry. For such radical, visionary individuals, the Romantics display an astonishingly great level of despair; brutal realism which at times verges on negativity. This is clearly evident in Blake?s work. His despair at the simplistic acceptance of hardship by the oppressed classes manifests itself on numerous occasions in Songs of Innocence. The abused chimney sweeper believes his utopian dream of a blissful future and it is this which helps to shackle him, convincing him to ?be a good boy?. These ?mind-forged manacles? afflict the adult populace too, as Blake demonstrates in ?London? they exhibit ?marks of weakness, marks of woe?. It could be argued that such a wholly honest, yet frequently depressing tone is necessary to expose the present, in order to proceed to a prophetic, Romantically ideal future. Therefore, it is actually positive in these circumstances, for the Romantic poet to be negative. The fulfils the Romantic idea of opposing traditional poetic form which generally approached objects of conventional beauty in the classical style, calling upon elaborate linguistic orations which Wordsworth described in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads as ?gaudiness and inane phraseology?. To the Romantic mind, such poetic structures were wholly unnecessary and served only to move poetry further from the common man.
Much more important, indeed central to the Romantic ideal was the value of individual, emotional experience; Wordsworth?s ?egotistical sublime?, as Keats rather uniquely described it. In this regard, the role of the poet is vital. In order to write with fervour about the sublime, the poet must first experience it personally. Keats vividly demonstrated how far this empathy could be taken when in a letter he stated that ?if a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel?. It was radical contemplations such as this that define for us, in so much as we can, the very essence of Romanticism and just how vividly we can see it to be a new dawn in English Literature.
Whilst Blake may not have dealt with ?the sublime? to the same extent as Wordsworth, he dwells frequently on individuals and especially the forgotten and despised members of society. I do not believe, however, that this alone is an essentially Romantic trait; for instance the First World War poets focussed almost exclusively on individuals who are outside the traditional poetic fold, yet they would not be considered Romantics.
Although Blake does not focus greatly on the sublime, he chooses rather to concentrate on the spiritual. These may at cursory glance appear very similar, but they are actually quite distinct. The sublime has been described by Edmund Burke as ?delightful horror? and for the Romantics this often emanated from the awesome power and beauty of the natural world. The spiritual contains much greater emphasis on the supernatural, as distinct to phenomena which can be rationally explained. Blake was probably the most deeply spiritual of all the Romantics. He most would most likely be described as New Ager or an Occultist if he were alive today. His work, both prose and poetry contains innumerable Biblical references, yet he rejects Biblical teaching, as almost all of the Romantics did, declaring that ?All deities reside in the human breast ?. In The Tyger, which some critics have seen as an overt reference to Satan, he speaks with unadulterated adoration for the tiger, whilst questioning the motives of its creator. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he drops the metaphoric veil and declares that the inspiration for books comes from Hell . Yet, in a paradoxical way, as the title suggests, Heaven and Hell have a reversal in roles which gives the work an abstract nature. This radical contradiction of accepted truth in his day again sets him at odds with his contemporary, traditional poets and marks out the Romantic nature of Blake?s ideas. For someone of such radical spiritual beliefs and possessing so vehement hatred of The Church, it is ironic that perhaps one of his most commonly known poems today is Jerusalem, which has evolved into a hymn, sung largely conservative patriots, in church.
When dealing with the subject of nature, Blake is again less prolific in his writing about the subject than Wordsworth, Shelly, Keats and many of the later Romantic writers. He does, however spend some time exploring nature in his poems, particularly in the Poetical Sketches, focussing on the four seasons in a more traditional approach, and in some of the pastoral settings of Songs of Innocence and more challenging aspects of nature such as The Tyger in Songs of Experience. He does not dwell on nature in the same manner as the later Romantics and it appears that spirituality has a much greater attraction for him than nature, although conversely he sees a pantheistic deity in humanity.
Blake was all his life a radical and rejected the conservative politics he saw around him. This sometimes manifests itself in blunt statements of a left wing, revolutionary nature and led to certain paranoia for his safety, perhaps stemming back to the infamous incident with John Schofield of the Dragoon Guards. We see these political overtones in London where he speaks of the ?soldier?s sigh? of disillusionment and battle weariness which merely ?runs in blood down palace walls?. This reveals Blake?s strongly held anti-monarchical view that the King is safe, whatever the plight of his people - the stops at the palace walls; the King choosing to live in denial of his subjects? suffering. The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Experience reinforces this feeling, presenting ?God and his Priest and King?, as what unites to create a paradoxical ?heaven? of the downtrodden?s misery.
William Blake, as the first Romantic poet evidently displays Romantic ideas in his work which were to define the movement?s lasting hallmarks. Yet, as an evolving genre, he is perhaps constantly defining for himself what Romanticism should be characterised by, something we struggle with even today. Inevitably, his work is deeply personal and as such it is possible to see instances where he left or at least placed less emphasis on aspects of Romanticism which other poets found important to the movement, such as nature and the sublime. Nevertheless Blake is undoubtedly a giant of Romantic literature whose work has been immensely influential both in the intellectual and social fields over the last two centuries.
Bibliography
James, D.G 1961, Matthew Arnold and the Decline of English Romanticism, Oxford University Press, London
Partridge, Eric 1924, Eighteenth Century English Romantic Poetry, Books For Libraries Press, New York
Bunney, Sebastian 2002, The Timelessness of Romantic Poetry [On-line]
http://www.literatureclassics.com/essays/430/index.asp
7 Nov 2002
Drabble, Margaret (ed) 1985, The Oxford Companion to English Literature 5th edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Eaves, Morris, Essick, Robert N., and Viscomi, Joseph 1996, Illuminated Books: electronic edition [On-line]
http://www.blakearchive.org.uk/cgi-bin/nph-dweb/blake/Illuminated-Book/@Generic__CollectionView;cv=java
5 Nov 2002
