As I mentioned in part one of this blog, it would be
impossible to separate poetry from Romanticism.
It is as indelible to the genre as the genre itself is to literature as
a whole. Now, yes, this is a blog about
books and poetry doesn’t necessarily count as a form of “novel,” however, I’m
willing to blur the lines a bit if you are.
I also understand that poetry isn’t for everyone (something that my
students remind me of every time I teach poetry in class), but hear me out
for a second to at least listen to why it is so awesome.
The
main facet of Romantic poetry that I find enticing is its direct union with
nature. To put it simply, all the best
Romantic poets moved to the Lake District (which is essentially the Yosemite of
England) and walked around all day until inspiration struck them through a
flower or a storm or a tree or what have you and they composed some brilliant
piece and then they repeated the process until they died or committed suicide. One major component of Romanticism was the autonomy
of the Poet. Nothing was more powerful
than the imagination of an artist except for the sheer power of nature and the
sublime. As Friedrich Schlegel says in
his Philosophical Fragments, “[Poetry]
alone is infinite, just as it alone is free; and it recognizes as its first
commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself. The romantic kind of poetry is the one on
that is more than a kind, that is, as it were, poetry itself: for in a certain
sense all poetry is or should be romantic.”
So here are a few of my favorite Romantic poets, the most powerful
people who ever lived (or so they thought):
Songs
of Innocence and Experience, by William Blake
The great thing
about William Blake is that he was literally crazy. He was known to go into his backyard naked
with his wife in order to have visions (aka: hallucinations) to fuel his next
artistic expression. The other great
thing about Blake was that he was not only a poet, but he was also an
artist! His paintings were singularly
unique because of his medium. What he
would do was take his poetry and write it down backwards so that he could
inscribe it onto a copper plate and formulate it in a varnish and soak it in an
acid bath. Following that, he would use
water color to complete the process. In
this way, no two of his poems were the same and each was as wild as it was a revelation. I put one of his most famous paintings here, “The
Ancient of Days,” for your viewing pleasure.
Feel free to google more if you’re curious. Blake’s most famous collection of poetry is
actually two collections of poetry which are each a direct response to the
other. It is called Songs of Innocence and Experience, respectively. In these poems, Blake toys with the themes of
childlike innocence and hope juxtaposed against the despair and cynicism of a
jaded adulthood. In this, his poetic
voice shines as he forces you to question which side of this slightly schizophrenic
argument is correct. Both disturbing and
hopeful, these poems will show you the darkness that is in the tunnel of
existence, but also point towards the light that shines in the dark.
The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge
had a very sad life that had constant tragedy throughout, which provided us
with one of the most famous poems ever written.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
is an elegiac tale that explores the evil and darkness that exist within all of
us. The basic plot is simple: the
mariner is on a ship with his shipmates and an albatross appears, an omen of
good luck and prosperity, to guide them through a particularly dangerous part
of the ocean. Following this, the
mariner kills the albatross for, ostensibly, no reason whatsoever. What follows is an exploration of good and
evil, life and death, and the humanity that is caught in between those
celestial battles. Told with beautiful
imagery and immaculate form, this poem is a must read for anyone who has ever
wondered why evil exists in the world and, more disturbingly, why it exists in
ourselves.
The
Complete Poems, John Keats
John
Keats was a doctor out of necessity, but a poet out of passion. Interestingly enough, out of all the most
famous Romantic poets, Keats was born later, but died first at the young age of
twenty-five. In the short time that he
lived, he gave us some of the best poetry of the age. To Keats, the poet and the reader are indistinguishably
linked and carry a shared imagination through the communal experience of
nature. This imagination is exactly the
thing that he explores through his poetry.
Best known for his Odes, these songs walk the reader through a singular
experience at the exact moment that it shoots outwards to the
interconnectedness of all phenomena. In other
words, Keats will take something simple, like a nightingale, and use it as a
conduit to explain the great truths of life, love, and loss. His poetry is insightful, compassionate, but
most of all, it is simply beautiful. His
words roll of the page and drip into your mind in such a tangible way that you can’t
help but fall into the whatever experience he wrote about. Keats was a true master of language.
Rimas
y Leyendas, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Bécquer
was the king of ghost stories. Not only
are his stories super creepy and wonderful, they are also filled with amazing
themes of love, passion, vengeance, and, most of all, regret. His Rimas
y Leyendas is the collection of all of his poetry and most of his short
stories. My favorites include “El Monte
de las Animas,” which is the original zombie story. Complete with unrequited love that results in
the dead coming back to life, this story will chill you to your core. Also, in “Maese Pérez,” Spain’s greatest
organist is murdered in a jealous rage, but that doesn’t stop him from playing
his haunting tune in the decrepit, hollow cathedral. In his poetry, he moves through a cycle of
emotion that ranges from the highest passion of love, to disillusionment with
love, all the way to utter despair and hopelessness. Throughout all of this, he tells us how the
only love worth having is unattainable, but we should go for it anyway. The heights and depths that he throws his
reader through are entirely relatable.
We’ve all felt love like this. We’ve
all hated love like this. We’ve all felt
misery like this. Bécquer merely gives
it the words that we never seem to have to describe it.
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “Epistle to
William Wilberforce” and “The Rights of Woman”
One
other component to Romanticism that often goes overlooked due to the Wordsworth’s
and Shelley’s and other dead, white men is an outpouring of social justice that,
previously, hadn’t really existed.
Romantics were among the first to become abolitionists and Mary
Wollstonecraft is ubiquitously hailed as the mother of feminism! Anna Laetita Barbauld came before
Wollstonecraft and is best known for these two amazing compositions. The first, “Epistle to William Wilberforce”
came after Wilberforce (one of the most prominent abolitionists of the time)
tried, and failed, to bring about abolition in the House of Commons. His motion was rejected at the time, which
resulted in this response by Barbauld to encourage and reignite the cause. Beautifully written and caustically critical,
this poem exhorts the efforts of Wilberforce and reminds him as well as others
to keep fighting for what they knew to be right. On the other hand, it is a harsh indictment
of slavery as it existed in England in the 1700s. Secondly, Barbauld wrote “The Rights of
Woman,” which was one of the first overt works of feminism ever published. Wollstonecraft came after Barbauld and had
some valid criticisms of her ideology, however it is clear that Barbauld was
one of her inspirations and a precursor to feminism as a movement. In this poem, hails, “Yes, injured woman,
rise, assert thy right!” (ll. 1). In an
age where patriarchy and oppression were even more prominent than they are
today, Barbauld had the courage to speak up and fight for the rights of
minorities.
