The Romantics
(Please don't yell at me because I don't discuss Blake or Southey or Your Other Favourite Romantic Poet. Wax lyrical in the comments instead.)
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When I first started studying the Romantic poets, in speech and drama as a teen, Coleridge was my favourite. Hard to believe, I know. I guess I was attracted to his mad intensity, and how he had all these grand ideas but could never quite follow through. I loved these lines from "Dejection":
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree,
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches' home,
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
I would also read over and over "Human Life: On the Denial of Immortality", trying to trace the thought processes and understand what it all meant. I guess this was basically a teenage angst thing for me. Coleridge was angsty and so was I. Voila, perfect match!
However, while I have formed a clear visual of each of the Romantics in my head over the years, Coleridge is the one whose image remains fuzzy. I mostly picture him as Taylor Hanson circa 1999, with long unwashed hair, semi-Regency clothes, and a crackpipe.
Even at the time I knew Wordsworth wasn't all that, that he was holding something back in his poems, espousing ideals that he didn't actually believe in. I liked "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" and felt kind of sorry for him for that whole being-in-love-with-his-sister-thing, but at university I read more of the poems where he really gets in there and condescends to the peasantry, and I realised what a boring sod he truly was. He had the follow-through that Coleridge lacked, but he in turn lacked that grand passion. Nonetheless, I thought of his poem at every single bloody daffodil that I saw in England.
Byron, I didn't mind. I still don't mind him, although his reputation far eclipses his poetry. I loved loved loved "When We Two Parted" (again, it's a teenage angst thing), but I chose "She Walks in Beauty" to recite for my exam, because it allowed for a little more vocal variation. I still know both poems by heart. And Byron gets my vote for Hottest Romantic, Physically Speaking:
Come on! The dude's a fox.
I was, and am, ambivalent towards Shelley. The one poem of his that I have loved from the beginning is "When the Lamp is Shattered":
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead -
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.
Check out the other verses, too, that is some quality angst right there.
However, in the last few years it is Keats who has emerged as my favourite: Keats, who died young, who really had something to complain about, who wrote with unexpected wisdom. I love "The Eve of St Agnes", with its beautiful, dreamlike quality, and those sonnets of fear and love. I went to his house in Hampstead and saw the bed where he lay when he coughed blood and knew his end was near. Even Oscar Wilde was moved by "The Grave of Keats".
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To be honest, though, these days Romanticism in general seems like a bit of a wank to me. It's like a bunch of men saying, well, now that we're rich enough not to work the land but to pay others to work it for us, now we can really appreciate the outdoors. As if pastoral poetry was anything new. As if they were the first men in all of Britain to ever have a feeling and write it down, like, oh, I'm so deep, my angst, let me show it to you. Writing the poetry of man in everyday language is an ideal I can get behind, but I also see the particular beauty and value in using a poetic vocabulary that is somewhat removed from everyday life.
I suppose that just as Wordsworth became more conservative as he aged, so have I. If you'll excuse me, I must retire to my lake.
---
When I first started studying the Romantic poets, in speech and drama as a teen, Coleridge was my favourite. Hard to believe, I know. I guess I was attracted to his mad intensity, and how he had all these grand ideas but could never quite follow through. I loved these lines from "Dejection":
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree,
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches' home,
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
I would also read over and over "Human Life: On the Denial of Immortality", trying to trace the thought processes and understand what it all meant. I guess this was basically a teenage angst thing for me. Coleridge was angsty and so was I. Voila, perfect match!
However, while I have formed a clear visual of each of the Romantics in my head over the years, Coleridge is the one whose image remains fuzzy. I mostly picture him as Taylor Hanson circa 1999, with long unwashed hair, semi-Regency clothes, and a crackpipe.
Even at the time I knew Wordsworth wasn't all that, that he was holding something back in his poems, espousing ideals that he didn't actually believe in. I liked "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" and felt kind of sorry for him for that whole being-in-love-with-his-sister-thing, but at university I read more of the poems where he really gets in there and condescends to the peasantry, and I realised what a boring sod he truly was. He had the follow-through that Coleridge lacked, but he in turn lacked that grand passion. Nonetheless, I thought of his poem at every single bloody daffodil that I saw in England.
Byron, I didn't mind. I still don't mind him, although his reputation far eclipses his poetry. I loved loved loved "When We Two Parted" (again, it's a teenage angst thing), but I chose "She Walks in Beauty" to recite for my exam, because it allowed for a little more vocal variation. I still know both poems by heart. And Byron gets my vote for Hottest Romantic, Physically Speaking:
Come on! The dude's a fox.
I was, and am, ambivalent towards Shelley. The one poem of his that I have loved from the beginning is "When the Lamp is Shattered":
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead -
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.
Check out the other verses, too, that is some quality angst right there.
However, in the last few years it is Keats who has emerged as my favourite: Keats, who died young, who really had something to complain about, who wrote with unexpected wisdom. I love "The Eve of St Agnes", with its beautiful, dreamlike quality, and those sonnets of fear and love. I went to his house in Hampstead and saw the bed where he lay when he coughed blood and knew his end was near. Even Oscar Wilde was moved by "The Grave of Keats".
---
To be honest, though, these days Romanticism in general seems like a bit of a wank to me. It's like a bunch of men saying, well, now that we're rich enough not to work the land but to pay others to work it for us, now we can really appreciate the outdoors. As if pastoral poetry was anything new. As if they were the first men in all of Britain to ever have a feeling and write it down, like, oh, I'm so deep, my angst, let me show it to you. Writing the poetry of man in everyday language is an ideal I can get behind, but I also see the particular beauty and value in using a poetic vocabulary that is somewhat removed from everyday life.
I suppose that just as Wordsworth became more conservative as he aged, so have I. If you'll excuse me, I must retire to my lake.