A note on Romanticism

The Romantic era was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that started in Europe
during the end of the 18th century. The movement was at its apex during 1800 to 1840 AD when the Industrial Revolution had swept across Europe and French revolution in France. As many youths were moving to the city in search of employment, romantics believed that men were losing touch with nature—and if that was to go on, humanity would essentially be doomed. In such case, William Wordsworth, in his sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us’ writes: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: /Little we see in Nature that is ours;/ We have given our hearts away…” Since we have lost touch with nature, the poet laments that we are “out of tune” and the sight of nature and God does not “move us”. It is such loss that romanticism primarily depicted—a wakeup call from romantics to their fellow beings urging them to stay surrounded by nature because it would physically and mentally sanctify their souls.

In such case, we can argue that while Romanticism celebrated nature, God and pagan life, it also lamented when people were increasingly going away from nature due to Industrial revolution. As a result, we can say that the Romantic era was a reaction to Industrial Revolution, a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

Five poets dominated the English romantic canon of poesy – William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, P.B. Shelly, Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The graveyard school of poets preceded romantic poets. The former had always depicted deaths and decay in their works. Romanticism, on the other hand, focused on pageantry life, celebrated love, nature, God and His creations. When Coleridge and Wordsworth produced the ‘’Lyrical Ballads’, the Ballads signaled a new trend in poetry—a break with neoclassical traditions. To Wordsworth, the subjects for poetry were to be “incidents and situations from common life,” which were to be written in language “really used by men”.

Though each poet differed from the other in their poetic style, the Romantic poets as a group tended to be radical in their politics – they sympathized with the American and French revolutions, spoke against royalty and slavery and were transcendental in their philosophy where they rejoiced in seeing nature as symbolic to God’s presence, and natural creation as analogous to the lesser creations of imaginative human beings.

“Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright/In the forests of the night/What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” William Blake questions in his poem, ‘The Tyger’. In his query, Blake brings in two crucial elements of God’s creation: while nature looks majestic from distance, upon close arrivals, they are to be feared—just like the tiger, which, from distance looks beautiful with its stripes, but is easily feared by all when one approaches it.

Romanticism treasured itself in aesthetic experience—“art for art sake” and nothing more. In doing so, they enjoyed untamed nature and were enticed by the surprises it brought. Moreover, while they were horrified and terrorized by the fatalities that nature brought when people tried to tame it, they also realized human futilities to domesticate nature because the romantics knew that human craft would never assimilate with nature, and nature, on the other hand would never submerge with artifacts. It rather would rise against an intruder and overpower the petty object with its diversity. Wallace Stevens shows the same bond in his poem, ‘Anecdote of the Jar’. Stevens writes, “I placed a jar in Tennessee…/The wilderness rose up to it,/ And sprawled around/…The jar was gray and bare/It did not give of bird or bush/”.

By retaliating the human shifts to revolutions and developments and celebrating pagan life and man’s touch with nature, Romanticism helped to revive the medievalism—primarily to escape through the fast developments and growing population. For this reason, romantics were often cited as having escapist attitudes—mainly because they could not cope with the current developments. In turn they retreated to the past—imagining a place that was distant from the maddening crowds and sounds of V-8 engines. To shield themselves with the accusations, romantics argued that men should be close to nature because it was mentally and morally healthy. For such reason, William Butler Yeats, in his poem, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ writes: “That is no country for old men…”because it is morally corrupt and where “the young (lie in) one another’s arms”. Yeats adds that those young generation have no respect to “those dying (older)generations at their song” because they are “caught in that sensual music (that)all neglect”. For such reason, Yeats expresses his desire to sail to Byzantium, a holy place—a place of old people.

To conclude, romantic era in Europe sprawled across the continents as an attack against the industrial revolution, French revolution—against the potent deaths of dear ones and the increasingly loss of human touch with nature. However, later, when it immersed itself in praising nature, God, the pagan life and human bond, it also brought with it medievalism.

In present day life, romanticism is of paramount importance because we have repeatedly failed to unite with nature and cherish the joys it brings. We continually try to know answers of nature through scientific rationalization, just like the Higgs Boson theory of ‘God particle’. With ever growing violence across the world, romanticism at times could help us question ourselves—the validity and worth of what we are doing against humanity and nature. Therefore, while the Romantic era concluded in 1840 AD, its relevance, its humble but unattainable questions (especially when we now have engrossed ourselves so much with science and technology and steadily lost touch with nature) keeps haunting us.