Research Romantics and the Burden of Consciousness (Essay Sample)

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Romantics and the Burden of Consciousness
Just like many other poets, romantics seek to address issues that are very closely related to their emotional state. From the genesis of romanticism in the nineteenth century and its peak in mid the same century, romantics have been known to be in dalliance with the emphasis of emotion and individualism (Barth 41,149). Moreover, romanticism was characterized with the glorification of medieval times at the expense of the classical moments in which it was born (Barth 139). Some scholars equate the attitude of the romantics to a rebellion against the industrial revolution and its aristocratic social and political systems (Wellek &Warren 105). Perhaps the vision of romanticism is not well embedded in poetry, but it made several significant contributions in music, visual arts, education, historiography, and natural sciences. In fact, the idea of nationalism was enhanced during that time because romanticism called for liberalism and it used radical means to achieve its objectives (Wellek & Warren 43). Today, many critics argue that the Romantics are poets of intensified self-consciousness, internalizing just about everything. Others have argued that they seek to escape the burden of consciousness. Both of these statements are true, but it is more ideal to relate romantics to the level of self-consciousness that shows how sentimental they were.
According to Geofrey Hartman, it is dangerous to isolate poetry from the emotional self of the writer (Kane 90). He goes on to quote Harold Bloom who said that:
The high cost of romantic internalization, that is, of finding paradises within a renovated man tends to manifest itself in the arena of self-consciousness. The quest is to widen consciousness as well as intensify it, but the quest is shadowed by a spirit that tends to narrow consciousness to an acute preoccupation with self. This shadow of imagination is solipsism, what sherry calls the spirit of solitude, or Alastor, the avenging daimon… Blake calls this spirit of solitude a Spectre or the genuine Satan, the Thanatos or death impulse in every natural man. (Kane 90).
The preceding quote brings in the problem of defining solipsism. According to Stern, the term solipsism embodies the thought that there is no mind other than that of self (Kleingeld 333). Based on what Kane reported about the poetry romantic poetry, romantics actually secluded other people from the scene and hence relied on their innate feelings to express the outer shape of the world. It is “an extreme form of narcissism where object libido is so weak that it turns inward upon self” (Kane 90). The counterargument of this case draws from the urge to disapprove solipsism. But how possible is it to deal with the solipsist mind? That is not an easy question to answer. One man that tried to dispel the fear of solipsism in romantic poetry is Hegel. However, as Kleingeld proved, he failed miserably in his attempts (333). The problem of disassociating solipsism from romantic poetry persists till this day, and it remains to be the sole defining element of romanticism.
Despite the resilience of solipsism in romantic poetry, Brennan provides an alternative to the definition of poetry by saying that poetry is a “sense of complete harmony between us and the world, and that is the reality” (Kane 91). He was saying that in response to what Bloom said. His concept of poetry was that there is no poetry without incorporating the beauty of the world around us. We develop sentiment from the environment we relate to, and “that is the reality.” But once again, a loophole was discovered in the definition by Brennan and it was adjudged a version of solipsism. This is because Brenan defines the jest of poetry in the lens of one man who considers the world a beautiful place and secludes others from his feeling.
The other attempt to move away from the paradox of describing poetry is by defining romantic energy as either organic or Prometheus (Kane 93). The problem with romantics is related to the adamancy of accepting the cure of imagination. The cure from imagination is essential given that thoughts have the power to move men from the confines of the world in which they live in to some other nonexistent space (Kane 93). Imagination is the disease of the poet. It makes them supernatural and thus special above all other humans. In the words of Bloom, and quoted in Kane, “the romantic poets selfless self, that Edenic identity commensurate with vatic vision but now fallen into naturalistic selfhood” (93). Talking about Edenic identity, classical poets adhered to some poetic principles that exemplified the supernatural and nullified the natural. It was a contest of supernatural discovery.
Think about the aesthetic values that are created in romantic’s poetry. They display a strong emphasis on emotions such as apprehension, terror, awe, and horror. This is the peak of solipsism as it is known. It shows how poets looked at the world in their own eyes and force their imagination upon us in every way. The riddance of self from the imagination and vision without the burden of personal exclusion from the past self is the problem here. And as such, no poet has been identified to be unique by receiving the credential of escaping dualism both within and without. Each poet had his or her shortcomings
There are numerous critics of romanticism as expressed in classical poetry. Two of them are William Wordsmith and his compatriot Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsmith wrote a preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), while Taylors work is recorded in his Biographia Literaria (1817). They fought the spirit of romanticism styling themselves as poetic police. They came up with their own standards of good poetry. However, despite their efforts in streamlining poetry, these two literary analysts still failed to provide a universal answer to the problem of solipsism.
In his words, Wordsmith said that poetry is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth, Taylor Coleridge & Schmidt 8). The result of this famed proclamation is that people started looking at poetry not just as a mimetic but rather an artistic course. In other words, poetry got the new meaning of art in relation to work. Interestingly, the analysts that followed borrowed Wordsmith’s school of thought. Classical romantics added a twist to the analogy by suggesting that the aim of poetry was to reflect the artist’s mind and not the external self, thus, they compared a poet’s work to a reflection in a mirror that is turned inwards and not outwards. Moreover, William Hazlitt (1818) viewed the changes in poetry in the lens of a mirror combined with a lamp (Wordsworth, Taylor Coleridge & Schmidt 156). At this juncture is where the poetry element in music was unveiled. Music was considered by German Romantics as the most explicitly defined form of poetry that gave an almost immediate expression of spirit and emotion.
The work of René Wellek, a German Romantic, combines reflections from the works of writers such as Fredriech Schiller, Novalis, and August Wilhelm. In one example, Wellek reports the views of Novalis on poets’ uniqueness. He reports Novalis to have been a devout lyricist who viewed poets as people with a rare kind of ability that is not earthly but divine (Wellek & Warren 119). According to Novalis, other humans were just subordinate to poets who had insight. He said this with a view of poets as humans in the pinnacle of imagination and spiritual astuteness (Kleingeld 270). But in a critical manner, Wellek defines Novalis and Fredriech as poets and writers of borderline influence. They had no clear-cut direction on how they wrote their poetry. Neither did they seek independence from the curse of romanticism.
In the early 1800s in England, literary reviews of poetry helped in the formulation of new critical analyses and theories. The most important papers at this time were the Quarterly review and the Edinburg Review (Leypoldt 5). These two papers did a lot of analyses on poems that were written at the term. However, critiques argue that since these were commercial papers, what they did mostly was trying to sell poetry books by providing positive reviews while shunning the critical debates. In that time, columnists could not post reviews based on the explicitly defined anti-government rhetoric that filled the poetic space (Leypoldt 9). They were not in a position top break the aristocratic barriers that stopped men from being liberal. The reviews consisted of loosely defined ideologies accompanied by literary judgment that was grossly skewed. Politics shaped poetic justice in a way that it almost never existed in England at the start of the ninetieth century.
It is the undisciplined approach to poetry review at the beginning of the nineteenth century that forced Coleridge to develop tools of analysis that would set objectivity for all. Even though he was unhappy with the way criticisms displayed so much opinion, Coleridge could not change the status quo. He met resistance from those who still upheld that poetry was an abstract subject and therefore needed abstract reviews. In fact, those who came up against the idea fronted by Coleridge alluded to the fact that any review is right for as long as it talks about the poem itself. Ethical considerations were not very important, and therefore, any review based on political affiliation for the reviewer was still valid (Wellek & Warren 79-133). As a result, Wordsmith in his religiously biased writings came up with his own criterion for dissecting his poetry. On the other hand, Coleridge drafted his own merit list of poetic elements (Wellek & Warren 280). The division and lack of consensus in the works of classical poets is what prompted Paul...