Romanticism and Romantic Poetry Was a Combination

Romanticism and Romantic poetry was a combination of personal philosophy and vision of the world and also a reflection of the times. In many ways we can understand Romantic poetry as a reaction to the rise of science and materialism and the denial by society of the importance of nature and imagination.

The Romantic writers' reaction against conventional views was largely determined by their opposition to the emerging rational and mechanical views of reality that was becoming dominant. Reason and science were replacing the imaginative and poetic view of life. The Romantic poets opposed the increasingly mechanical and scientific world and one of the ways that they expressed their opposition can be seen in the adoration of nature.

In this view nature acts as a symbol of freedom from the constraints of hard reason under which, as both Blake and Wordsworth state, all human beings labor. Many Romantic poets like Wordsworth found inspiration and direction for their imaginative creativity in nature. However, Wordsworth was also continually aware of the "still sad music "of humanity, which had lost its way in the modern industrialized world. In his poem Michael, Wordsworth illustrates the tragedy of the loss of the natural and pastoral world to encroachment of the modern city. Central to this poem is the conflict between the beauty and richness of nature and the modern scientific "empty" world. Michael is a poem essentially about the failure of the old rural world of nature. This failure is depicted through Michaels's son. The character of Michael is a symbol of the strength and integrity of the natural world. Through his figure Wordsworth expresses his views about nature.

With 'Michael' Wordsworth pays his debt to pastoralism and creates the myth of natural man and a symbol of fortitude. Fortitude was his favorite word and the virtue he most admired in men... The poem is a record of pastoral life and the poet's honest admiration of it. Details are chosen to convey the dignity and grandeur of that life, embodied in the character of Michael, who with his rugged health, strong will, independent mind, intimacy with the countryside and domestic feelings personifies its virtues. At the opening, the shepherd Michael is over eighty but still 'stout of heart, and strong of limb'. (Risti?, Ratomir)

However, the pressure of the modern world results in a destruction of the old natural order. This is expressed though the image of the unfinished sheepfold in the poem. It is also the symbol of the failure of hope and of the accord between father and son. Michael is defeated by the failure of his son, the victim of a corrupt society. The sheepfold remains unfinished and Michael is seen sitting beside it, unable to 'lift a single stone'. The story of Michael's life with its pathos assumes the cathartic character of great tragedies; and the poem ends with 'a vision of utter loss': (ibid)

In essence the poem is a "strong statement regarding the age of industrialization and its accompanying affects on rural life and rural people; it is, too, a study of hope and despair." (Wordsworth's "Michael") While Wordsworth and Blake were in unison in their reaction to the scientific age, they differed in other aspects. While nature was an important Romantic symbol, it was imagination - and the power of pure imagination - that is the most obvious and significant feature of Romanticism. However, the views of what constituted the imagination and its place in relation to nature was not always consistent among the Romantic poets.

In the works of Blake and Wordsworth there is a conflict in their views of imagination and nature on one level and congruence on another more subtle level. On the one hand, William Blake radically rejected nature as part of the temporal and 'fallen' world and viewed nature as intrinsically inferior to the immutable and eternal forms of the imagination; while on the other hand, Wordsworth viewed nature as a conduit of the imagination; a means by which we can apprehend the eternal forms and power of the imagination.

William Blake's was vehemently opposed to the rationalistic and scientific empiricism of his time that was expounded in the views of Bacon, Locke and Newton. The mechanization and scientific understanding of reality was, according to Blake, a perversion of the 'holy energies of the imagination'. The vision of the imagination that Blake suggested was radical in that it was a total vision of reality through artistic imagination, without any mediation from nature or other sources. For Blake the power of the imagination enabled us

To see the World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an Hour www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=71281007" (Keynes 431)

While symbols of nature are used in the above extract, Blake was strongly opposed to any veneration of nature or the natural; as he saw this as counter to the appreciation of imagination in itself.

In Songs of Experience, however, Blake is close to Wordsworth's perception of the developing industrial world and its view of reality. This is symbolized for Blake by the Image of the city.