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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

PRE-ROMANTICISM

The characteristic trend in the English literature of the second half of the 18^th century was the so-called pre-romanticism. It appeared among the conservative groups of writer as a reaction against Enlightenment.

The mysterious element plays a great role in the works of pre-romanticists. One of the most important representatives of pre-romanticism in the English literature was William Blake, who in spite of his mysticism, wrote poems full of human feelings and sympathy for the oppressed people. Blake’s effectiveness comes from the poetic ‘contrasts’ and simple rhythms.

William Blake (1757-1827)

William Blake was born in London into the family of trades people. Blake did not receive any formal education but he demonstrated good knowledge of English literature, particularly Milton (English poet). At the age of 14 he became an apprentice engraver (ученик гравюра), and is as well known for his engravings as for his poetry.

Blake has always been seen as a strange character, largely because of his childhood experience of seeing visions. He was a very religious man, but he rejected the established church, declaring that personal experience, the inner-light, should direct and guide man.

William Blake had a very individual view of the world. His religious philosophy is seen through his works Songs of Innocence (1789), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) and Songs of Experience (1794). His poems are simple but symbolic. For example, in his poems The Tiger and The Lamb, the tiger is the symbol of mystery, the lamb — the symbol of innocence.

The Tyger is a mystical poem that, rather than describes a tiger, an animal that Blake had never seen, is a perception of the Universal Energy, a power beyond good and evil. In the poem the nature of universal energy becomes clear through a series of questions, which the reader is forced to answer. This makes the reader enter into the poem, becoming part of the poetic experience.

During the poem, the reader passes from a state of ignorance to a state of understanding. In this way the poem becomes an ‘experience’ for the reader as well as a picture of an experience felt by the poet.

From Songs of Experience

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the

forests of the night, What immortal

hand or eye Could frame thy¹ fearful

symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt

the fire of thine² eyes? On what wings

dare he aspire? What the hand dare

seize the fire?

¹ thy [6ai] — your

² thine [6am] — your

Blake’s later poems are very complex symbolic texts but his voice in the early 1790s is the conscience of the Romantic age. He shows a contrast between a world of nature and childhood innocence and a world of social control. Blake saw the dangers of an industrial society in which individuals were lost, and in his famous poem London he calls the systems of society ‘mind forged manacles’. For Blake, London is a city in which the mind of everyone is in chains and all individuals are imprisoned.

William Blake thought that childhood was the perfect period of sensibility and experience, and he fought against injustices against children. In his poem The Chimney Sweeper heshows how the modern world, the world of chimney sweepers, corrupts and ‘dirties’ children. Using the symbolic technique of a ‘dream’, Blake presents a heavenly view of children who are clean, naked, innocent, and happy, and contrasts it with the reality of the sweeper’s life, which is dirty, cold, corrupted and unhappy.

The poem refers to the terrible social conditions of the sweep. These children were sold by their parents when they were very young. They got up early in the morning and worked all day in awful conditions, suffering from the cold. In Tom’s dream, happiness and delight become reality. The poem is simple and sentimental. Blake avoids in it the more complex aspects of his mystical symbols.

William Blake’s poetry was not immediately recognized during his lifetime, because of its mysticism. His engravings were more immediately popular and, like his poetry, reflect his great power of imagination.

ROMANTICISM

The period of Romanticism covers approximately 30 years, beginning from the last decade of the 18^th century and continuing up to the 1830s. Romanticism as a literary current can be regarded as a result of two great historical events: 1) the Industrial Revolution in England and 2) the French Bourgeois Revolution of 1789. The Industrial Revolution began with the invention of a weaving-machine which could do the work of 17 people. The weavers that were left without work thought that the machines were to blame for their misery. They began to destroy these machines, or frames as they were called. The frame-breaking movement was called the Luddite movement, because the name of the first man to break a frame was Ned Ludd.

The reactionary ruling class of England was against any progressive thought influenced by the French Revolution. The last decade of the 18^th century became known as the ‘white terror’. Progressive-minded people were persecuted and forced into exile.

The Industrial Revolution in England, as well as the French Bourgeois Revolution, had a great influence on the cultural life of the country. Romanticists were dissatisfied with the present state of things in their country. Some of the writers were revolutionary: they denied the existing order, called upon the people to struggle for a better future, shared the people’s desire for liberty and objected to colonial oppression. They supported the national liberation wars on the continent against feudal reaction. Such writers were George Gordon Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Others, though they had welcomed the French Revolution and the slogan of liberty, fraternity and equality, later abandoned revolutionary ideas. They turned their attention to nature and to the simple problems of life. They turned to the ideas of the feudal past by way of protest of capitalist reality. Among these writers were the poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, who formed the ‘Lake School’, called so because they all lived for a time in the beautiful Lake District in the north-west of England. They dedicated much what they wrote to Nature. Legends, tales, songs and ballads became part of the creative method of the romanticists. The romanticists were talented poets and their contribution to English literature was very important.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

William Wordsworth was the greatest representative of the Lake School Poets. He was born in a lawyer’s family and grew up in the Lake District, a place of mountains and lakes. Soon after mother’s death in 1788 he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, situated in a lovely village near Lake Windermere. The boy was allowed plenty of leisure: to go boating and fishing on the lake and studying wild life in the woods. There William came to know and love the world of nature.

His father died leaving him an orphan at the age of thirteen. His two uncles sent him to Cambridge University. During his college days William took a walking tour in France, Switzerland and Italy. After graduating he toured Wales and France and became deeply involved in the cause of the French Revolution in which he saw a great movement for human freedom. Later he was greatly disappointed at the outcome of the Revolution. He thought that it had brought only cruelty and bloodshed. William left for the quiet of the country.

In about 1795 William Wordsworth met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who became one of his closest friends. In 1797 he two poets published their best work Lyrical Ballads.

William Wordsworth wrote sonnets and ballads. The most characteristic themes of Wordsworth's poetry were the defence of the common country people, their feelings and beliefs, the beauty of nature. Every object in nature was in his eyes a source of poetry. His fame grew worldwide.

When he died he was buried in the little church at Grasmere in the Lake District.

George Byron (1788-1824)

George Gordon Byron, the great romantic poet, has often been called a poet of ‘world sorrow’. In almost all his poetry there is gloom and pessimism. The reason for may be found in the social and political events of his day which influenced him so deeply.

‘To solve the mystery of the gloomy poetry of so immense, colossal a poet as Byron, we must first search for the secret of the epoch it expresses’, Belinsky wrote.

During his childhood the First Bourgeois Revolution took place in France. At the same time the Industrial Revolution developed in England and the invention of new machines, which replaced workers, brought misery to thousands of labourers. Wars, political oppression of the common people, all these facts observed by the poet, gave rise to his discontent with the social and political life of his time and that’s why his poetry was full of gloom. But Byron did not intend to accept the existing conditions passively. He raised his voice to condemn them, and to call men to active struggle against the social evils of his time. That’s why he may be rightly called a revolutionary romanticist. Byron’s heroes, like the poet himself, are strong individuals who are disappointed with life and fight against the injustice and cruelty of society.

The poet was born on January 22, 1788 in an ancient aristocratic family in London. His father, an army captain, died when the boy was three years old. The boy spent his childhood in Aberdeen, Scotland, together with his mother. His mother, Catherine Gordon, was a Scottish lady of honourable birth and respectable fortune. Byron was lame and felt distressed about it all his life, yet, thanks to his strong will and regular training, he became an excellent rider, a champion swimmer and a boxer and took part in athletic activities.

When George lived in Aberdeen he attended grammar school. In 1798 George’s granduncle died and the boy inherited the title of lord and the Byron’s family estate, Newstead Abbey. It was situated near Nottingham, close to the famous Sherwood Forest. Together with his mother the boy moved to Newstead Abbey from where he was sent to Harrow School. At the seventeen he entered Cambridge University. He was very handsome. He had a beautiful manly profile. His contemporary young men tried to imitate his clothes, his manners and even his limping gait. He seemed proud, tragic and melancholic. But he could also be very cheerful and witty.

Byron’s literary career began while he was at Cambridge. His first volume of verse entitled Hours of Idleness (1807) contained a number of lyrics dealing with love, regret and parting. There were also some fragments of translation from Latin and Greek poetry. His poems were severely criticized by the Edinburgh Review, the leading literary magazine of that time. The poet answered with a biting satire in verse, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), in which he attacked the reactionary critics and the three Lake School Poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey.

After graduating from Cambridge University in 1809 Byron started on a tour through Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Albania. He returned home in 1811. By right of birth he was a member of the House of Lords. On February 27, 1812 Byron made his first speech in the House of Lords. He spoke passionately in defence of the Luddites. He blamed the government for the unbearable conditions of workers’ life. In his parliament speech Byron showed himself a defender of the people’s sufferings, and that made the reactionary circles hate him.

In 1812 the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published. They were received by his contemporaries with a burst of enthusiasm. He became one of the most popular men in London. He himself remarked, ‘I awoke one morning and found myself famous’.

Between 1813 and 1816 Byron composed his Oriental Tales. The most famous of tales are The Giaour, The Corsair and Lara, all of which embody the poet’s romantic individualism. The hero is a rebel against society, a man of strong will and passion. Proud and independent, he rises against tyranny and injustice to gain his personal freedom and happiness. His revolt, however, is too individualistic, and therefore it is doomed to failure.

In this period Byron began to write his political satires, the most outstanding of which is the Ode to Framers of the Frame Bill.

In 1815 Byron married Miss Isabella Milbanke, a religious woman, cold and pedantic. It was an unhappy match for the poet. Though Byron was fond of their only child Augusta Ada, he and his wife parted. The scandal surrounding the divorce was great. Byron’s enemies found their opportunity and used it against him. They began to persecute him. The great poet was accused of immorality and had to leave his native country.

In May 1816 Byron went to Switzerland where he made the acquaintance of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the two poets became close friends. While in Switzerland Byron wrote Canto the Third of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1816), The Prisoner of Chillon (1816), a lyrical drama Manfred (1817) and a number of lyrical poems.

The Prisoner of Chillon describes the tragic fate of the Swiss revolutionary Bonnivard who spent a number of years of his life in prison with his brothers. Chillon is a castle on the shore of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. The story told by Byron had real historical foundation. Bonnivard was an active fighter for the liberation of his native city of Geneva from the control of Charles III, Duke of Savoy. Bonnivard was a republican, and the Duke of Savoy imprisoned him in the Castle of Chillon where he was kept from 1530 to 1536 without trial. In 1536 the citizens of Bern, Switzerland, captured the Castle of Chillon and released Bonnivard.

In 1816 Byron wrote his Song for the Luddites where he again raised his voice in defence of the oppressed workers, encouraging them to fight for freedom against their tyrants. It is considered to be one of the first revolutionary songs in English classical poetry.

In 1817 Byron went to Italy, where he lived till 1823. At this time political conditions in Italy were such as to rouse his indignation. He wished to see the country one and undivided. Acting on this idea, the poet joined the secret organization of the Corbanari which was engaged in the struggle against the Austrian oppressors.

The Italian period (1817—1823), influenced by revolutionary ideas, is considered the summit of Byron’s poetical career. Such works as Beppo (1818), and his greatest work Don Juan (1819—1824) are the most realistic works written by the poet. It is a novel in verse, that was to contain 24 cantos, but death stopped his work and only 16 and a half cantos were written. Though the action in Don Juan takes place at the close of the 18^th century, it is easy enough to understand that the author depicts the 19^th century Europe and gives a broad panorama of contemporary life.

Other works of this period are: Canto the Fourth of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1817), The Prophecy of Dante (1821), where speaking in the person of the great Italian poet Dante, Byron calls upon Italians to fight for their independence; the tragedy Cain (1821).

Once Byron wrote: When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, Let him combat for that of his neighbours. The defeat of the Carbonari uprising (1823) was a great blow to Byron. The Greek war against Turkey attracted his attention. He went to Greece to take part in the struggle for national independence. His restless life ended there. Soon after his arrival he was seized with fever and died on April 18, 1824. He was thirty-six years old.

The poet’s heart was buried in Greece, his body was taken to England and buried near Newstead. The government did not allow him to be buried in Westminster Abbey. Only in 1969 the authorities finally allowed his remains to be buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

His death was mourned by the progressive people throughout Europe. Pushkin called Byron a poet of freedom. Goethe spoke of him in his Faust, Belinsky called him ‘a giant of poetry’.

The importance of Byron’s poetic works, especially of his political poems, is great. Translated by Russian poets, Byron’s poetry has become a part of our national culture. In Russia, Pushkin and Lermontov were among his admirers. Pushkin called him the ‘ruler of people’s thought’. Belinsky called him the Prometheus of the century. Hertzen called his poetry ‘a word of fire’. Byron remains one of the most popular English poets both at home and abroad.