The Romantic Imagination PDF

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The Romantic Imagination The generation of poets which proceeded the Romantics were called the Augustan/ Neo-classical poets. The Romantics and Neo-classical writers are separated by their use of imagination; while Neoclassical writers believed in writing about concerns of the time, the Romantics explored internal themes through imagination. Alexander Pope was a poet of the Augustan age, and created works which focused on the social conventions and etiquette of the time, ignoring the imagination and subconscious truths explored in later poet’s works. The Romantic poets believed that one cannot discover the truth if they do not explore the imagination, thus imagination was use in all canonical Romantic writings. John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) establishes the idea of the mind as a mirror, reflecting and imitating the world around it. Locke was a philosopher of the Neo-classical age, an age of enlightenment, when the light of science was shining on man, allowing man to make new scientific discoveries. Many intellectuals of the age believed that the world could be fully understood through science, that if you understood the rules of the world, you understood everything (Newton). Locke proposed that the mind is a blank sheet of paper devoid of characters and external objects obtrude onto the paper, imprinting it – assuming the mind is a passive entity. However, the Romantics believed that these ‘truths’ ignore the complex layers of the world. Blake and Coleridge were vocally hostile of Locke’s theories as they believed it stripped humans of their importance. The Neo-classical age was a particularly materialistic one. A shift occurred during the Romantic era as intellectuals looked to humanist approaches to the world, as well as accepting the fashion of sensibility.

The Imagination and the Divine

To see a 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. (Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’)

Locke believed that reality is proven by the material. However, Romantics suggest that an understanding of the material is only needed to reach the spiritual, an invisible layer of reality. One wat to reach this spiritual reality is through the imagination, which Blake suggests is a God-like ability.

The World of Imagination is Infinite and Eternal, whereas the world of …Vegetation [ie the material world] is Finite and Temporal….All things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Saviour….The Human Imagination. (Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgement)

The imagination is divine and to access the imagination displays a divine potential.

The primary Imagination I hold to be a living power…. and ….a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation’ (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria)

To create is to have the abilities of God – a belief held by Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and more. They believed that imagination is a prized possession. Although, some argue that one would become trapped in fanciful worlds and lose sight of reality, lowering their ability to communicate with others and engage.

The Imagination and the External World M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp. Abrams is a Romantic critic who believes that art reflects the external world, that art imitates the world around it. Neo-Classic view of art:  Passive mind – art does not attempt to alter or transform what it depicts.  Art is a mirror of nature and reflects the world in which it is produced.  Art replicates reality.

Romantic view of art:  Active power.  Art is a lamp, it sheds light on the world and allows people to see the world more clearly and intensely.  Looks for the internal/subconscious reality and truths within.

….The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls, And everywhere along the hollow rent Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light, Were all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,

Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. (Wordsworth, Book 6 of The Prelude) - The light of Wordsworth’s imagination shines on the physical

world, the interprets it into spiritual ideas. This extract is an outward projection of Wordsworth’s mind. While nature is the primary focus, it is used to express the speakers own mind and not the real world.

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of dancing daffodils; Along the lake, beneath the trees, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; A poet could not but be gay In such a laughing company. I gazed, and gazed, but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. (Wordsworth, ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’)

The External images themselves are not important, the importance is placed on how the speaker’s mind perceives them. The speaker is interested in the wealth these daffodils may bring him. The last line, ‘And dances with the daffodils’ depicts and out of body experience. Romantics focus on how the physical world influences their minds. It’s an introspective look at the world that discusses the mind’s interpretations of events.

Coleridge and the Romantic Imagination The imagination…. ‘dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate’ (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria) At the time, Coleridge was not as well-known as other writers of the age. However, he strived to understand the subconscious and the imagination and produced theoretical works discussing the matter. He believed that in order to fully understand something, you must bring it alive in your mind. Coleridge tends to oppose fancy and imagination. He suggests that the two definitions are separate. Where fancy is often referred to as imagination, it expresses mental flights and visions. Coleridge proposes that fancy and imagination are either two separate faculties OR different levels of the same. The imagination aims to fuse two separate concepts to create a new, separate entity, that is a whole on its own.

Then with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome, those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, ‘Beware, beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!¿ Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread – For he on honey-dew hath fed And drank the milk of paradise. (Coleridge, ‘Kubla Khan’)

‘Kubla Khan’ is an unfinished piece that came to Coleridge in an opium fuelled dream. Opium often produced vivid dream where the minds abilities were far more advanced and could process waking experiences and create something new from them. This poem brings together disparate images that somehow work together despite not being connected, and creates the image of a remote and mysterious visionary place.

‘Frost at Midnight’ (53 – 5) by Coleridge

The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not; Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang

From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half opened, and I snatched A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the intersperséd vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought! My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, And think that thou shalt learn far other lore, And in far other scenes! For I was reared In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon....