Byron, Shelley or Keats?

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

I think much of what the Romantic triumvirute wrote is out of touch with literature and poetry today. Let's say they wrote some nice poems and take down their books from that inviolable academic pedestal and return them to the basements of college libraries where old literature professors dress as corn dogs and wear big buttons and hood ornaments (out of their ars) that say, "Save the Classics"

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I say save the classics, but one must realize what they are saving. I think some parts of these boards don't feel comfortable with critiquing anymore, and simply gush over anything Harold Bloom, or some other catalogue tells them to. People seem afraid to admit, or to criticize, to truly read. I post these things not to destroy the romantics, but to engage in a discussion that will actually contextualize them, and read them better than the simple - "Who is better" or "Which is your favorite" thread. I don't by any means hate these poets, I merely just feel that they need to be taken down a significant notch, and, though still studied, stop being gushed upon, as they are simply six poets within a longer tradition, which seem to get more attention than any other group besides Shakespeare - even Shakespeare's contemporaries are virtually ignored.

I think much of what the Romantic triumvirute wrote is out of touch with literature and poetry today. Let's say they wrote some nice poems and take down their books from that inviolable academic pedestal and return them to the basements of college libraries where old literature professors dress as corn dogs and wear big buttons and hood ornaments (out of their ars) that say, "Save the Classics"

Such intellectual acumen. Such depth of thought. The art of a given period of the past is out of touch with the art of today... so let's return it to the basement where it might find a proper moldering resting place. Let's get rid of Mozart and Beethoven because they have nothing in common with Britney Spears and Flavor Flav. Let us rid ourselves of the Bard and rush to the embrace of Bukowski! What has Michelangelo to say that can improve upon American Idol or Grand Theft Auto.

"Museums: cemeteries!... Identical, surely, in the sinister promiscuity of so many bodies unknown to one another.
...Why poison ourselves? ...But we want no part of it, the past, we the young and strong Futurists! So let them come, the gay incendiaries with charred fingers! Here they are! Here they are!... Come on! set fire to the library shelves! Turn aside the canals to flood the museums!... Oh, the joy of seeing the glorious old canvases bobbing adrift on those waters, discolored and shredded!... Take up your pickaxes, your axes and hammers and wreck, wreck the venerable cities, pitilessly!"
-F.T. Marinetti

:brickwall

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Originally Posted by JBI

I say save the classics, but one must realize what they are saving. I think some parts of these boards don't feel comfortable with critiquing anymore, and simply gush over anything Harold Bloom, or some other catalogue tells them to. People seem afraid to admit, or to criticize, to truly read. I post these things not to destroy the romantics, but to engage in a discussion that will actually contextualize them, and read them better than the simple - "Who is better" or "Which is your favorite" thread. I don't by any means hate these poets, I merely just feel that they need to be taken down a significant notch, and, though still studied, stop being gushed upon, as they are simply six poets within a longer tradition, which seem to get more attention than any other group besides Shakespeare - even Shakespeare's contemporaries are virtually ignored.

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Well said, JBI, makes sense. Well, how do you contextualize them, then? If you consider the trite rhyme schemes and meter in which they gushed about nature ad nauseum, how seriously should we take them?

I don't by any means hate these poets, I merely just feel that they need to be taken down a significant notch, and, though still studied, stop being gushed upon, as they are simply six poets within a longer tradition, which seem to get more attention than any other group besides Shakespeare - even Shakespeare's contemporaries are virtually ignored.

I agree with you in the sense that they ARE but six poets... not inherently better than a great many others that are far less recognized. Of course I think William Blake is quite a bit more... both as a poet and an artist... but that may arguably be but a personal preference... no different from your love of Leopardi. Still there are endless poets of equal merit that are far less well-known: Leopardi, Holderlin, Heine, Schiller, Novalis, Hugo, Verlaine, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Valery, Eluard, Trakl, Tu Fu, Li Po, Rumi, etc... to say nothing of greater poets: Spenser, Goethe, Baudelaire, Firdowsi, etc... In many ways I imagine that they maintain their position in no small part due to the fact that they are seen by a great many as something of the epitome of what lyric poetry is. In this way they are not unlike the Impressionists in the visual arts. The popularity, however, is understandable. How many readers upon first coming to poetry can begin to fathom let alone appreciate Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, etc..? I imagine that the Romantic poets open the door for many to serious poetry... and as such there will remain a fondness for them... that may be greater than the merit of their work... but neither is the work itself without merit.

gone now

Sorry, lukesguild, wrote too long and didnt see your last post.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Certainly there are great Romantics outside England: Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Holderlin, Moricke, Heine, and more in Germany... Hugo in France... Leopardi and Foscolo in Italy... and perhaps we may even include Pushkin in Russia. Indeed... I'm somewhat surprised at your sudden dismissal of Byron considering your recent championing of Pushkin... who was undeniably deeply influenced by Byron.

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While we are considering Russian Romantics let us not forget Lermontov. I dearly love A Hero of Our Time, and his poems are said to be an enormous influence on Pasternak.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I'm still waiting for your shift over to the 18th century poets: Swift, Johnson, Gay, Poe, etc...:D Actually, I quite like Christopher Smart, myself... and I must concur with Mortal Terror, that Pope is quite marvelous... taken in small doses.

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Indeed, the view from the bridge is different at 26 than it was at 18. Gay, Dryden, and Pope always seemed so dull before, but now... I find that every couple of years my entire world view needs an overhaul and I have to re-assess everything I knew or thought I knew. There is a definite trend toward softer stances, greater inclusion, and increased uncertainty.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I haven't read a good biography but I don't get the sense he lost faith in his vision at all.

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I haven't read any good ones either. Whenever I try to read up on Wordsworth his biographies all begin the same way, "William Wordsworth was born on 7 April, 1770 in Cockermouth..." I just start laughing and I can't get any further. I have a juvenile sense of humor that precludes me from reading that and just about any Charles Dickens novel.

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Originally Posted by JBI

It eventually will come down to Yeats's notion of himself and his contemporaries as the last romantics. In truth, the realization was from Yeats, and the rest, that this vision, this romantic ideal, this past - which had been fading for some time, though perhaps not in Ireland like it had in England, and certainly not until the symbolist movement in France, they being a little slower, and it wasn't reclaimable, one couldn't go back - the vision failed - nature failed, - and this obsession with nature as the imagination failed with it, as poetry can exist without natural images, or outside of the Lake district of England.

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In many ways, I think Hemingway comes out of that tradition. There is a love of the land and wild natural things that permeates his work. It's what makes his work breathe in a way, makes it vital, and alive. His landscapes are complex characters, though his people are simple.

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Originally Posted by JBI

As for Pushkin and Byron - I don't know - Pushkin has character, whereas all Byron's heroes all happen to be Byron himself, just recast as some other wandering seducer, or melodramatic misfit. I can see why Pushkin liked him, but as such, I don't think he has the same spirit as Pushkin did when he wrote Onegin - that same distinctly Russian feel for society - that same bitterness. Byron's hero, mind you, would have accepted Tatyana, then killed Lenski, then, run away, and then come back to seduce her again - I think Pushkin, though higly influenced by Byron, broke well away from there, by letting himself become absorbed into other works. The book reads more as a commentary on German Romanticism, and French Novels than it does as a Byronic text.

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Are you thinking of Goethe's Werther? Weren't Pushkin's prose ventures also influenced by Sir. Walter Scott? I think it's worth noting that prose works can have as decisive an influence on poetry as other poets.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

What has Michelangelo to say that can improve upon American Idol or Grand Theft Auto.

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I was with you up to that point, but as a person who's actually played the games in the Grand Theft Auto series, I firmly believe that the latest one will be in a museum some day. It is art, and a milestone in a new form of interactive media.

So rather than blatantly praise without reading, or read naively as this board is so fond of, let us actually question the place of this vision - those daffodils - in today's society. Let us ask what every poet means a) to the tradition, as is fitting, and b) to our time period, and our audience.

That is very patronising JBI.

Are you suggesting that people on here who do not agree with you are not as well read as you? (The Romantics were a major part of my degree). Or that they may read but do not understand? (I can't convince you to feel the same as me, so I'll belittle you).

You are persisting in trying to downgrade Wordsworth's achievements by questioning the place of "daffodils" in todays society!!!! You also extracted the urine earlier about "wandering lonely as a cloud". If you know so much of his poetry, you must surely know that he himself would not have considered that one of his major poems. It is probably one of his best known (and loved) by the general public, but it is not what he is known by literary critics for, as you should well know. The fact that it is so well loved by many can draw people in to poetry, as opposed to putting people off as you suggest. Wordsworth is not my favourite of the Romantics, but I would not underestimate his place in literary history, or his worth. But you seem to know better. Incidentally, I am not following Bloom's canon. I can think for myself, and if he deems the English Romantics amongst the most important poets, I can only say good on him, I agree. And if we followed your logic, with reference to the last sentence, we would have lost centuries of priceless art, as philistines of today would say, it's not relevant to me now, instead of looking at things in context.

(b) to our time period, and our audience)

Well, how do you contextualize them, then? If you consider the trite rhyme schemes and meter in which they gushed about nature ad nauseum, how seriously should we take them?

I would like to state the claim that Wordsworth is more relevant today than he ever has been. Whereas I agree that he has his faults, even Byron at the time attacks his work as “namby pamby” though that may be a non-critical approach I think we can understand Byron’s argument in that phrase. He is not a perfect poet by any degree and I would even support JBI’s idea that he was taken down a notch in estimation if only to widen the ground to examine other poets. However, I would still argue that his simple pastoral pieces offer something in today’s hectic and celebrity-obsessed world. I would not dismiss Wordsworth lightly.

The “trite rhyme schemes and meter” or simple meter is of course the sole objective of pastoral poetry isn’t it? To reflect the simplicity of the pastoral? Surely a complex, ambiguous meter defeats its very purpose?

What Wordsworth offers the reader of today is a space in which to reflect peacefully, a mediation even, rejecting the fast-paced stress society that we are increasingly forced to live in. Reading Wordsworth helps to remind us that that the simplicity of nature can help to "repair" us from the stresses of daily life. Take the last stanza of “To The Same Flower” (daisy):

Bright Flower! For by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,
Sweet silent creature!
That breath’st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature!

I would argue that it is a wise person that is able to seek comfort in the small things in life, the sun and air, nature, life, and with it our very time on earth itself. It is a reflective person that is able to attempt to stand outside of the madness of everyday life and reflect upon these things. To worship the daisy in this sense of the word is not “namby pamby” at all, to criticise it in this sense is to totally miss the point of Wordsworth’s objective (or my interpretation of it). No, to wish to “share” in the simple nature of these things around us, to mediate and reflect with a calm mind is to allow us to appreciate the simple pleasures of the world. Or something like that.

I can’t recall which philosopher replied to Alexander the Great’s offer of “anything you want in the world is yours” with a simple request for him to move out of the way of the sun, but he obviously shared the same thoughts as expressed in the poem above. He would also share some of the thoughts of Ruskin who encouraged the working classes to paint and vigorously taught them to do so. Not of course that he expected to produce great artists out of everyone, but that he wanted to encourage people simply to see.

I am not suggesting that we all immediately embrace the love of the daisy and sit under a tree by some shady brook, for to do so would spoil the drive to force-sell car insurance to old people and generally interfere with office politics.(Sorry) No, occasionally reflecting in this way wouldn't hurt though. What I am suggesting is that we don’t just dismiss Wordsworth’s ad nauseum references to nature out of hand, and that if we allow them to, Wordsworth’s works can still offer something for our time, and for our lives. ;)

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Originally Posted by Neely

I can’t recall which philosopher replied to Alexander the Great’s offer of “anything you want in the world is yours” with a simple request for him to move out of the way of the sun, but he obviously shared the same thoughts as expressed in the poem above.

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Diogenes of Sinope!

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Originally Posted by JBI

Ironically enough, looking back on it, I keep thinking to myself what the hell was I thinking when I wrote that out. Keats to me now is the best of them, and Byron the worst of them. Seriously, what possessed me then to value Byron of the three the highest. Now I see myself not really liking Shelley still, besides one or two poems, and not liking Byron at all, even Don Juan, which before I thought great.

Goes to show what this "rating of stuff" really means.


In general though I have stopped liking, for the most part, English Romantic Poetry. It doesn't quite do it for me anymore, the same way modernists, and post-modernists do. Perhaps then it may have been a lack of exposure, or perhaps a lack of range, but even so, how the hell could I have rated Byron over Keats?

Oh, and P.S., Keats was far more influential on Tennyson than Byron. Tennyson admitted it himself more than once, especially in agreeing in his friend A. H. Hallam's assessment of he as a Keatsian poet.

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I love the camaraderie that these poets seem to share. Byron being at Shelley's funeral, or... funeral pyre, and all that.

I personally don't know all that much about Tennyson, though I enjoy the work I've read. I was just simply putting the 'role model' factor out there.

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Originally Posted by JBI

In general though I have stopped liking, for the most part, English Romantic Poetry. It doesn't quite do it for me anymore, the same way modernists, and post-modernists do. Perhaps then it may have been a lack of exposure, or perhaps a lack of range, but even so, how the hell could I have rated Byron over Keats?

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Hehe, I rememeber you saying you liked Byron over Keats and thought it odd. Yes i agree about the lack of range. But then they were breaking ground and really didn't have (at least to their perception) much of a tradition to fall back on.

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Oh, and P.S., Keats was far more influential on Tennyson than Byron. Tennyson admitted it himself more than once, especially in agreeing in his friend A. H. Hallam's assessment of he as a Keatsian poet.

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Oh absolutely. It's quite evident in their styles, especially Tennyson's early poetry.

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Originally Posted by Saladin

Diogenes of Sinope!

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Ah thank you Mr Saladin.

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Originally Posted by Neely

I can’t recall which philosopher replied to Alexander the Great’s offer of “anything you want in the world is yours” with a simple request for him to move out of the way of the sun, but he obviously shared the same thoughts as expressed in the poem above.

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Diogenes of Sinope, also known as Diogenes "the Cynic" or Diogenes "the Dog" would not have expressed the sentiments which Wordsworth gives voice to in that poem. That is a gross misreading of his philosophy. He was an extreme ascetic who preached the vanity of human nature and the fruitlessness of desire. He walked around naked, begged for a living, and slept in a tub. The people of Athens would make fun of him, would throw bones at him and call him "dog" to which he would raise his leg and urinate on them. He walked around in the daytime with a lantern looking for an honest man. He publicly mocked Plato in his academy and hurled a featherless chicken at him saying "Behold Plato's man." He was not a pretty nature lover as you would portray him. He was something else. When you mention a philosopher, please get their philosophy right. I have a great deal of respect for Diogenes, almost as much as I have for Silenus, and it bothers me when I see his ideas misrepresented.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

Diogenes of Sinope, also known as Diogenes "the Cynic" or Diogenes "the Dog" would not have expressed the sentiments which Wordsworth gives voice to in that poem. That is a gross misreading of his philosophy. He was an extreme ascetic who preached the vanity of human nature and the fruitlessness of desire. He walked around naked, begged for a living, and slept in a tub. The people of Athens would make fun of him, would throw bones at him and call him "dog" to which he would raise his leg and urinate on them. He walked around in the daytime with a lantern looking for an honest man. He publicly mocked Plato in his academy and hurled a featherless chicken at him saying "Behold Plato's man." He was not a pretty nature lover as you would portray him. He was something else. When you mention a philosopher, please get their philosophy right. I have a great deal of respect for Diogenes, almost as much as I have for Silenus, and it bothers me when I see his ideas misrepresented.

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I didn't say that he would make an ideal walking companion with Wordsworth, or that Diogenes was a nature lover as such, but you cannot fail to see the similarities in rejecting the "commercial" world (for a want for a better word) and embracing life's simplicities, such as the rays of the sun, as is evident with the example I laid out.