Which is your favourite poet of that generation of the romantic poets who blossomed early and died young? Why?
Thanks :wave:
Printable View
Which is your favourite poet of that generation of the romantic poets who blossomed early and died young? Why?
Thanks :wave:
In the order of preference: Keats, Byron and Shelley.
Keats is lyrical and delicate and vivid, Byron is more descriptive and solid, Shelley is ephemeral and "ineffectual". All three can be extremely beautiful. They might not be very influential in our time but their unique beauty will keep them alive whether our generation care for them or not.
Keats is my favorite poet, if I have any and regarding Byron and Shelley, I think Shelley was a more mature poet, because Byron had that "compromisse" with himself. If we consider Lord Byron to be Byron's greatest creation...
Anyways, I disagree with the words used to describe Shelley. For once I think ephemeral is something that is better applied to Keat's poetry and since you used ineffectual between "" I have no real clue of what you meant.
Anyways, Shelley was the true intelectual of the trio, the most conected with the philosophical and social changes of his time. His poetry reflects it quite strongly, he is the more idealogical of the trio.
"a beautiful ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." Mathew Arnold on Shelley,
a beautiful ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." Mathew Arnold on Shelley
Yet Shelley is certainly a far greater poet than Matthew Arnold.
Byron. Shelly was got what he deserved dying young, and Keats uses way too much visual description; his work is way too thick to enjoy on the same scale as Byron..
Shelly got what he deserved? Keats uses too much visual description? Where is the cut-off point?
Personally, I like all three... a lot. I might also add Novalis and Hölderlin (who may not have died at an exceptionally young age... but certainly his career as a poet was cut tragically short. My personal favorite of the generation, however, would have to be William Blake... who still died far too young in spite of his age.
Yes that is an odd comment. There is a few names that we could add, Baudelaire didn't die that old either, the two greatest brazilian romantic poets (Castro Alves and Gonçalves Dias) died before the 30's and if we think well, the Bronte sisters (they are a later generation) also died rather young and Rimbaud "died" :D
I am really wondering what Keats have to do with visual description. I think nothing, ,maybe in his hyperion or such, but those are his minor works without doubt.
And Mathew Arnold is just influeced by the early vision of Shelley as a minor romantic poet that didn't considered Shelley's critical capacities (His Defense of Poetry is one of the best texts ever about Poetry) and his philosophical capacity. He is considerable less vain that Arnold supposes him to be.
But I agree, while Wordsworth and Coleridge proposed a new poetic vision, it was Blake that dared to take it to new world of symbolism and imagination and Keats that went most far in pure aesthetical perfection. Those two are the giants of the english romanticism.
Shelley being greater than Arnold is highly debatable. Maybe (I repeat 'maybe') greater as a poet but as a critic, Arnold's influence is far more noticeable and effective (thanks to TS Eliot) than Shelley's. What makes Keats great makes Shelley less so. Shelley's 'dying ambers', 'shifting clouds' 'flying leaves' are transient and abstract compared to Keats's concrete 'gleaner' or 'deep delved earth' or all that we find on the Grecian Urn. Byron is great at writing long descriptive poems. Name a great 'long' poem by Shelley while Don Juan sits up there along with the greatest poems written in English language. If that was not enough, couple this achievement with Childe Harold and the poetic play, 'Manfred' (all three 'younger Romantics') tried their hands at poetic plays but 'Manfred' is the only true masterpiece written by any of this lot). Even Keats's Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion etc are great enough long poems. Keats wins hands down as a writer of shorter poems, sonnets and lyrics. Shelley had lyricism but then... (sorry time for the school run!)
Shelley being greater than Arnold is highly debatable.
I suppose that any critical assertion is "debatable". You might argue that the assertion that Shakespeare is greater than Matthew Arnold is debatable. I don't know that many would agree. The fact that Shelley is immediately thought of among the ranks of the 6 great English Romantics (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Blake, Keats, and Shelley) certainly says much for his recognition as a poet. Whether Keats or Shelley was the greater poet... well THAT is certainly "highly debatable. I'd probably lean toward Keats myself. Arnold... as good as he may be... is certainly not of that rank. Arnold's influence as a critic may certainly have been influential... especially during the era when T.S. Eliot was seen as the last word in literary criticism. Let's face it, Eliot's criticism must always be taken with a very large grain of salt. He repeatedly dismissed and underrated (and even denied having read) Whitman... in spite of the earlier poet's obvious influences. He also dismisses Shelley, and Blake (who is "only a poet of genius?") and Romanticism in general... often, one suspects, out of a fear of direct comparison with those poets most influential upon his own development.
I'm afraid that I'd rather take Yeat's opinions or Harold Bloom's critical appraisal of Shelley's achievements. He is on of the great lyric poets. The fact that Shelley may not have been as successful as that Byron (not to underrate him) or any number of other poets in composing extended or long poems is irrelevant. The scale of a work of art has little to do with its aesthetic value. Baudelaire generally stands as the greatest poet of France (again arguable) and yet he composed no truly "long" poem. The reputation of Chopin and Debussy rests largely upon small... even intimate compositions. The same may be said of Degas and Van Gogh. In spite of this... I question the notion that Shelley was unable to compose a successful long poem, his grand elegy to Keats, Adonais, in which Shelley, as Bloom states, "beautifully sustains his lyric drive through four hundred and ninety-five lines." I suspect that many poets, including certainly Matthew Arnold, would wish only once to have written a lyric as memorable as Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, The Cloud, Mont Blanc, Mutability II, or unquestionably Ozymandias. The fact that he had composed such a body of poetry the age of thirty is further remarkable... especially when one considers that very few of the great epic poets (Dante, Milton, Virgil, Edmund Spencer, etc...) would have survived as anything more than minor poets had they died at such an early age.
By Shelly getting what he deserved, I was commenting on the fact that he abandoned his son and pregnant wife to go chase Marry, eventually leading to her suicide, just days before he went out to finally marry Marry.
Oh I'm sure that Shelley in many ways was a less-than-ideal human being. Indeed... if I were to meet him today I might just think he was a jerk... but then again, a great many artists were jerks (or worse). The problem is that it is quite easy to confuse the artist's biography with the artist. Picasso was a jerk... unquestionably. Beethoven was surly at best... as was Michelangelo. I don't know that I'd like to hang out with either of them in spite of their artistic brilliance. Caravaggio? Well what can you say about a hateful drunkard that peddled homo-erotic imagery of young boys to pedophile Catholic Cardinals and Bishops and killed a man in a duel over a tennis match... but what a painter! J.L Borges once tackled the question "Can an artist create art that is truly greater than he?" (It was in one of his many essays). He came to the conclusion that one cannot create art that is more intelligent or more moral or more sensitive than one is oneself. As a result... in spite of Mozart's social immaturity, Borges would argue that there was a side of him of the true depth and maturity which allowed him to compose a work such as The Marriage of Figaro or the Requiem. I don't know. But I somehow suspect that in spite of certain questionable traits there was something more to Shelley. Something that allowed him... inspired him to produce poems of real depth and feeling... and even compassion for humankind.
I'd say Keats, Byron, Shelley.
I rank Keats so highly because of his sheer talent at writing verse. His longer poems like Enymion (which he, himself, considered terrible), Lamia, Hyperion, etc. all display the depth and sensuality of his use of imagery. His best works are definitely his shorter poems though, when his ideas are more concentrated.
Personally, I think Keats possessed more talent than Byron, but Byron's thematic influences outlasted Keats. The Byronic hero has been used on numerous occassions by both Byron's contemporaries and in the modern times (M. Shelley's Frankenstein, Bronte's Heathcliff, etc.), and Byron's very life embodied romantic sentiments, more so than Keats (although Byron held all the other romantic poets contempuously)
As for Shelley. I personally enjoy everything he's written, from short poems like Ode to the West Wind, to long poems like Adonias. In all actuality though, Shelley had less talent than Keats and less innovation than Byron (a fact he was most likely fully aware of).
**
Also, Matthew Arnold's literary reputation (aside from his criticism) rests entirely on one poem, Dover Beach, while Shelley produced numerous outstanding poems that no one poem characterizes him.
best of each : Keats - Ode to a Nightingale
Byron - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Shelley-Ozymandias
I meant those three of the second generation of the English romantic poets (W.Blake is sometimes considered pre-romantic, sometimes is incuded in the first generation with Wordsworth and Coleridge) :)Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
...However I find your discussion also interesting!
I can't agree with you. He was still 19 whene he get married and he eloped with Mary Godwin because he really loved her :thumbs_up . He did it according to his belief that love can overcame any social constriction. Love and freedom will defeat shortcomings and evils of the society. He was just self-consistent.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Obviously, Byron is not paragorn of moral behavior if Shelley gets what he deserved... That makes even less sense, Shelley was the kind of person which "moral" is devoted to social themes, not individuals. That was possible his problem. And yes, if Byron composed great dramatic poems Shelly let us Adonais, which is possible the greatest elegy of english language. Not to mention he more than showed his capacity with sonnets and other minor forms.
Keats works with long poems is being exagerated. The Odes are not exactly long and alongside his sonnets they are his best poetry. It is Keats capacity to produce lines that are ephemeral and yet constant that make us seem him a poem so sublime as Dante or Ovid... those wings...
As criticals? They are all worst than Coleridge, so why the argument.
And Shelley ? One of the first to reckon Keats and his Defense of Poetry outranks anything that Arnold wrote. Its influece ? Goes until Jorge Luis Borges that loved to quote a few ideas inside there and Borges's criticism of literature easily replaced T.S.Elliot criticism.
By the way, the outlasting influence of Keats is today bigger than Byron. Keats poems and verses are today more well know, quoted and his themes repeated. Oscar Wilde and Yeats owns more to Keats than to Byron for example and Yeats is the head of the last great poetic movement of lyric poetric language.
I love Keats and my favourite poem by him is "Ode on a Grecian Urn".there are aspects of his poetry that reminds me of Giacomo Leopardi, especially the idea that happiness is a consequence of non fulfillment and the great sensibility.
I like Shelley too mainly because of his social commitment and of his strong ideology and Byron's Don Juan struck me as an extremely witty and ironic work...and I was fascinated by "We'll Go No More a-Roving".
I will repeat my preference:
Keats
Byron
Shelly
My favourite poems:
Adonais
Lines to an Indian Air (sheer lyricism)
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Still Shelley is not the best of the lot in spite of his two poems being my top two favorites! Shelley was very melodic but produced less memorable works than the other two. As far as the sheer grandeur of achievement is concerned, Keats towers above the rest. Byron's long poems, wit and personality makes him a great contender for the second place. I do not consider 'Adonais' to be a 'long' poem (one poem that I re-read quite often and most of the time in one sitting). If T S Eliot had 'anxiety of influence' then why would he rate his immediate predecessor, Mathew Arnold so high?
As far as Mathew Arnold is concerned, he might not be very big across the Pond but here in the Old Blighty, he is rated quite high. He is counted among the trio of the great Older Victorians: Browning, Tennyson and Arnold. Dover Beach is not the only great poem he wrote (he wrote it during his honey moon!!!). You have to read his Sohrab and Rustum , The Scholar Gypsy and obviously his elegy Thyrsis, written on the death of his poet-friend Arthur Hugh Clough.
I'll paste Shelley's Lines to an Indain Air, published posthumously and one of the least well known of his poems, the lyrical beauty of this short poem has aided me a lot in winning nice, cultured female friends:lol:
Lines to an Indian Air
1.
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee, 5
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!
2.
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream— 10
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart;—
As I must on thine, 15
Oh, beloved as thou art!
3.
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale. 20
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;—
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.
Personally I would probably rank Keats over Byron or Shelley... although I am more than certain that a strong argument could be made for any one of the three. I would never begin to think of placing Arnold within the same rank. Admittedly, he may be more appreciated in Britain than in the US... but I have never imagined him as any more than one of many marvelous second-tier poets of the era. I've never heard of him mentioned as standing on par with Tennyson or Browning... indeed I would be far more likely to give Rossetti the nod for a third of that group... if not Hopkins. As for Eliot's "anxiety of influence" I suspect that he had no problem in acknowledging Arnold because he never felt threatened or overwhelmed by his aesthetic achievements. Eliot clearly knew that Whitman cast a huge shadow... just as a writer like Becket knew that Joyce's influence was so huge and obvious that he could only escape it by abandoning the English language.
Keats appeals to youth - a melodic sensuousness and a wistful nostalgia that engage younger readers..he does however veer from sublimity to bathos more frequently, a pardonable fault at his age.
Knowing his frail physical condition intensifies the tragic fatefulness that underlies the reading of his work. He is terribly aware of mortality. Hyperion is only a fragment, but Keats evokes a sadness in the fall that is as epically grand as Milton's.
The Anxiety of influence is just an expression. They are less anxious than one may think.
I think this thing about long poems is a bit irrelevant. Shelley was very good doing what he did and I think he is more consistent than Byron, but that is not important either.
As the great victorians, that group is pushing a little. Unlike the 6 of romantism, that group was not that "great" and the distance between then is a big far. Even Tennyson is a bit secundary when compared with Browning. One could push Oscar Wilde there, this kind of thing.
One thing is however true, Shelley is not vain, ephemeral. That is a huge mistake and misleading because of the kind of popularity Shelley enjoyed at first, focused only in part of his poetry.
As the reputations stand at this point in literary history, Byron is considered the greatest of ALL three (Keats included), his persona, the Byronic hero "tired of living but not of life" appears again and again in modernist and postmodern literature. Being a student of Jerome McGann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_McGann) I am extremely reluctant to accept the inferiority of Byron's genius. Shelley's reputation is yet to recover from the Victorians and the critics who followed them. Modernism, with its emphasis on concreteness and 'objective co-relative' had little sympathy for his hazy and obscure imagery. Like Keats, Shelley also has this personal thing behind his persona, his prediction concerning his own young death at the end of 'Adonais' and elsewhere:Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
...my spirit's bark is driven,
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;...
his women and his great wife, the creator of 'Frankenstein', his aristocratic background and radical views, his financial difficulties and his reluctance to address them etc. He tied his reputation with Keats's in Adonais. The legend of three 'young' romantic poets, who died young and left copious amount of work behind and then there is the question of the literary canon. For us foreigners American Literature is Hemingway, Faulkner and Melville. I remember the shock and horror when Marcus Smith refused to teach us Hemingway and 'forced' Walker Percy's 'The Moviegoer' on us which many of us found boring and inconsequential! Although it led me to many interesting novels by Percy himself and the subsequent discovery of that, the most hilarious of American novels, 'A Confederacy of Dunces' by another writer who died young, Toole, still the question was asked about the exclusion of 'Papa' Hemingway. People look at the canon differently according to their geographical location. In England, Shelley's reputation has not been quite high for a long long time whereas everywhere else the 'canon' is revered more and a 'canonical' figure enjoys more respect. The canon is more dynamic in its native country whereas it is more static and 'canonical' in other places. Joyce Carol Oats or Flannery O'Connor or Eudora Alice Welty are big in America, they are part of the 'current' and dynamic canon, they are not appreciated in the same way elsewhere. The way literary reputation stands at this moment in time, Lord Byron is the most admired of the three in his native country.
About Beckett and Joyce (sorry could not overlook that one). Beckett did not write in French, he wrote in French and English. Beckett achieved greatness by going against the Joycean current, he was Joyce's opposite in literary terms. Nobody can write English language like Beckett did, but then who can write our language quite like James Joyce?
"I who had loved the image of old Geulincx, dead young, who left me free, on the black boat of Ulysses, to crawl towards the East, along the deck. That is a great measure of freedom, for him who has not the pioneering spirit. And from the poop, poring upon the wave, a sadly rejoicing slave, I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck"
Samuel Beckett Molly
You said a whole lot there Mr K, but opinion ain't fact: the English Lit canon is as happy with Shelley as with Byron..perhaps even more so, as Byron requires greater historical sensibility. And as for the dynamics of canon-development, in Britain the canon is utterly ossified, arrested in evolution just as post-structuralism reared its head above the Parisian barricades.
My order would be Keats, Shelley, Byron.
As to that other side argument, Shelley is way, way greater poet than Arnold, not even close. And Shelley isn't ineffectual. He's quite intellectual, certainly the most intellectual of the three poets.
which of the three is the only one who can make you LAUGH and can make You CRY..?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6331869.stmQuote:
Originally Posted by nebish
As I said, canon is never ossified in its native country. From here, the American canon seems to be running round the three 'Biggies' I mentioned above. The true dynamics of a culture and its manifestations in art and literature become more and more obvious as you come closer. The TLS does not give the true picture of the English canon, there are old farts who read and admire it and then there are others who read it in British Council libraries and think of it as the last word on English Literature. "Too much water has passed under the butt bridge, in both directions" as Samuel Beckett would put it. Things change. The British may have failed to produce a Derrida or Foucault or Badiou, the influence of these thinkers managed to cross the Chanel and did play havoc with the established notions here and got the things moving in diverse directions. Nothing stays the same.
Well, first of all I dispute that Byron is considered more important than Shelley in the canon. When I went to school, we barely touched Byron while we spent a considerable amount of time on Shelley. Possibly more on Shelley than Keats, since Shelley has so much more work. And this was in a class devoted to the Romantic poets. So I don't know what you're talking about.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow
I wasn't taught Byron either but then I was not taught Ben Jonson, Dryden, Tennyson (we had Arnold in our syllabus though!) either and I chose never to read Dickens. I strongly believe that all great art is measured by the effect it has on the subsequent works of art. Keats's 'sensuousness' lives, the Byronic hero lives and Byronic wit lives in subsequent works of art. I studied 'Adonais' and 'Ode to the West Wind' and 'Ode to Intellectual Beauty' etc as a student. I taught them as well. I don't see their effect on the subsequent works of literature. Yes Yeats wrote on him but his phantasmal imagery is unique to him, too unique. To me Shelley's 'Complete Poetical Works' is a huge book with very little to offer for its size.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Fair enough as your opinion. But when you said it was canonical that Byron is more important than Shelley, well that I believe is inaccurate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow
As to Shelley's importance to other poets, yes Yeats, but therre is also Wallace Stevens, and I'm sure some others as well. I think Tennyson admired him too.
The Mask of Anarchy is detectable as an influence in every important political poem subsequently..
Shelley bringing intellectualism and philosophy to English Romantic poetry, that is the essence of the Shelley that "lives"
If Anything ,Lord Byron reputation diminished considerably while Keats and Shelley only increased with time.
As nebish pointed, Shelley added to literature because he is the romantic poet that was attuned with the socio-politic ideals of his time. We do not even need to go far, Mary Shelley was of course influenced by him. His notion that a literature is a big book writen by many hands can be found in Mallarme and Jorge Luis Borges. His place in the canon is indeed as secure as Byron's.
Keats "in life" managed to have impact over Byron and Shelley. T.S.Eliot considered the Odes among the greatest poems ever writen and that Keats was one of the most perfect sonnet's creators and admired even more Keats aesthetic theories. The most likely greatest poet of british origem after the romantics, Yeats, is influenced by Keats mostly. The Bronte sisters display equalily influence of the trio (and Wordsworth and Colerdige). Oscar Wilde display influences of Keats.
And that was really a matter of opinion,but I am sure american literature started a century before Faulkner or Hemingway and Twain, Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman and Dickinson have something to say about it.
The final point is that it is extremelly hard to really measure who is the more popular, influential and this won't be given by personal experiences but the trio is very qualificated and influential.
The only thing we should not allow is the notion that Shelley was ineffective, that is ridiculous.
Your point about Mask of Anarchy is valid but as far as philosophy is concerned, that has to be Rousseau whose influence both in philosophical and political aspects can not be overlooked. The political unrest in France inspired Romantic Poets and all of them were quite intellectual. Think of Blake when you think of intellectualism, think of Leigh Hunt when you think of political commitment. As far as the influence of friends and immediate acquaintances is concerned, all three were thoroughly influenced by Hunt, specially Shelley.Quote:
Originally Posted by nebish
1) Byron, because he was hot and I'd totally do him.
2) Shelley, because he'd join in.
3) Keats, because he would sit in the other room and listen.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Shelley was perhaps the first hippie. He believed in free-love and wasn't faithful to Wollstonecraft during the marriage. In fact, he consorted with her cousin, of all people (who, btw, also slept with Byron and had his child) - that's why she wrote Frankenstein. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by KateXX
If anyone "got what he deserved" it was Byron. Granted, I LOVE the man, because I love Byronic heroes and the tragic beauty of genius married with villany and self-awareness, but Byron was as hedonistic as they come. He was a massive slut who'd sleep with anything - man, woman, boy, transvestite girl, transvestite boy - was a drunk and a drug addict who was violent with his wife.
That said, I haven't read a poet yet who wasn't a slutty alcoholic libertine - except for Plath, and that's because she was horribly depressed and suicidal.
Poetic lives are part of the myth that perpetuates legacy and legend - it makes bards more interesting.
The answer to that question is as transparent as Britney's underwear: Bryon.Quote:
Originally Posted by nebish
Don Juan is witty and gritty satire that brought many a grin to my face. "She Walks in Beauty" made me cry because it touched me so.
If I might sustain ostentatious pedantry for a moment,
Shelley was a lyrical intellectual and every thinking man needs his bard.
Bryon was a histrionic feeler, and every emotional woman needs her troubadour.
Keats was a tedious rhymster, and every form lover needs a poet.
Bryon, m'lady? Would that be Bryon Gysin ?
Keats a slutty alcoholic libertine..? Granted he contracted venereal disease, granted he loved his Fanny, but compared with Lord B - who managed over 200 a year while in Venice - his libido was elfin
Gysin is a cheap imitation of the authentic, sublime Georgie. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by nebish
Wilde describe Shelley as a boy`s poet whilst Keats was a man`s poet. I prefer the poetry of Keats but revere the politics of Shelley.
Shelley, Keats, Byron
I think the philosophical merit of Shelley gives his poems more lasting power for me; there's more to consider there. But that's just my opinion.