Looking at Romance: something from the German Romantic School
I began this blog originally, by doing some research and reading on Keats. There are times when I get reading one thing, and end up following some interesting detours, and this has been one of those times. On this detour, I have been reading something about the romantic period (approximately 1798-1850) in connection with the German school of thought, and in particular have been looking at Romanticism and Nature. I found this quoted passage in a book called, Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany (Robert M. Wemaer). I post it here because the quote is that of Tieck, who occupied the same position among the German romanticists as did Wordsworth among the English.
I would like to look at the historical context (social, political) that influenced writers and poets over this 50 year period to become part of this movement, and I hope to do some more research in this area before we have flown on by in our studies to a different period, if only because these periods are not disconnected from one another, nor does one stop one day and another begin the next.
The romanticist did not attach beauty of nature to the outside object, but rather, it was through "seeing imagination" and "sympathetic heart", that the poet was able to put himself in the place of something in nature in moments of contemplation. I question whether this thought, expressed in the past tense, cannot also be applied to poets today. In any case, it is Tieck's quote that follows, that I thought may be found to be of some interest to our studies at this time because there is connection between what happens in different countries, even if it plays out a lot differently or only with slight difference.
"Do you think we are really able to describe nature as it is?" asks Tieck in one of his critical writings. "Every eye must see it in a certain connection with the heart, else we do not see anything, at least nothing that would please us if told in verse. Is not every person of a poetic mind put into a mood in which trees and flowers appear to him like living and friendly beings, and is this not the interest that we take in nature? Not the green shrubs and plants delight us, but the hidden divinations that arise, as it were, from them and greet us. Man discovers then new and wondrous relations between himself and nature. Nature sympathizes with his pains and his sorrows, and he feels towards these lifeless objects friendship and affection; and, after that, no beautification, no sham additions, are needed to help along the beauty and charm of poetry....It seems to me it is plain enough that man looks upon nature as a thinking and feeling being; that, therefore, in looking upon a leaf or, perchance, upon the great ocean, many things will suggest themselves to his mind which are not in these objects themselves if seen by beings differently organized, but in man's own soul."
This passage in the book goes on to say that this is the "good side of the matter", and that it had also an "evil side", and that both of these tendencies could be studied in the works of Tieck. I find the use of the word "evil" interesting. Tieck was able to express in the above passage his personal "I", but Wemaer, says there is more to be considered. Apparently Tieck was so taken up with his ability to dream himself into nature's many forms, he forgot the real poetic end. Wemaer: "We admire the great human I for its wonder-working ability to do all these things [feel feelings, float in the sky, dissolve in the water, rustle with the wind, inhale fragrance]; we appreciate the poet's triumphant joy in making use of this ability granted him above all other mortals; and yet what is the purpose of it all? May the poet make use of his gift for its own sake, or should he use it for a higher end!"
These are interesting questions he poses. I have to ask myself whether there is some kind of responsibility attached to a published poet, or was there in earlier times a belief that poets had influence on society, and therefore were required (in some unwritten law), to be responsible for the thoughts conveyed in this high art form. We today in North America may not consider this question, or at least, not give it much thought. Should we? Are there not poets today in cultures somewhere in the world, who are admired and whose poetry is read, who have great influence? Is the poetry contained in music something we here need to be more aware of as having potential to have great influence on our society? I'm digressing here, but only to attempt to make the point that we perhaps do not ask enough questions. We accept readily and easily popular culture ideals and ideas. What are the ideas that are being conveyed?
Getting back to Tieck, he became self-indulgent, so that when his poetry is read, there is movement from one image to another of nature, but by the end of his poem, there is no definite picture that remains in the mind of the reader, and so there has been no definite thought or definite feeling conveyed. Impressionistic landscapes can be painted, and these landscapes were cultivated by the romanticists. Included in romantic era poetry were not only sights and lights, but also sounds of nature, sometimes conveyed by a shepherd pipe or a shepherd melody that conveyed primitive sadness and loneliness. Melody, landscape and mood merged into a spiritual ensemble. The romantic poet "attempted to reconcile the belief that God is in nature with the belief that God is revealed in nature; that God is an in-dwelling impersonal spirit with the belief that God is a person; a philosophic God with a belief in a biblical God."
Not unconnected with the romanticists was Jean Jacques Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), a Swiss-French philosopher and political theorist was one of the great figures of the French enlightenment and probably the most significant of those who shaped 19th-century Romanticism. Rousseau influenced people as Kant, Goethe, Robespierre, Tolstoy and the French revolutionists. His most celebrated theory was that of the “natural man”. He maintained that human beings were essentially good and equal in the state of nature but were corrupted by the introduction of property, agriculture, science and commerce. People entered into a social contract among themselves, established governments and educational systems to correct the inequalities brought about by the rise of civilization. Rousseau stood out as a new prophet in the history of man’s feelings for nature. The wild scenery, with cascades of water, mountains, abysses, gloomy forests, places of inaccessibility, lonely spots, were called in Rousseau’s day, “romantic”.
The romanticists, assumed a different, larger and more modern meaning. Although the romanticists were lovers of Rousseau’s type of scenery, they also liked the idyllic, pastoral or elegiac – all of nature, and not limited to any special kind of scenery. Love of nature was an intimacy of association. It grew out of spiritual connection between poet and nature. To the romanticists, nature was a world of living beings possessed of a life either given to them by the poet’s imagination, or already in them. They communed with nature as with beings possessed of an organization like their own selves, or with beings making up a vast world of divine revelations. They were symbolists and pantheists. Rousseau, had been, however, only a lover of nature and a theist.
The romanticists’ feeling for nature contained two approaches: subjective, in which “man is the measure of all things”, as expressed by Coleridge: - “Lady, we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live: Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!” and pantheistic, in which “God is prince of poets and the universe his chapbook”, as expressed by Tennyson: - “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies;--Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.”
Subjective animation of nature was not entirely new. It is found in the later poetry of the Greeks, especially in Theocritus; in the Renaissance, where it reached its highest development in Petrarch; in Shakespeare; and in Goethe, by whom it was handed over to the romanticists. Pantheism was not new either. It is found in the philosophy of the Orieintals, the Greeks, the Neoplatonists, but it was rarely ever used for poetic purposes. Since the middle of the 18th-century, however, philosophy joined itself to poetry; and this new poetic pantheism came to occupy a dominant position in the whole activity of the German romanticists. The German romanticists paid a lot of attention to aesthetics and psychology - they did not naively commune with nature, but knew the why and wherefore of the whole psychological process. It is not known to what extent Homer, Theocritus, Petrarch or Shakespeare had become conscious of the play of mind on matter. As we read these poets, however, as well as the English poets we have been studying, this is an interesting idea to keep in mind. Do we see subjectivity? Do we see pantheism? Do we read with discernment?
I would like to look at the historical context (social, political) that influenced writers and poets over this 50 year period to become part of this movement, and I hope to do some more research in this area before we have flown on by in our studies to a different period, if only because these periods are not disconnected from one another, nor does one stop one day and another begin the next.
The romanticist did not attach beauty of nature to the outside object, but rather, it was through "seeing imagination" and "sympathetic heart", that the poet was able to put himself in the place of something in nature in moments of contemplation. I question whether this thought, expressed in the past tense, cannot also be applied to poets today. In any case, it is Tieck's quote that follows, that I thought may be found to be of some interest to our studies at this time because there is connection between what happens in different countries, even if it plays out a lot differently or only with slight difference.
"Do you think we are really able to describe nature as it is?" asks Tieck in one of his critical writings. "Every eye must see it in a certain connection with the heart, else we do not see anything, at least nothing that would please us if told in verse. Is not every person of a poetic mind put into a mood in which trees and flowers appear to him like living and friendly beings, and is this not the interest that we take in nature? Not the green shrubs and plants delight us, but the hidden divinations that arise, as it were, from them and greet us. Man discovers then new and wondrous relations between himself and nature. Nature sympathizes with his pains and his sorrows, and he feels towards these lifeless objects friendship and affection; and, after that, no beautification, no sham additions, are needed to help along the beauty and charm of poetry....It seems to me it is plain enough that man looks upon nature as a thinking and feeling being; that, therefore, in looking upon a leaf or, perchance, upon the great ocean, many things will suggest themselves to his mind which are not in these objects themselves if seen by beings differently organized, but in man's own soul."
This passage in the book goes on to say that this is the "good side of the matter", and that it had also an "evil side", and that both of these tendencies could be studied in the works of Tieck. I find the use of the word "evil" interesting. Tieck was able to express in the above passage his personal "I", but Wemaer, says there is more to be considered. Apparently Tieck was so taken up with his ability to dream himself into nature's many forms, he forgot the real poetic end. Wemaer: "We admire the great human I for its wonder-working ability to do all these things [feel feelings, float in the sky, dissolve in the water, rustle with the wind, inhale fragrance]; we appreciate the poet's triumphant joy in making use of this ability granted him above all other mortals; and yet what is the purpose of it all? May the poet make use of his gift for its own sake, or should he use it for a higher end!"
These are interesting questions he poses. I have to ask myself whether there is some kind of responsibility attached to a published poet, or was there in earlier times a belief that poets had influence on society, and therefore were required (in some unwritten law), to be responsible for the thoughts conveyed in this high art form. We today in North America may not consider this question, or at least, not give it much thought. Should we? Are there not poets today in cultures somewhere in the world, who are admired and whose poetry is read, who have great influence? Is the poetry contained in music something we here need to be more aware of as having potential to have great influence on our society? I'm digressing here, but only to attempt to make the point that we perhaps do not ask enough questions. We accept readily and easily popular culture ideals and ideas. What are the ideas that are being conveyed?
Getting back to Tieck, he became self-indulgent, so that when his poetry is read, there is movement from one image to another of nature, but by the end of his poem, there is no definite picture that remains in the mind of the reader, and so there has been no definite thought or definite feeling conveyed. Impressionistic landscapes can be painted, and these landscapes were cultivated by the romanticists. Included in romantic era poetry were not only sights and lights, but also sounds of nature, sometimes conveyed by a shepherd pipe or a shepherd melody that conveyed primitive sadness and loneliness. Melody, landscape and mood merged into a spiritual ensemble. The romantic poet "attempted to reconcile the belief that God is in nature with the belief that God is revealed in nature; that God is an in-dwelling impersonal spirit with the belief that God is a person; a philosophic God with a belief in a biblical God."
Not unconnected with the romanticists was Jean Jacques Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), a Swiss-French philosopher and political theorist was one of the great figures of the French enlightenment and probably the most significant of those who shaped 19th-century Romanticism. Rousseau influenced people as Kant, Goethe, Robespierre, Tolstoy and the French revolutionists. His most celebrated theory was that of the “natural man”. He maintained that human beings were essentially good and equal in the state of nature but were corrupted by the introduction of property, agriculture, science and commerce. People entered into a social contract among themselves, established governments and educational systems to correct the inequalities brought about by the rise of civilization. Rousseau stood out as a new prophet in the history of man’s feelings for nature. The wild scenery, with cascades of water, mountains, abysses, gloomy forests, places of inaccessibility, lonely spots, were called in Rousseau’s day, “romantic”.
The romanticists, assumed a different, larger and more modern meaning. Although the romanticists were lovers of Rousseau’s type of scenery, they also liked the idyllic, pastoral or elegiac – all of nature, and not limited to any special kind of scenery. Love of nature was an intimacy of association. It grew out of spiritual connection between poet and nature. To the romanticists, nature was a world of living beings possessed of a life either given to them by the poet’s imagination, or already in them. They communed with nature as with beings possessed of an organization like their own selves, or with beings making up a vast world of divine revelations. They were symbolists and pantheists. Rousseau, had been, however, only a lover of nature and a theist.
The romanticists’ feeling for nature contained two approaches: subjective, in which “man is the measure of all things”, as expressed by Coleridge: - “Lady, we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live: Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!” and pantheistic, in which “God is prince of poets and the universe his chapbook”, as expressed by Tennyson: - “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies;--Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.”
Subjective animation of nature was not entirely new. It is found in the later poetry of the Greeks, especially in Theocritus; in the Renaissance, where it reached its highest development in Petrarch; in Shakespeare; and in Goethe, by whom it was handed over to the romanticists. Pantheism was not new either. It is found in the philosophy of the Orieintals, the Greeks, the Neoplatonists, but it was rarely ever used for poetic purposes. Since the middle of the 18th-century, however, philosophy joined itself to poetry; and this new poetic pantheism came to occupy a dominant position in the whole activity of the German romanticists. The German romanticists paid a lot of attention to aesthetics and psychology - they did not naively commune with nature, but knew the why and wherefore of the whole psychological process. It is not known to what extent Homer, Theocritus, Petrarch or Shakespeare had become conscious of the play of mind on matter. As we read these poets, however, as well as the English poets we have been studying, this is an interesting idea to keep in mind. Do we see subjectivity? Do we see pantheism? Do we read with discernment?
posted by maggiesong at 8:25 PM
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