Week-1 Lesson -2

Topic: Introduction to Romanticism

Course Title: The Romantic Poets

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiRWBI0JTYQ

In this Session we will study about:-

1. Wordsworth definition of poetry

2. Coleridge’s idea of fancy and High Imagination

3. Blake’s take on Art

Wordsworth definition of poetry

Wordsworth propounded his views on poetry, its nature and functions and the
qualification of a true poet in his Preface. So far as the nature of poetry is
concerned, Wordsworth is of the opinion that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings.” Poetry has its origin in the internal feelings of the poet. It is
a matter of passion, mood and temperament. Poetry cannot be produced by strictly
adhering to the rules laid down by the Classicists. It must flow out naturally and
smoothly from the soul of the poet.
But it must be noted that good poetry, according to Wordsworth, is never an
immediate expression of such powerful emotions. A good poet must ponder over
them long and deeply.  In the words of Wordsworth, “poetry has its origin in
emotions recollected in tranquility.”

Process of Poetic Composition

There are four stages which play a very crucial role in converting an experience
into a pleasing composition.

Stage One: Observation

First comesobservation or perception of some object, character or incident which
sets up powerful emotions in the mind of the poet.

Stage Two: Recollection

Next comes the contemplation or recollection of that emotion in tranquility. It must
be noted that at this stage memory comes into play and brings out what had been
lying in the unconscious for days, months or years. A similar kind of incident
triggers the poet to visit the past experiences stored in the unexplored regions of
his mind.

Stage Three: Filtering

The third stage is that of filtering wherein the poet  is purged of non-essential
elements and thus makes his experience communicable to all men.

Stage Four: Composition

The fourth stage is when the actual composition begins. The poet seeks to convey
his emotions through print and turns into a communicator. In the words of
Wordsworth he becomes a man speaking to men. What is important to him is not
just expressing his joy but sharing it with his readers. The Solitary Reaper by
Wordsworth demonstrates this poetic process.

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

The Solitary Reaper, William Wordsworth

Feelings started overflowing spontaneously as the poet listened to the song of the
Highland girl: “the Vale profound / Is overflowing with the sound.” Removed from
the scene he started recollecting his experiences in tranquillity and exhuming
theme of the song and causes its joyousness. Slowly but gradually this state of
mind disappears, and an emotion which is quite similar to the original is generated.
It soon turns into feeling and starts resonating and he begins composing his poem
with “the music” he feels in his heart “Long after it was heard no more” causes its
joyousness.

Coleridge’s idea of fancy and High Imagination

The Biographia Literaria an autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor

Coleridge, which he published in 1817. It was one of Coleridge’s main critical
studies. In this work, he discussed the elements of writing. The work is long and
seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it
is not a straightforward autobiography. Although the work is not written from
Coleridge’s poetic mind, it is still written with the qualities and rhythm of the
poetic. Through this discussion, he makes many value judgments, leaving his
audience with a clear understand of his stance on certain issues. Some of the issues
he tackles include politics, religion, social values, and human identity. He
expresses his own thoughts from a personal viewpoint.
Imagination
Imagination in its real sense denotes the working of poetic minds upon external
objects or objects visible to the eyes. Imaginative process sometimes adds
additional properties to an object or sometimes abstracts from it some of its
properties. Therefore, imagination thus transforms the object into something new.
It modifies and even creates new objects.
According to Coleridge, imagination has two types: Primary and Secondary.
• According to him the primary imagination is “the living power and prime agent
of all human perception”. Primary is perceiving the impressions of the outer world
through the senses. It is a spontaneous act of the human mind, the image so formed
of the outside world unconsciously and involuntarily. It is universal and is
possessed by all.
• According to him the secondary imagination is the poetic vision, the faculty that
a poet has “to idealize and unify”. It is an echo of the former, co-existing with the
conscious will. It works upon the raw materials that are sensations and impressions
supplied the primary imagination. It is the secondary imagination which makes any
artistic creation possible and root of all poetic activity. It is considered as shaping
and modifying power.
Coleridge calls secondary imagination a magical power; it fuses various faculties
of human soul- will, emotion, intellect, perception. It fuses internal and external,
the subjective and objective.
The primary and the secondary imaginations do not differ from each other in kind.
The difference between them is one of degree. The secondary imagination is more
active, more conscious than the primary one. The primary imagination is universal
while secondary is a peculiar privilege enjoyed by the artist.
The significance of the Imagination for Coleridge was that it represented the sole
faculty within man that was able to achieve the romantic ambition of reuniting the
subject and the object; the world of the self and the world of nature. For him, the
most important aspect of the imagination was that it was active to the highest
degree.
Fancy
Coleridge regards fancy to be the inferior to imagination. It is according to him a
creative power. It only combines different things into different shapes, not like
imagination to fuse them into one. According to him, it is the process of “bringing
together images dissimilar in the main, by source”. It has no other counters to play
with, but fixities and definites. Fancy, in Coleridge’s eyes was employed for tasks
that were “passive” and “mechanical”.
The distinction between Fancy and the Imagination
The distinction made by Coleridge between Fancy and the Imagination rested on
the fact that fancy was concerned with the mechanical operations of the mind while
imagination on the other hand is described the mysterious power. “The Primary
Imagination” was for Coleridge, the “necessary imagination” as it makes images
and impressions of what it receives through the senses. It represents man’s ability
to learn from nature. The over arching property of the primary imagination was
that it was common to all people. Whereas “The Secondary imagination” on the
other hand, represents a superior faculty which could only be associated with
artistic genius. A key and defining attribute of the secondary imagination was a
free and deliberate will.
Thus imagination creates new shapes and forms of beauty by fusing and unifying
the different impressions it receives from the external world. Whereas Fancy is a
kind of memory; it randomly brings together images, and even when brought
together, they continue to retain their separate individual properties.
Conclusion
Critics have reacted strongly to the Biographia Literaria. But Coleridge delivers the
Biographia Literaria without a second thought of whether or not there will be any
disagreement from his audience. He does not cater to one audience; he just
expresses his thoughts.
Coleridge owned his interest in study of theory of imagination. He is the first critic
to study the nature of imagination and examine its role in creative activity. While
most of the critics use Fancy and imagination almost as synonyms, Coleridge is the
first critic to distinguish between them and define their respective roles. He
distinguishes between primary and secondary imagination. Coleridge’s treatment
of the subject is characterized by greater depth, penetration and philosophical
subtlety. It is his unique contribution to the literary theory.

Blake’s take on Art

Mark Lussier, from Arizona State University, writes an article, “Scientific Objects
and Blake’s Objections to Science”, that compares the science and imagination
within a scientific object. Lussier writes about scientific instruments that display
his beliefs. A compass took role in one of Williams Blake’s paintings; “Newton” to
represent that Newton could not get out of his circle of thought and reason. In this
painting, a nude scientist, Newton, bends over and draws with a compass to create
a perfect circle at the bottom of the ocean. “The compass imposes an imaginary
order…” (Lussier 120). He describes how Blake took scientific instruments, such
as the microscope and telescope, and used them to influence others about his
beliefs on imagination. “In Blake’s age, the telescope created the most sensational
results, a cultural phenomenon perhaps best exemplified by the forty-foot
reflecting model invented by William Herschel and used in discovery of the planet
Uranus thus enlarging the solar system, and to map the Milky Way, thus expanding
contemporary views of the universe itself.” (Lussier 121). Blake includes these
scientific instruments in his paintings and poems to symbolize imagination and
how imagination is endless. Before the telescope and microscope, no one believed
in what they couldn’t see. Blake wants people to see that at the end of our
understanding, is where the endless domain of our imaginations begins.

Blake intellectually compares and contrasts the human imagination to scientific

instruments. He does not believe in science because there are rules that set limits to
the thought process and what could be possible. He believes in a never ending
imagination within our brain, locked up by our perception. Although Blake does
not believe in science, he was able to use scientific instruments, such as the
telescope, that provided support to his beliefs. Even though Blake uses these
instruments to represent his ideas, he does not believe that seeing the details
prevailed beneficial. For example, looking through a telescope to see the colors
and shapes of Mars diminishes our opportunity to imagine all the possibilities of
what could exist there. For example, if I had to choose between reading a book and
watching a movie about the same story, choosing to watch the movie first hinders
my opportunity to imagine all the details within the story; what the characters look
like, what the places look like, and so on. If I want to read the book after seeing the
movie, I would already have an idea of what everything looks like in a movie,
versus what I could imagine. Blake believes in reading the book first so that our
imagination can create the details for us. Reading is a great way to exercise
imagination. Blake did that by expressing his imagination through his poetry and
paintings. In order to understand the message he conveys, he encourages us to
broaden our imagination so that we can make the connections he makes and see
what he sees. As children we have dreams about things we’ve never seen, or
dreams that our imagination creates based off of all the things we have seen
throughout our life. Blake tells us that imagination creates these images and ideas
of things that seem impossible. Today almost nothing seems impossible. So many
people doubted the idea of electricity, but Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
The invention itself starts with an idea and turns into reality. Referring back to one
of his paintings, “Newton”, the compass was invented using imagination, but
Blake does not agree that the compass should obtain an imaginary view. “The
compass imposes an imaginary order, thereby providing an instrumental mediation
for mental projection onto what Blake termed “The Vegetable Glass of Nature,”
yet this imaginary order should not be (but often is) confused with both the
imagination and its perception of the real.” (Lussier 120). Although it took
imagination to create the compass, the compass creates something that does not
pertain to nature. A perfect circle does not exist in nature, and Blake believes that
“’Nature is Imagination.’” (Lussier 120). The Circle that Newton is drawing in
Blake’s painting represents his thoughts and ideas and how he stays within his
comfort zone of thought and reality. This defies Blake’s thoughts of endless
imagination.