Fine Art in Romantic Literature [pp. 52-66]

Fine Art in Romantic Literature.
And what reader, without looking at the
superscription, would conclude that the following stanza Was addressed to a daisy?
"Thou wander'st the wide world about,
Uncheck'd by pride or scrupulous doubt,
With friends to greet thee, or without,
Yet pleased and willing;
Meek, yielding to the occasion's call,
And all things suffering from all,
Thy function apostolical
In peace fulfilling."
The pantheism, propounded as a philosophical system by Spinoza, begins to appear
in fine art with Rousseau, and reaches its
literary consummation in Wordsworth and
Shelley.
Those who attribute intelligence and sensibility to natural objects may be divided into two classes, according as they transfer to
these objects the passing emotion with which
they themselves are affected, or endeavor to
ascertain what is the real or typical nature
of each created thing. Whenever the feelings of the poetizing individual are attributed
to insentient objects or to the lower animals,
we have an instance of what Ruskin calls
the "pathetic fallacy." Whenever an attemipt is made to express the specific quality of any object or existence inferior
to man in terms of human emotion or
activity, we are simply idealizing in a manner which is inseparable from our notions
of high art. The two modes of poetizing
are perfectly distinguishable in theory,
though they may be confounded in practice; as where one, in determining the specific quality of a flower, for example, permits
himself to be influenced by the mode of
feeling which is uppermost at the time.
The "pathetic fallacy" is more common
in passionate, the idealization of specific
quality in reflective poetry. Wordsworth is
a master of both, but particularly excels in
the second. The latter method is closely
akin to that of science. Goethe's discovery
that each of the various organs of the flower
is modeled upon the structure of the leaf is
an example to the purpose, and the union of
the poetic and scientific natures in an observer like Alexander von Humboldt will
illustrate the same truth. In fact, poetry
precedes and accompanies science, as we
have already remarked that it precedes and
accompanies history.
To return again to our point of departure,
the ego or personality of the individual. Comfortably housed and safely defended in the
eighteenth century, it often found itself homeless and shivering after the French Revolution. Protected even against the assaults of
others' self-love by the politeness of which
Chesterfield is so famous an exponent, it was
suddenly stripped of every adventitious covering and ornament, and obliged to change
conditions with the meanest wretches. The
footing upon which it had stood disappeared.
The aristocrat began to question concerning
himself, his inalienable rights, and his duties,
at the moment when the man of the people had completed a theory, not only of the
aristocrat's rights, but of his own. Henceforth the only patent of prerogative was manhood. In the simple citizen of the new era
all ranks were confounded. Man had grown
self-conscious and reflective; he was now to
be analytic. The age of science and exact
scholarship was at hand, but science and
exact scholarship are evoked only at the bidding of the imperious human spirit which
requires their ministrations. Science which
investigates the powers and functions of the
human soul is psychology. Science which
aims to discover the essence and necessary
basis of all being is ontology. Spinoza's pantheism, for example, is ontological. Both
were to be cultivated in this epoch, and both
were to manifest themselves in fiction and
poetry.
The French exponent of psychology in
fiction is Balzac; the English, George Eliot;
the American, Hawthorne. In poetic psychology, Dante and Petrarch are the illustrious progenitors of the modern school.
All true poetry is fundamentally psychologic,
but the word, as here used, refers to an abnormal development of self-consciousness,
which therefore becomes in the highest degree observant and critical of its own states
and processes. No modern poet is more
psychologic in this sense than Robert Browning, and the knowledge gained by self-intro
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