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

.Fine Art in Romantic Literatur.e.
sp(!ction makes him the shrewdest diviner of
other men's thoughts and motives. But in
him the spirit has sublimed away the artistic
form, so that his poetry is not ordinarily sensuous enough to be dramatic, nor sometimes
to be truly lyrical.
The poet of ontology is Emerson. From
this point of view, his "Brahma" is peculiarly
significant, as marking the point of junction
between Occidental and Oriental philosophy.
As California is the border, and its shore the
barrier, where the Aryan race makes pause
before precipitating itself into the bosom of
the Orient whence it sprang, so Concord is
the halting-place where Western thought, in
its final outcome and supreme result, reflects
for an instant longer, and finally is merged
into the transcendentalism of the East.
Goethe and Ruiickert having established the
precedent of composing poems in the Oriental manner, Emerson and Browning have
thought fit to follow. Here again scholarship goes hand in hand with poetry. The
study of the Sanskrit language and antiquities has kept pace with the growing predilection for Orientalism in poetry and in decorative art. Edwin Arnold is not a pioneer,
nor even one of the advanced guard; he is
only well up with the main army. The
translators of Saadi and Omar Khayyam are
sometimes anticipated even by the bard of.
Lalla Rookh.
One practical lesson has been taught by
Emerson, or rather clearly formulated by
him-the lesson of self-reliance. The French
Revolution, like the Protestant Reformation,
was a revolt of the individual against society,
that is, against law and custom, which, framed
in the interest of the few, had grown unendurable to the many. The audacity displayed at these periods, by Mirabeau in the
French Tribune, as by Luther at the Diet of
Worms, can only be paralleled by that of
Paul on Mars' Hill. The energy and self- re liance of the orator and reformer react upon pure literature. Victor Hugo rebels against
pseudo-classicism in France, as Wordsworth
and Keats do in England. As the trouba dours were both poets and warriors, as Milton
was statesman and polemic no less than a de VOL. VI.- 5.
votee of the Muses, so these new singers grasp
the sword with one hand, and wield the pen
with the other. What Bertrand de Born was
to the Provence of Richard the First's day,
K6rner was to the Germany that had known
Napoleon. The sentimentalism which had
been despised as mere weakness, bore fruit
in the downfall of monarchies which had outlived their usefulness. Poetry was becoming identical with the truest and noblest life.
One indication of this movement is the
change which takes place in the poetic conception of the Golden Age. The poets
of Greece and Rome have already left it
far behind them. Quite otherwise with us
who
"Doubt not through the ages one increasing pur pose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the pio cess of the suns ";
and who perceive
"One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."
With the Golden Year in the future, the
poets-and every writer is now a poet, a
creator or maker-set resolutely about bringing it near. Tennyson cries out "But well I know,
That unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors."
The poets are revolutionary as long as
revolutions tend to elevate humanity. Shelley
defies authority in the name of Man, for
whose sake all authority is constituted. He
would set no bounds to the personality which
has wrought these stupendous changes. Byron
abandons poetry as craftsmanship, and lays
his reputation, his fortune, and his life on the
altar of Grecian independence. But revolutions accomplish their task, and are succeeded by reforms. Southey and Coleridge form
extensive plans for a pantisocracy, or com munity where all men shall be absolutely
equal, and which is to be situated in Penn sylvania. Thus they anticipate the idea of
Brook Farm, whose citizens were also to be
literary people, and to exist in a state of
perfect equality. Shelley will know nothing
but
q
1885.]
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