Victorian Poetry Analysis

Into the East: The Evolution of Eastern-like Thought and Mysticism in 18th & 19th Century European Poems and Prose.

It was the essence of Romanticism to be progessive by the standards of its era. All poets explore the 'cutting-edge' of their craft, through new styles of writing, through the exploration of poetic turns of phrase and the manipulation of the language itself. However, in the Romantic genre, a new avenue of exploration opened itself up to the poets of this era. Rather than focusing entirely on new form and style, an evolution was on the horizon.

Through their poetry and their writing, Romantic era poets began exploring not just the world around them but their own emotions and feelings- and through them, examining the nature of their very spirits. These poets defied modern trends, broke away from familiar rhetoric of Church and Christ and the epic poetry in the nature of the Illiad, the Odyssey. It focused on the struggles and trials of the common man (and woman!) of the era, their faults, their fights, the things that were real to them. The motion became inward-seeking, examining the fundamentals of life, of God and man and the very nature of how we as humans interact with the world, with Him, and with one another.

This was the step towards eastern mysticism.

This was the step towards enlightenment.

The first of the poets of this era to explore these sundry notions was Charlotte Smith. Though not necessarily as shrouded in mysticism as those who would follow, she began the slow motion towards those notions in her shorter sonnets (revived first by her and then Willian Bowles in 1789), which explored less the physical world around her and focused more on the ephermal, the inconstant, feelings and thoughts that reigned over her during their composition. Most of her shorter sonnets are most suitable as "a medium of mournful feeling (Norton 39)" and remain an excellent technical example of the form.

However, in terms of the essence of mysticism, it is Blake who set the standard for the Romantic era. In fact, it is not a work of poetry that sets him upon this pedastle, but rather, a short argument called "All Religions Are One". In it, Blake defies the fifteen-century old assumption that the Bible is a fundamental portion of man's spiritual existence. Inherent in that statement is the idea that the way towards Heaven may not necessarily be through the Christian ideal of a Messiah figure.

He makes three primary assertions in these arguments: One, that all religions spring from man, he (man) being the true Poetic Genius and interpreter of the universe. Second: through the Poetic and Prophetic aspects of man, he is more than his sundry senses; were it not for this prophetic genius, man would be but "Philosophic and Experimental...and stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again. (Norton 80)". Man would be nothing more than automaton, processing, outputing, and processing again, over and over.

Of his assertions, however, Blake's most wholly remarkable and eastern-way of thinking is summed in the last line of his third document. "He who sees the infinite sees God. He who sees the ratio sees himself only. / "Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is. (Norton 81)". This is in remarkable parallel to Taoist teachings, which assert that people who dwell solely in the immediate and material universe can not attain a 'oneness' - "be as he is"- just as Blake states that those who are focused solely on the 'physical' world cannot attain a god-like state.

He states that "Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception; he percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover." Buddhist thought believes that there are levels to this world beyond what the five basic senses can percieve, and that it is by shedding these trappings of the physical world, man can achieve a state of Nirvana- or, oneness, perhaps with a God-like figure. Blake seems to have extrapolated these notions on his own, five thousand miles and a world away from where they originated.

Interestingly, however, Blake does not appear to have entirely abandoned the notions of a Christ figure and a Christian God. In his poem "The Lamb", an obvious scriptorial reference, Blake asks the lamb in question to identify it's maker and master; when the animal cannot, he supplies the answer for him- it is one 'called by thy name' (Lamb), "meek and mild", "For he calls himself a lamb." Blake does not seem prepared to wholly dimiss the idea that there may be indeed a Christ and a God. Again, in a similar vein, current Eastern philosophies remarkably integrate seemingly counterproductive Christian philosophies with Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist principles, appreciating the portions of each worldview that seems best able to explain the universe to them.

It is in Blake's "From a Vision of the Last Judgement" that this avant garde writer seems to best capture his feelings on religion- most specifically, his disdain for the trappings of modern theology and religious thought. Like "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," Blake strongly asserts that true Sin is not necessarily crime, but unthinking adherence to dogma.

In keeping with Blake's tradition of dogmatic rejection and overthrow of systems, Mary Wollstonecraft came into her own with a vituperative assault upon Sir Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Though not as steeped in the mystical components of the eastern schools of thought, especially regarding the spiritual, Mary Wollstonecraft manages to capture the essence of the equal rights of mankind.

"The man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he was born, and the consequent homage that benumbed his faculties like the torpedoe's touch; --or a being, with a capacity of reasoning, would not have failed to discover, as his faculties unfolded, that true happiness arose from the friendship and intimacy which can only be enjoyed by equals..." (Norton 160)

The notion that no man bears the true Way to salvation- or enlightenment- is an inherently Eastern notion. Similarly, the idea that no one person (station aside) is superior or better than another brings this eastern views into a more social western light. Only people who are willing to set aside pride and social standing in order to explore the deeper meanings of their life and the world around them are capable of finding happiness- happiness, and perhaps, enlightenment. Thomas Paine explores a similar vein in his essay Rights of Man.

The notion that mankind must be held to a set of laws, he does not challenge- what Paine attempts to refute is the idea that a single, overwhelming force (parliament) is in sole control of mankind's destiny. While standards of behaviour are acceptable- necessary, even- when a conglomeration of men comes together not as individuals, but as an entity; and this entity no longer serves the need of the people, but the need of the masses, or the few; then it becomes difficult for man to find his own way, to express himself as an individual and a singular consciousness, capable of exploring life and his own place in the world.

Wordsworth, a close companion to Coleridge, takes a step away from the grand and sweeping political statements of his predecessors, as well as the vast and painful emotions of other poets of the era. Wordsworth's poems, with exceptions, have a much strong focus on the firm, albeit still mysterious, natural world. Though quite long by the standards of some Romantic poets, especially Blake, The Thorn remains a very focused piece of literature.

Rather than directly exploring the sweeping feelings and emotions sweeping through him, or the staggering implications of the natural spirit world, Wordsworth simply describes a lowly thorn, encountered on a path he took one day. Quickly, though, the poem transitions from being a vivid description of a bramble and crag and develops a life of it's own, characters and circumstances creating themselves out of the fabric of the piece. Wordsworth takes a simple bramble and from it, weaves a remarkable tale of love, abandonment, betrayal and death.

Allegory or metaphor, still, there is a haunting mystical sensation surrounding the poem. Wordsworth does not anthropomorphize the scenery, per se; rather, from simple observation of a small detail in his walk, the poet derives a tremendous and staggeringly brilliant poem. This idea of a 'deeper meaning' in a simple plant is eastern in the extreme. Many tales and parables exist in eastern mysticism, tales that derive from a single bush indications and a sense of the entire universe, without getting lost in the details and arcane bends of mythological stories. This trend continues on in Tintern Abbey and many of the poems found in Lyrical Ballads. There is a strong sense of the natural world in his poetry, almost Taoist in the way it describes the spokes without calling it a wheel.
De Quincey, a famous essayist, turned his attentions less to the magical world being revealed to him and analyzed instead with a remarkably concise methodology and thorough analysis.

While many poets simply express -what- they are feeling, De Quincey, through his essays, was more concerned on the -how-. This is a very progressive and enlightened attitude towards creation. As the poet William Stafford said, and I paraphrase, "the difference between an act and a morale act is the thought that goes into it". Most poets are content to simply write, to let the words emerge from them and flow onto the paper. De Quincy, however, desired to take a more fulfilling look into the way of writing, into the manner in which is writing came onto the paper. Rather than discussing his life, De Quincy, through his writing, analyzed how he lived it.

Clare, in his way, took a similarly self-absorbed track into his work. Rather than analyzing his works methodically, as De Quincey, Clare simply let his poems (often induced by fits of madness) flow onto the pages, though their singularly personal expressions reveal a great deal of his character and personality. Though regrettably tainted by fits of madness, Clare's poetry is similar to De Quincey's in that it is a statement of self. Clare, intentionally or not, describes himself and his own personal searches for truth, what have you through his poetry, composed for his own pleasure and often in case of things he merely saw or thought in passing. This somewhat abstract, free flowing style of verse lends a great deal of credibility to his work, because it has occasionally be argued that only madmen see the world as it really is; they merely lack faculty to put it properly. Among these great works is I Am. Echoing both Exodus and Descartes, this simple statement marks volumes of reaction in a reader. The notion of 'I am' states in resounding clarity the idea of a singular sense of self, both apart from the universe and integrated into it.

Lord Byron remains an anomaly among the Romantic writers of the era. Though his style of writing and his subject matter would seem to mesh well enough with their poems, taken at a glance, he shares little in common with his counterparts. Wealthy, a member of the landed aristocracy, Byron represented to the English an 'ideal' Aristocrat. Wealthy, strikingly handsome, and a 'Renaissance Man' in every sense of the word, adding poetry to his already formidable repetoire of skills and professions would seem to create a healthy and well-minded man indeed.

But Byron's poems lack the spiritual depth of poets of his time; often, they feel more the angst-ridden complaints of a young lord who is floundering through life, trying to determine his place in the world. Darkness is a striking exception to his usually vague, and borderline cliche, poetry. The ways in which it refers to the end "Darkness had no need / Of aid from them- She was the Universe." This essence of totality is strikingly reminiscent of Taoist teachings, not perhaps taught per se in Europe but still echoed strongly in the mysterious, un-named nature of the work. Hemans, in a similar vein, is less concerned with the overwhelming sense of oneness with the universe as she is with the status quo, or at least upsetting it. Though she makes a powerful (and quite contradictory) statement regarding the rights of humans and the definition of gender roles, she searches little for Absolute Truths in her works, focused more on the immediate here and now rather than sweeping and ephermal notions of a Beyond.

In reading Coleridge, it is easy to see where he and Wordsworth would find such a strong common ground. Coleridge's poetry has a remarkably spiritual bend to it, loaded with striking metaphors for life, death, and everything in between. His epic poem, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a poignant example of man's attempts (and failures) to control life and death. For instance, the albatross is the guiding figure found in every culture from the Shoshone to Buddhism to Christianity. It is the teacher, the patient guide, the being who guides lost and confused souls towards their final destination- enlightenment, nirvana, heaven, what have you. But what a typically human statement to shoot the albatross! To defy and murder the very thing that could bring not just one man, but an entire peoples, to safety! Equal parts human statement and Christ allegory, the murder of the albatross is every defiant and shortsighted gesture of humanity, a resounding statement of pigheaded singlemindedness in the face of hope.

Once the albatross dies, however, the strong mystical streak of Coleridge's writing clambers into view. Remarkable, certainly daemonic events begin unfolding aboard the ship, in ways that would certainly have had Christians of that era clucking their tongues in protest- at the least. Five centuries earlier, and they may have been looking for stones to throw. Skeletal ships bear Death and Life-in-Death towards his adrift vessel, where demonic beings throw dice for the souls of the damned. All but he are stricken dead, and yet the ship floats on, guided by unseen hands. Zombies, the undead, arise from the deck as shambling animate corpses- Christian theology would call this witchcraft in the highest form, and yet Coleridge creates a vaguely holy atmosphere; there is nothing malign in their existence, no shambling hordes of hell manning the sails. The corpses are Life-in-Death's property, neither dead nor alive. A morbid state, to be sure, but one not without purpose, and they are released from their servitude once the moment passes. Christianity says that the soul ascends immediately to Heaven for the Father's judgement; Eastern thought supports the idea that soul and body can be separated, and in this case, perhaps joined again.

In keeping with the theme of Coleridge's poetry, Christabel, though a great deal darker than Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is just as striking for the depth of metaphor; the supernatural, and metaphysical, aspects of this poem fall right in line with his other works. Arguably, this may be one of the first 'Vampiric' poems to be writ by a prominent poet, a trend that would continue well into the Victorian era and beyond. Though obviously a sexual allegory, the vampire mythos has powerful connotations for the dark nature of man itself; the 'shadow' personae, as Jung put it. The vampire is beholden to rules for their own sake, rather than for the right of society. The vampire must feed on the emotions and desires of the people around it, unable to feel such things for itself. Vampirism, especially in Christabel, is less about sucking blood than it is about the consumption of lives, the way that people wrap themselves wholly around another person and simply take and take and take, emotionally and mentally, until their host is left but a shattered, broken shell, with nothing left to share and live for. As a sexual allegory, though, it was probably one of the best pieces of 'pop' erotic literature to hit the bookshelves since Sappho and her girlfriends in ancient Greece, but that's really neither here nor there.

Still, it's nice to know that some things never change.

Kubla Khan, however, is where Coleridge moves beyond European myths and literally (in a figurative manner) crosses the Great Divide and places a mystical poem right in the middle of the Mysterious Orient. In the tradition of the Yaqui Indians, the great philosophers of India, the wise men of China, Coleridge (though accidentally) stills his conscious brain and allows the unconscious to speak to him. The resulting poem is arguably one of the greatest pieces of literature in the history of the written word. It is steeped in profound metaphor and allegory both, a literal accounting in some places of a legendary warlord's empire being carved out, but also a remarkably deep and profound sense of the eastern ideals of mysticism.

There are things that go on in Xanadu beyond what Kubla Khan might know- places ancient and terrible, reckoned far greater than any that a warlord could make manifest. Trees and forests more ancient than man bear witness to the rise and fall of another empire, while deep chasms beckon the unwary to unholy places where pacts between demons and maidens are brough to fruition. Kubla's ancestors speak to him through the thundering of the caves and the rumbling of the rivers, prophesying war in a way that only the sainted were able to do in contemporary Christian mythology. Deep magic was afoot in Xanadu, maidens possessed of magical prowess with the dulcimer, and a terrible image of Coleridge himself, less a man and more a Demon himself, fed anew on the milk of Paradise and renewed as only it's fruits could make him.

The common, unifying thread throughout the majority of these poets is the notion of progressivism. Not only socially, but religiously. A motion away from the crumbling power of the Catholic Church and the hundreds of sub-sects of the various Protestant religions springing up across the face of Europe. Poets were turning away from power hungry priests and familiar rhetoric, from the literal words of men centuries dead, and looking now inwards, both at themselves and their world, to try and decipher the true meanings of life. This movement on their part spurred a civilization long stagnated ecumenically into a fresh burst of thought and reason. All over Europe, people questioned, demanded, sought more from life than their 'Christian Duty'. Poetry can change the world, and in these hands, it did. It brought a fresh wave of enlightenment to Europe, testing the restraints and binds placed upon the people by themselves and challenging their preconceived notions. The Romantic poets described here were brave pioneers, exploring untested lands and waters blindly, perhaps reckless, in search of a greater truth. That is, in essence, what defines the Romantic era as described through these poets: a willingness to take a risk, to push the boundaries of thought and mind.

"To strive, to seek; to find, and not to yield."
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson