This is a 6000-word essay that I submitted for a course in EFL University, Hyderabad. Read Part II here.
Neil Nagwekar
H00MAELI20190056
Romantic Poetry (LIT 214)
Professor Prakash Kona
21 December 2020
English Romantics, Hegel and their Paths to Political Transcendence
The political changes of 18th century England are tectonic enough to have been documented by several sources, thus only requiring brief summation here. The most popular English dictionary of its time, the holy book on capitalism, Wollstonecraft’s feminist argument, a trio of revolutions and the death knell for feudal systems all occurred in this period, providing valuable clues to the direction in which European history was headed. To say that political turmoil was a feature of this period would be an understatement—to say that its foundational structures had been entirely uprooted after centuries of interrogation, would be closer to the truth.
Amongst these multiplicity of changes was, I think, a singular intention; the removal of religion from political systems. A variety of changes support this interpretation. Kings—traditionally known as representatives of God on Earth—were removed in favour of Presidents and Prime Ministers. Lords, ladies, etc. that constituted the feudal system were dismantled for a secular one. Churches began holding little to no political power. Kingdoms were replaced by nations, and their communal philosophies were being eroded by rightist notions of free competition, equality, entrepreneurship and private property. Politicians derived their power no more from God, but from the commonwealth. In the history of thought it is around the Renaissance that anthropocentrism took preference to theocentricism, but it is in this century that we see its widespread practical application.
The hope, I think, was that this official turn toward anthropocentric forms of government would bring humanity on the precipice of perennial peace—arguably the end-game of politics itself. Human history hitherto was a bloodied affair. It was common for rulers to exterminate entire civilizations and cultures on the basis of religion and faith, which was a major factor in the never-ending cycles of war and peace. Institutions like democracy, the modern state, etc., then, were concrete steps toward transcending those oppositions.
The very existence, or perception, of this opposition is curious. Hegel was friends with Holderlin and Schelling—two major influences on the Romantic era—but his work was primarily relating to self-consciousness and dialectical forces throughout human history. Amid what is often lost in dialectics is linear progression. The three stages of the dialectic—thesis, antithesis and synthesis—encourages the notion that Hegelian history is no more than cyclical, with changes in industry, technology or the surrounding milieu only acting as supplements, or dependent variables, to dialectics. This interpretation is understandable, but in some ways undermines Hegel’s own conception. In ‘Geist’, Hegel offers his potential means to an end. While the word does not translate perfectly in English, Geist encapsulates a form of the ultimate core of the human being; an essence that lurks somewhere between the spirit and the mind. While it is popularly interpreted as ‘Spirit’, it must be noted that Geist is a purely individual concept. On a macro level, this Spirit would connote the overall historical processes of continuous change within all individuals. Here, the final stage—i.e. a society where total freedom, along with an absence of conflicts, would prevail—was not termed Spirit, but the ‘Absolute’.
Was the rise of anthropocentric forms of government viewed by Hegel as the crowning achievement of the Absolute? There is evidence to suggest so. For instance, according to Wayne George Deakin in Hegel and the Romantic Tradition, the philosopher believed that the people and political systems had reached a stage of ‘mutual recognition’ encapsulated by the formation of the modern state. Mutual recognition is the final stage in the three stages of the achievement of Spirit. It is preceded by the lordship/bondsman stage, which must doubtless correspond to feudalist and slave states.
In addition, according to Lucia Pradella, Hegel believed that the inclinations of European society toward capitalism and imperialism were concrete steps in the direction of the Absolute:
Hegel […] considered capitalist society as humanity’s supreme stage of development and naturalized the form of value-producing labor […] Hegel rejected the materialist approach to history of the classical economists and of the utopian socialists. He not only justified but also promoted European expansionism on the basis of a Eurocentric vision of peoples… (Pradella 428-429 – Hegel, Imperialism, and Universal History)
With the benefit of hindsight, 21st century citizens are aware of the many injustices inherent to imperialism, capitalism and the modern state, and can easily discount their credentials as the final pieces of a utopian world. Furthermore, the fact that Hegel inaccurately identified Prussia (which is not even a functional state today) as a state that had truly apprehended the Spirit in political practice, further suggests that he was hasty in judging the arrival of the Absolute.
English Romantic poets like Blake, Coleridge and Shelley—who are our main objects of focus—despite having no such benefits of hindsight, could yet reflect on the disturbing developments of English society in their time. They could ascertain, unlike Hegel, that changes in 18th century England did not herald any finality in political dialectical conflicts, but that they were a mere continuation.
(The conclusions of this essay are interconnected with religion and the notion of infinity and God, as originally stemming from Cartesian understanding. This is why these three poets have been chosen in the interest of balance, since Coleridge was a theist, Blake extensively rewrote the fundamental morals of Christianity, and Shelley was an avowed atheist.)
This conclusion was not an accidental or coincidental one. Most Romantic poets have had their early lives influenced by the political domain. Wordsworth was a youthful radical who campaigned for the Lowther brothers. Coleridge and Southey once formulated ideas of a pantisocracy. Shelley openly stood for socialism and for methods of nonviolent resistance to power. Byron fought Ottoman Turks for the Greeks. Therefore, let’s begin with their identifications of the inherent problems to the new world order, before beginning to explore their individual solutions.
It is interesting how Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience incorporate opposites in its thematic structure. There are several examples of this form of symbolism: the description of The Lamb (‘he is meek & he is mild’) against that of The Tyger (‘burning bright’, ‘fire of thine eyes’, etc.) come to mind. A line from Blake in the latter poem further alludes to this opposition: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (Blake 34) By commenting on the entrenching nature of dialectics, it already appears as if Blake does not subscribe to notions that European society was approaching perfection.
Blake is known for his explorations on mythology, prophecy and mysticism, as well as his engravings and art, which have been greater fleshed out than his views on concrete, real world political events, but in The Chimney Sweeper one sees him more attuned to his immediate, concrete physical surroundings. Look at the initial lines in its Songs of Innocence version:
When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry “ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (Blake 7)
The sensitivity with which Blake describes the boy, of course, reiterates the harrowing nature of child labour, while the word ‘sold’ subtly reinforces the image of slavery. The implication, I think, is that in a supposedly post-serf era, when workers are free and Europe is on the cusp of perfecting civilization, how can new peoples and institutions (e.g. modern state, entrepreneurs) flex their powers and inflict injustice in such a similar manner to its predecessors? Tom Dacre, Dick, Joe, Ned and Jack—children who have been forced to climb and clean chimneys since they are small enough to fit inside—labour under the dream that a transcendental being, an Angel or God, will rescue them from their state. It is up to interpretation if Blake meant this intervention to be an optimistic foreboding or tragic delusion, but the portrayal of helpless children trapped by the casual oppressions of the material world, remains very real.
Now consider The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience. The child here is not like Tom from Songs of Innocence. He harbours no illusions of the welfare state, nor does he wait for angels to liberate him. Instead, he has a toughened, cynical outlook toward religion itself.
…because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King, Who make up a heaven of our misery.” (Blake 29)
What does this comparison between innocence and experience suggest? At any rate, it appears to have been a realization of the extent of corruption in religious bodies. This realization itself is hardly utopic—it is not as if the child in The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience) has improved his material or mental conditions by being wise to the act. At most, what the child is armed with is knowledge, which makes him better prepared for further injustices Christianity and capitalism may offer. It appears to me that Blake is, here, simply illustrating the two sides of a dialectic (in this case, innocence and experience) in his own way, unique from yet somewhat similar to Hegel’s, but is not able to express his means of transcendence.
While Blake understood the continuation of dialectical oppositions in his time from the point of view of a detached artist, Coleridge may have required first-hand experience to come to this realization. It is hard to underestimate the impact of the French Revolution’s failure on Coleridge, who was at the time an impressionable teenager at Cambridge. Lyrics like Ode on the Destruction of the Bastille leave little doubt that Coleridge, like Wordsworth, once viewed the revolution as a true transcendental point in world politics, a full celebration of liberty and of the individualist spirit, and a permanent detachment from dogmas of religion and autocracy. Therefore, its disintegration into another ordinary, naked power struggle (coupled with the acceleration of the vices of industrial England) was undoubtedly a stark reality check. At the very least, Coleridge had to be made aware that the political realm had not reached any practical permanent transcendence.
Coleridge’s partnership with Southey over the formation of a pantisocracy, in this context, is interesting. Firstly, it implies that Coleridge yet believed that dialectical conflicts in the realm of politics could be transcended. Secondly, that its success was contingent on the right system and the right people. Coleridge appears to think that while in practice, the political ideal had not been achieved yet, it was still attainable. We know that this scheme never came to fruition (for reasons mentioned anon), but within its very idealisms is an interesting point worth exploring.
Pantisocracy (‘pan-socratia’, or, governance by all) was a clear reaction against the current political state of Europe. It was based on benevolence, not free competition. It viewed the granting of human rights as a ‘concern’ for all i.e. as a duty more than a right. It espoused ‘aspheterism’, which loosely translates to communal property. Many of these idealisms would sound familiar to the average leftist intellectual.
Coleridge, viewing the benevolent origins of the French revolution—which was meant to be the revolution that ended all revolutions, but instead descended into another cog in the giant wheel of cyclical politics of peace and war—believed pantisocracy could transcend that, not knowing that its conception was merely the continuation of cycles; here, the opposite to capitalism. Coleridge did not live long enough to know that many of these rudimentary idealisms would be extrapolated after his death by Marx, which meant he was unaware that the pantisocratic ideal was not more than a precursor to communism.
The logistical problems behind pantisocracy’s failure offer more clues. Since Southey’s aunt, who was meant to bankroll the utopia, disinherited him, Southey proposed a change in the location of the pantisocratic society from America to Wales. He began to suggest private ownership of the land, hiring farmers as servants and to have, for starters, only a small space within the land that would be communally owned. These proposals proved to be the final straw for Coleridge, who abandoned the project and severed ties with Southey.
Southey’s attempts at this temporary compromise are understandable in intent, but for Coleridge, they likely mirrored the same steps of compromise that post-French Revolution was guilty of. The beheading of the king, the Reign of Terror, the crowning of Napoleon, etc. were ultimately consequences of decisions that were taken to cope with the grim realities of their time, with compromises upon compromises, instead of sticking to their idealisms till the bitter end, which shackled their attempts at true revolution and escape from peace-war cycles. One suspects that the reasons behind the failure of the pantisocracy would have offered Coleridge enough hints that there was no ideal achievable in practical politics, for he never planned another political utopia after this. Here’s Habib interpreting Coleridge’s France: An Ode, written five years after the failure of pantisocracy and three years after meeting Wordsworth:
The final stanza is a direct address to Liberty, which the poet dissociates from any possibility of realization in human government; rather, he finds the spirit of liberty in the mind’s contemplation of its own individuality and the surrounding sublime objects of nature, as pervaded by the love of God […] This reads very much like Wordsworth’s retraction of the ideal of liberty from political affairs into the connection between humanity and nature. (Habib 441 – A History of Literary Criticism)
Lastly, let’s look at Shelley. He and Byron, the last of the Romantics, were also among the most heavily criticized, perhaps for their openly revolutionary views and anti-establishment stances, with events like the Peterloo Massacre having a tangible impact on their poetry.
Most of Shelley’s famous works have political overtones. Ozymandias is the story of a king who, in his vanity, believed that he was the mightiest of all men, the salt of the earth, the beginning and end of history, only for time to disintegrate his empire into dust. A Defence of Poetry famously proclaims poets as ‘unacknowledged legislators’ and reiterates that the creation of poetry was meant to adhere to order, harmony, utility and the expression of beauty—the same as language (or, some would say, political institutions). Ode to the West Wind may read as a furious, natural, transcendent force laying waste to a material world filled with its conflicts and petty contradictions; a wind that Shelley seeks communion with, as he believes that in his childhood—unpolluted from civilization’s mundane forces—he was as natural, mighty and ferocious as the wind.
However, while these are works that the literary canon deems to be Shelley’s finest, he has certainly written more political works. Consider A Song: ‘Men of England’, a short poem which, in its aabb rhyme scheme and consistent use of iambic tetrameter, appears to be written particularly for the proletariat. The poem addresses them, asking them a series of rhetorical questions on the nature of their oppression and is undoubtedly meant to goad them into action. What is interesting is the obvious polemical style of writing, a style that in my view provokes the working class to violent revolution, even if this is not explicitly mentioned. Here is an example:
Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap: Find wealth—let no imposter heap: Weave robes—let not the idle wear: Forge arms—in your defence to bear. (Shelley)
Men of England, to me, reads as the culmination of the political frustrations Shelley endured in his brief life. He was nicknamed ‘Mad Shelley’ and ‘Eton atheist’ for his radical humanist and atheist views, despite the aforementioned anthropocentric turn in the form of government. There is, unlike Blake and Coleridge, no real realization of dialectical opposing forces in Shelley’s work, but the trade-off is that there is a concerted search for a specifically political form of utopia.
In the final analysis, in Blake, Coleridge and Shelley one sees examples of Romantic poets whom, after engaging in political activities or having tussled with their philosophies, have arrived at a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the functioning of the so-called new world order. In the case of Blake and Coleridge, there also seems to be an acknowledgement of the dialectical forces in human history that so resembles Hegel (although, of course, Hegel incorrectly opined its end).
Where do Romantics proceed from here?
Originally written: 21 December 2019 (apx.)
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