During our classes study of Romanticism there was a
topic we touched on briefly a few times, but we never dived too deep into the
subject. That would be the topic of
mortality. This theme of mortality
carries throughout the Romantic period of literature that we studied this
semester. Authors such as Charlotte
Smith, John Keats, William Lewis, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge use mortality in
their works of poetry in various ways to comment on the hardships of life, the fragility
of human life, coming to terms with morality, and the moment a person realizes
they are about to bite the dust.
I
have included Wanderer above the Sea of
Fog by Caspar David Fredrich in my post because it is a rather popular
painting that offers a figurative representation of the Romantic poet “Take
this picture as the essence of the Romantic approach to art…Friedrich has
adapted the generic conventions of landscape painting to the demands of
creative self-expression…Friedrich always took as his task the private and
personal encounter of an individual with nature” (Boston College). The man standing above the fog gazing out in
a state of personal reflection is not worried about the audience he has his
back turned to. His worry lies inside of
himself. The Romantics were more
concerned about the problems of the individual.
With this in mind, mortality is a typical topic for Romantics to talk
about because individuals deal with mortality differently. It is normally a subject that requires quiet
introspection.
Charlotte
Smith lived a life full of hardships and constant sorrow. The suffering she experienced in life
influenced her work. She wrote a great
deal of poems which touched on her deep depression and how she longed to end
her life in order to escape the never ending helplessness she felt. In Smith’s poem “Written in the Churchyard at
Middleton in Sussex”, she uses the idea of mortality and the uncaring ways of
nature to explain how she does not want to be alive anymore. Her imagery of the human bones being torn
from their graves and the tumultuous weather is her way of showing that life
does not care for the suffering of humans.
She begins the poem by evoking images of the moon and the sea sweeping
over the landscape: “Press’d by the moon…/While the loud equinox its power
combines/The sea no more its swelling surge confines” (Smith Line 1-3). Human power and intelligence is nothing to
the elements of nature. The moon and the
sea combine their influences to inflict destruction on man’s tombs, the constant
blatant reminder of human mortality, to put them in their place “Tears from the
grassy tombs the village dead/And breaks the silent Sabbath of the grave”
(Smith Line 7-8). The Sabbath graves are
important to man, but nature does not care about the objects or feelings of
humans. Smith goes on in her poem to
comment on the jealousy she feels for those who are dead because they do not
have to suffer through the relentless hardships life inflicts on humans: “While
I am doomed—by life’s long storm opprest/To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest”
(Smith Line 13-14). Charlotte Smith is
no longer scared of her mortality. She
glares at its face and begs it to take her away from the endless pain she feels
on a daily basis.
In
John Keats poem “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”, he addresses his own mortality
that he feels as his life gets closer to coming to its end. During all of our discussions on Keats and
Morgan’s presentation over his poetry, we learned that many members of John
Keats’s family died of tuberculosis. He
dealt with the fragile mortality of humans from a young age until the day he
died. John Keats opens the poem
specifically commenting on his mortality: “My spirit is weak—mortality/Weighs
heavy on me like an unwilling sleep” (Keats Line 1-2). His coming to terms with his own mortality
has been a gradual process because the disease gradually overtook his
health. Mortality seems to be “an
unwilling sleep” because of this slow moving process of dying from tuberculosis. He goes on to say “Yet ‘tis a gentle luxury
to weep/ That I have not the cloudy winds to keep/Fresh for the opening of
morning’s eye” (Keats Line 6-8). Mortality
has lifted some grief off of his shoulders.
He does not have to keep up with the speed that full life brings upon a
person. His death is taking his life,
but it is also bringing a peaceful rest.
John Keats uses the Elgin marbles in this poem to talk about art in relation to human mortality. The image above is a part of the Elgin marble collection. He starts this by claiming that the wonders that the brain registers are
false and create a dispute inside of a person’s soul “Such dim-conceived
glories of the brain/Bring round the heart an indescribable feud” (Keats Line
9-10). John Keats’ loss of vitality has
brought him rest and this has given him time to reflect on matters that he once
believed to be glorious. Keats then
transitions into speaking about the Elgin marbles. He is filled with mixed feelings about dying,
but he is grateful that the brilliant Elgin marbles will continue to remain
immortal “So do these wonders a most dizzy pain/…Wasting of old time—with a billowy
main/A sun—a shadow of a magnitude” (Keats Line 11, 13-14). Mortality is a hard thing for human’s to deal
with, but Keats found solace in the marbles.
He will pass on and these wonders of human creation will continue to
exist.
Matthew
Gregory Lewis is another Romantic poet who used the theme of mortality in his
work. However, he touched on the moment
when a person realizes they are about to die.
This death is usually a female character who dies because she was
careless with her words and her actions.
He also usually ends his poems that feature this type of character with
a moral lesson about what they should or should not do. During my research of Lewis for my argumentative
paper, I found that his mother had an affair, and after that many of his female
characters might have been based off this “a recurrent theme in Lewis’s
[poetry]: the punishment of a young woman for some transgression…D.L.
Macdonald, traces such representations to an event that had a life-long impact
on Lewis: his mother’s adultery and the subsequent public and messy legal
proceedings” (Thomson). In his poem “The
Water King”, the main female character is a young maiden who carelessly marries
a knight she hardly knows. She finds out
after he has taken her hand in marriage that he is the Water King “’Your
bridegroom is the Water-King!’/The maid had fear and hate confessed/And cursed
the hand which then she press’d” (Lewis Line 42-44). The young maiden is tricked into
marriage. After she became the Water
King’s wife there was nothing she could do to escape her new husband. However, the maiden had no flashing signs to
warn her that her life was in danger “But nothing giving cause to think/How
near she stray’d to dangers brink” (Lewis Line 45-46). In this line, Lewis is touching on the
fragility of human life and how close humans make it to the brink of
death. Many do not pull back from the
edge, such as this particular young maiden.
In
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s masterpiece “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, he
uses the theme of mortality to describe and death as a physical or spiritual
being that comes to take life and the mariner watching his crew’s souls part
with their bodies. Part III of the poem opens
with a description of the crew on the Mariner’s ship slowly wasting away because
of a lack of water and food. After suffering
for an elongated amount of time, the men on the boat spotted a shape
approaching the boat: “And is that Woman all her crew?/Is that a Death? and are
there two?/Is Death that Woman's mate?” (Coleridge Line 187-189). By making death into an apparition that can
be seen by men, Coleridge makes death seem like a much more tangible fate for
mortals. The two figures the crew sees
then roll a set of dice to decide who gets to keep the ancient mariner’s soul: “The
naked hulk alongside came/And the twain were casting dice/’The game is done!
I've won! I've won!’” (Coleridge Line 195-197).
Death does not truly care about souls or helping them make their way to
the afterlife. Coleridge’s death is a
devious, wanton being who wants to punish souls, such as the ancient
mariner. The mariner played death by
taking the life of the albatross at the beginning of the poem. Death now wishes to discipline the mariner
for this. After the woman wins the
mariner’s soul, “the naked hulk” retrieves the souls of the crew. The mariner watches as their souls are set
free while he remains to suffer: “The souls did from their bodies fly/They fled
to bliss or woe!/And every soul, it passed me by/Like the whizz of my
cross-bow!” (Coleridge Line 220-224).
The comparison between the speed of how the souls flew away and the
mariner’s cross-bow is Coleridge’s way of showing how fast life is taken
away. Now, the mariner is left to suffer
all alone with his weak mortality in tact because of his deed.
The
wonderful thing about Romantics is the giant switch they made during the
movement from the whole community to the introspective self. Each poet we read this semester had something
to say about the self and how it deals with hard subjects such as
mortality. Many people may not see the point
of poetry. However, once you analyze the
words you will find that these poets were addressing problems every human must
face eventually.
Additional Websites:
http://suite101.com/article/john-keatss-on-seeing-the-elgin-marbles-for-the-first-time-a401625
http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4e.htm
Boston College. "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog - Caspar David
Friedrich." Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog - Caspar David Friedrich. The
Trustees of Boston College, 1 Apr. 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Keats, John. "On Seeing the Elgin
Marbles." By John Keats : The Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d.
Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Lewis, Matthew. "The Water King - Norse
Romanticism: Themes in British Literature: 1760-1830 - Electronic Editions -
Romantic Circles." The Water King - Norse Romanticism: Themes in British
Literature: 1760-1830 - Electronic Editions - Romantic Circles. Romantic
Circles, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Smith, Charlotte. "Elegiac Sonnet #44 by Charlotte
Smith | The Literary Gothic." Elegiac Sonnet #44 by Charlotte Smith | The
Literary Gothic. Literary Gothic, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Thomson, Douglass H.. Tales of Wonder. Peterborough,
Ont.: Broadview, 2010. P. 54, note 1. Print.
Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800. Ed. Dahlia Porter and Michael Gamer.
Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2008. Print.
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