Nature
and Humanity
Before
starting this project I wasn't sure what topic seemed most interesting to
me. There were so many things we
discussed over the semester that I felt overwhelmed with how I was going to
accomplish this final assignment. My
head was reeling with ideas, but it wasn’t until this picture of a tiny monkey
dressed in a fashionable shearling coat popped up on my screen that I decided what
to write about. Throughout the course
we’ve seen nature play a key role in Romantic Literature. While Darwin the monkey (and yes, the
monkey’s name is in fact Darwin) may not understand the words of Coleridge or Erasmus
Darwin, we have learned in class that nature plays an important role in the
works of Romantic poets, giving them inspiration to write about nature itself
as well as well as humanity within nature.
Darwin and Nature
Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants takes inspiration from nature through
scientific observation. As discussed in
class, the poem without the footnotes contains a mystical feel to it. To describe the actions of the plants, Darwin
engages a theme of fantasy throughout the poem which invokes eroticism,
sensuality, as well as love: “E’en round
the pole the flames of Love aspire/ And icy bosoms feel the secret fire!/
Cradled in snow and fan’d by arctic air/ Shines, gentle Barometz! Thy golden
hair…” (247-250). As noted by
RachaelMarie in her post (here) Darwin is clearly personifying the
plants. By describing them with human
features and actions he is giving life to the plants in a way that everyday
foliage cannot obtain, especially not through photosynthesis.
It’s interesting to note that the
things in which Darwin is personifying are in fact objects that are alive. These are not random inanimate objects or
abstract ideas such as a guitar or the feeling of hate, but things that live,
create life, and die. The idea that
Darwin is giving life to something that is already living is what Catherine
Packham mentions in her article about Darwin and his use of personification in
the poem: “The central purpose of
personification in Loves of the Plants is not to offer a visual image of an
abstraction, but to further animate an all-ready visible, all-ready living object”
(198). But why does Darwin personify the
plants? The act of personifying things
that already have life represents the parallel between nature and humanity,
which is magnified through the use of personification. While society may not allow the crazy sexual
shenanigans that occur during the poem, we do share with plants the act of
life, procreation, and death, which in turn ties us to nature.
John
Clare and Nature
In John Clare’s poem “The Mouse’s
Nest,” nature is described in a more realistic way. The poem features a person who has
accidentally come across an animal while in a barn. After a moment he finds out that the animal
is a tiny mother mouse with her young attached to her. Further examination of the animal reveals
that the narrator has some sort of fear toward it, which could ultimately
translate as a fear toward nature: “She
looked so odd and so grotesque to me/ I ran and wondered what the thing could
be” (7-8). The act of running away from
nature is an interesting concept and suggests that nature can be a frightening
thing. However, the problem with the
narrator running away from nature in this instance plays on the idea that we’re
afraid of things that we have no reason to be afraid of.
Earlier
in the poem it is also revealed that the narrator was the one who disturbed the
mouse and not the other way around, which, as Desdemona Cranshaw suggests in
her post (here), could signify the way in which man has disturbed nature
through their actions. Clare constructs
the scene with these words: “I found a
ball of grass among the hay/ And proged it as I passed and went away…” (1-2).
The action of the human is what starts the whole situation in the poem and can
be conveyed into how we, humans as a whole, disrupt nature through our
prodding. To further this idea we must
take into account the last few lines of the poem: “The water o’er the pebbles scarce could run/
And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun” (13-14). In these lines we can see how nature has been
defiled due to the cesspools in the scene; it also shows how nature is no
longer a prominent thing in the area, which ultimately explains why the little
mouse is now living in the barn and not in a grassy knoll somewhere.
Coleridge and Nature
In
Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, nature is seen as something that should not be taken lightly. At the start of the poem the Mariner
describes the ship’s journey through terrible weather while way out at
sea: “Listen, Stranger! Storm and Wind/
A Wind and Tempest strong!/ For days and weeks it play’d us freaks—/ Like Chaff
we drove along” (45-49). In these lines
we can get a sense of the urgency in the Mariner’s voice, but we can also see
how, despite the bad weather, the ship and the crew continued on their journey,
thus ignoring the signs that something might go wrong.
Another
important aspect of the poem is how the ship’s crew treats the Albatross that
arrives soon after the ship gets stuck in the icy ocean: “The Mariners gave it biscuit-worms/ And
round and round it flew: The Ice did
split with a Thunder-fit/ The helmsman steer’d us thro’” (65-68). In these lines, Coleridge’s poem suggests
that being good to nature will prompt nature to be good to you. It signifies the beneficial relationship
humans and nature could have as long as humans don’t disregard it. The happy relationship between nature and
humanity does not continue in the poem due to the rash actions of the narrator,
who kills the Albatross for no reason.
According to CLC’s post (here), troubling situations can lead humans to
do irrational things due to the stress it puts on the mind. Humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions
without thinking them through, leading to dire consequences, the likes of which
happen within The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.
Coleridge’s
description of water plays a key role in how nature is viewed within the
poem. The fact that the ship is once
again stuck in the middle of the ocean soon after the Albatross is killed—
leaving the crew low on supplies— lends itself to represent the isolation
nature can bring upon humanity: “Water,
water, everywhere/ Ne any drop to drink” (117-118). In this instance, nature is now depriving the
crew of any help, unlike the before when the albatross assisted them in getting
out of the bad weather and ice. Not only
that, it could also represent the way in which the Mariner has been cast away
for his wrongdoing to the Albatross.
Al-Rashid best describes this notion with these words from his article: “The sea, for the Mariner, embodies the void
in which he is abandoned to review his deeds according to a perspective
different from what he experienced in civilization, having now been exposed to
atypical community which comprises along with people, fauna and natural
contexts, the sea in particular, all of which come to act upon the Mariner”
(267). The result of the narrator’s
wrongdoings coincides with the notion that nature is not something to be
trifled with and should be treated with care and respect.
Wordsworth and Nature
The
picture above is of William Wordswords.
I chose this painting due to the way Wordsworth appears to be
contemplating something while in the midst of nature, which is what The Prelude discusses. In The
Prelude we get a complex mixture of nature with humanity through the use of
nostalgia. Throughout the poem
Wordsworth recollects the many events that occurred to him during the years of
his life. He associates numerous scenes
from nature with these events, ultimately conjuring up strong emotions that are
related to his past: “The earth/ And common face of Nature spake to me/
Rememberable things—sometimes, ‘tis true,/ By quaint associations, yet not
vain/ Nor profitless…” (418-422). In this moment, Wordsworth tells us that
nature has the power to make him remember things he didn’t think he could
remember from his past.
Another
interesting aspect of the poem is in the way Wordsworth focuses on the small
details in nature. Lines 31-34 tell us
of a single stone that then conjures up a full picture that takes Wordsworth
and his readers back in time: “A grey
stone/ Of native rock, left midway in the square/ Of our small market-village,
was the home/ And centre of these joys…” Fellow blogger Hanner Nanner explains
this idea in her post (here), mentioning that even though the presence of
nature is sometimes small within the poem, it still has a big presence in
Wordsworth’s thoughts. The fact that
Wordsworth focuses on the rock coincides with how his thoughts go from a small
idea to a larger one. The overall effect
adds to the building of nostalgia and how something small can lead to a greater
thought. Nature in this aspect has allowed
Wordsworth to not only think about nature but to think about his place in it.
Overall
the use of nature in Romantic Literature has been an interesting thing to think
about. Each of these writers used nature
in a way that helped their work blossom and grow (no pun intended) and they put
into perspective the roll nature has in humanity and vice-versa, revealing that
we’re undeniably connected to one another.
Works Cited
Al-Joulan, Nayef Ali, and Amer Hasan Al-Rashid.
"Dis/Continuities: Natural And Artistic Landscape/Seascape In T. S.
Eliot's "The Waste Land" And S.T. Coleridge's "The Rime Of The
Ancient Mariner.." Cross-Cultural Communication 7.2 (2011): 265-271.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Clare, John. "The Mouse's Nest"" John Clare, "The
Mouse's Nest" N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Darwin, Erasmus. The Loves of the Plants. Oxford [England:
Woodstock, 1991. Print.
Packham, Catherine. "The Science And Poetry Of
Animation: Personification, Analogy, And Erasmus Darwin's Loves Of The
Plants." Romanticism 10.2 (2004): 191-208. Academic Search Complete. Web.
11 Dec. 2012.
Wordsworth, William, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dahlia Porter,
and Michael Gamer. Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800. Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview, 2008. Print.
Wordsworth, William, Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and
Stephen Gill. The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850: Authoritative Texts, Context and
Reception, Recent Critical Essays. New York: Norton, 1979. Print.
