The Poetry of Life

The Romanticism which became all pervasive in modern European culture was a "mood" that escaped any rigid scheme of classification. That was part of the strength of the movement, for it could change from person to person and combine with various political and social ideals. Romanticism did have one explicit base however-it accorded the greatest importance to the emotions and to the imagination. The feelings of the heart, however irrational, were considered more valid than the thoughts of the head. The enemy was that cold reason which Charles Dickens had symbolized in Scrooge and which had provided the essence of the Enlightenment's hope for a better world. For Romantics, human nature was best descibed through the 'soul' which contained emotions and which furthered imagination. All else was abstract "intellectualizing", typical of people who lacked true emotion and therefore a true soul.




The Romantics themselves summarized their attitude in the phrase "the poetry of life". Not only did this term imply the primacy of poetry as an expression of the human soul, but it also contained a view of an individual's feelings which was central to romanticism. These feelings were thought "private" and "secret", something which only that person who was swayed by them could understand. However, on the surface, the secrecy of the soul was not well maintained by the Romantics. Undoubtedly, Rousseau's 'Confessions' (1783), stimulated the outpouring of their feelings to one another. Rousseau had set out in the very beginning of his book maxims which the Romantics were to imitate: "I desire to set before my fellows the likeness of a man in all the truth of nature, and that of man myself."




It is important to note here that the origin of Romanticism lie within the age of reason itself and it was none other than Rousseau who foreshadowed many aspects of this mood. The ideal of the "natural man" which he popularized but which also existed in many other thinkers of the period emphasized that the individual was good and virtuous when removed from the fetters of civilization. In such an ideal state heart and head were unspoilt. For Rousseau and other eighteenth century thinkers this meant that humans were bothe reasonable and virtuous. However, the element of human reason in the state of nature played, for Rousseau, a lesser part than the goodness of the heart. This foreshadowed the romantic belief in the essential rightness and virtue of mankind's proper emotions when they are left to develop freely.




The concept of natural man became a widespread fad in the 18th century. This image was associated with rural life, the kind of Arcadia which writers ahd idealized for centuries. The ideal of natural man associated with rural life was not only a background for the Romantic Movement, but also went into the making of one of the most important preoccupations of the 19th century, indeed of modern times: namely, that the peasant represents the greatest virtues in a society which is growing ever more industrial and urban.