Individualists
Anthony Storr Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries Marilyn Butler (Oxford pp. 213, £7.95, £3.95) The subtitle of Marilyn Butler's book, 'English Literature and its Background 1760-1830' points to her conviction that literature cannot be properly appreciated without reference to the historical period at which it was conceived. Her approach, therefore, is 'diachronic' rather than 'synchronic', and whilst entirely sympathetic to old-fashioned readers like myself, may possibly be dismissed by critics who have embraced structuralism as their literary credo.
1760-1830 must have been one of the most exciting periods to live through. 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!' Wordsworth's lines on the French Revolution are usually quoted without his subtitle, 'As it appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement'; but, even if enthusiasm for change was shortlived and later repudiated, change was taking place all over Europe, and writers could not avoid being affected by it. 'The Romantics', as the term is popularly used, include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley and Keats; but, as Marilyn Butler points out, it was not until the 1860s that the term came to be applied to this group of writers, who 'would not have used it of themselves.' The more she leads us on to examine these writers individually in her scholarly way, the more one comes to agree with her that 'thought is the prisoner of language, and 20th-century thinking about early 19th-century literature is cramped by a single formidable word: Romantic'.
What do we understand by the word 'romantic' today? I suppose that we conjure up an artist who is an individualist; who rates his personal emotional experience above conventional standards or collective norms; who is, therefore, rebellious; a potential innovator; concerned with liberation rather than with control; with selfexpression rather than with form; a dreamer rather than a thinker; one who submits himself to the ungovernable and ineffable; and. finally, one who is so inevitably doomed to find that the real world disappoints his expectations that it is only in death that he can envisage the possibility of fulfilment or peace.
Mrs Butler, quoting from Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, points out that he is far from conforming to any such stereotype. 'For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: but though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility had also thought long and deeply.' Mrs Butler remarks: 'As a whole the passage stresses the controlling activity of the writer's intellect and moral sense.' And when Wordsworth goes on to say that poetry takes its origin from 'emotion recollected in tranquillity,' he is also repudiating the vulgar image of the Romantic overwhelmed by the passion of the moment. Mrs Butler might have reinforced her case by quoting Lamb, who, after repudiating the idea that genius 'has a necessary alliance with insanity,' writes: 'But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject but has dominion over it.'
All artists of arty consequence have access to powerful feelings; but all artists, whatever their peculiarities of personality, also exhibit the capacity to organise, shape and present their feelings, and therefore possess a measure of the 'classical' virtues of control and detachment. Mrs Butler is surely right when she postulates that 'the search for Romanticism is not so much the quest for a certain literary product as for a type of producer.'
Since Mrs Butler is as well versed in history as she is in literature, her comments upon what are the effects of the times on writers are illuminating. The individualism which is a necessary feature of the 'Romantic' was fuelled by the decline in patronage and the rise of journalism. 'Art marketed rather than art commissioned' encouraged individuality, but may also have contributed to alienation. The solipsism of the artist, Mrs Butler affirms, is a consequence of the widening of his audience and his lack of a direct, personal relation with those he is addressing. She aptly points out that 18thcentury writers were 'more inclined than the Romantics to express sympathy for certain well-defined social groups.' Being sorry for oneself precludes being sorry for others. The social changes which took place during the turbulent years which Mrs Butler is considering were bound to affect writers; but 'when abstract concepts are taken up in literature, in good literature at least, they undergo the transformations that the single subjective consciousness imposes . . . The writers of the day made a literary movement which represented revolution, but one could not call it revolutionary literature.'
In this densely-written book, Marilyn Butler is especially illuminating on the authors whom she has made her special study; Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen and Peacock. One sometimes felt that she needed more space; that the publishers, in fitting her book into the 'Opus' series, had imposed limits which she may have found irksome. Each brief period of years with which she deals has its own characteristics; and, as she includes references to other countries in Europe, her book could have been three times its present length without in the least wearying the reader. She makes frequent reference to painting; and it is a shame that the publishers have not allowed her illustrations. Apart from one reference to Mozart, there is no allusion to music. Beethoven, especially, would have illuminated her theme; and, although Schumann, born in 1810, overlaps the next generation of artists, he is one of the most 'literary' of composers. Indeed, his father translated 'Childe Harold'; whilst Schumann himself wrote incidental music to 'Manfred'. The interaction between literature and music is as fascinating as its relation to painting. In so learned and stimulating a book, it may seem churlish to draw attention to a possible slip; but when Mrs Butler refers to `Gericault's handsome idealised portrait of the French Emperor on a white charger surmounting the Alps', I think she may mean David's picture of Napoleon crossing the Great St Bernard, which was painted in 1801, the year after Napoleon performed this feat. Gericault would only have been ten or 11 at the time.
Previous page
