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Unit 16: The Triumph of Romanticism (Renascence of Wonder and Influence of French Revolution.....

16.9 Coleridge and Southey Notes

The impact of the French Revolution on Coleridge and Southey was of the same pattern as in the
case of Wordsworth-youthful exuberance at the rising of the masses ending in despair and
disillusionment with the Reign of Terror but after this disillusionment Wordsworth and Coleridge
followed different paths in search of an anodyne. Whereas Wordsworth found consolation in
Nature, Coleridge sought to burke his discontent with abstract philosophy and intellectual idealism.
Coleridge failed to receive from Nature the joy which he was wont to. Metaphysics interested him
and claimed his almost full attention. His poetic spirit also declined with the decline of his
revolutionary fervour. By 1811 he had become not only an “anti-revolution” Tory but also an
incorrigible “antiGallican.”

Byron
On Byron the French Revolution exerted no direct influence. But he was a revolutionary in his own
right. He was against almost all social conventions and institutions, and felt an almost morbid
pleasure in violating and condemning them with the greatest abandon. In his poetry he most
vigorously championed the cause of social and political liberty and died almost as a martyr in the
cause of Greek independence. A critic observes: “Byron excelled most other poets of England in his
being one of the supreme poets »f Revolution and Liberty. His poetry voices the many moods of
the spirit of Revolution which captured the imagination of Europe in the early years of the last
century. A rebel against society but also against the very conditions of human life, Byron is our
one supreme exponent of some distinctive forces of the Revolution. Of its constructive energy, its
social ardour, its utopianism, there is no trace in his work.’’

Did u know? Byron was excited by the imposing personality of Napoleon who appealed to
him as a “Byronic” hero.

Shelley

When Shelley started writing, the French Revolution had already become, as a historical incident,
a thing of the past However, the spirit of the Revolution breaths vigorously in his poetry. After his
characteristic way he overlooked physical realities, and was attracted by abstractions only. Says
Compton-Rickert: “Ideas inspired him, not episodes; so he drank in the doctrines of Godwin, and
ignored the tragic perplexities of the actual situation.” To Shelley the Revolution, to quote the
same critic, appealed “as an idea, not as a concrete historical fact.” In all his important poems, such
as The Revolt of Islam, Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, and the incomparable Ode to the West
Wind, breathes a revolutionary spirit impatient of all curbs and keenly desirous of the emancipation
of man from all kinds of shackles-political, social, and even moral. Love and liberty are the two
ruling deities in Shelley’s hierarchy of values, and in his exaltation of them both he comes very
near the Rousseauistic creed. The French Revolution had failed miserably in the implementation
of its three slogans “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” But Shelley always envisioned ahead a real
Revolution which would rectify all wrongs once and for all. This hope for the millenium is the
central theme of much of his poetry.

Keats

Keats was almost entirely untouched by the French Revolution, as by everything earthly. A critic
observes: “In the judgment of Keats, philosophy, politics and ethics were not suitable subjects for
verse. While, therefore, Wordsworth and Coleridge were reflecting upon the moral law of the
universe, while Byron was voicing the political ideas of Europe in the poetry of revolt, and Shelley
was writing of an enfranchised humanity, the music of Keats luxuriated in classical myths and
medieval legends, and was inspired by an insatiable love of Beauty.” From a study of Keats’s
poetry it is hard to believe that such an incident as the French Revolution ever took/place at all.
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