Andrew P. Coleman

The American Romantic Spirit:  Man Becoming a Part of Nature

The history of America has been a romantic quest.  Columbus’ conquest of paradise, the Puritan experiment in a new Christian society, Jefferson’s lofty ideal that “all men are created equal,” and the frontier spirit that summons every man to seek out his own destiny, all exemplify the romantic spirit that has inhabited and driven the American psyche.  The development of the American consciousness has paralleled the rise of romanticism as a philosophical, artistic, and literary movement.  Romanticism celebrates nature, individualism, imagination, emotion, passions, heroes, folk cultures, the exotic, the medieval age, transcendence, the gothic, and the remote and mysterious.  Romanticism was a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism and against the neoclassical artistic values of the 18^th Century, which exalted order and harmony.  At the same time, Romanticism rejected the dogmatic religion of the 17^th Century in favor of a personal, nature-based faith.  Romanticism possessed a heightened awareness of and sensitivity to the beauties of nature; often Romantic writers described nature in terms of the sublime.

Always present in American romance is the stark beauty of the landscape.  Nature’s sublime beauty serves to inspire a sense of wonder and to test the resolve of those who challenge its cold, cruel hand.  American romantic literature is enchanted by the magical beauty of the untouched wilderness and darkened by its foreboding power.  Romance stories are typically a quest.  The assigned readings trace the “American quest” from Columbus’ discovery of the New World, through the spiritual and intellectual inward and outward discoveries of Jonathan Edwards, and across Irving’s bridge between man and nature, from the natural to supernatural.  The American romantic spirit finally, fully arrives in Cooper, the first truly and completely romantic American writer.  Cooper was a man at home in and as a part of nature.  The American romantic epic is framed by nature, which stands as a backdrop, always ready to serve as metaphor, vivid descriptor, or personification.

Romanticism in Europe arose at about the time of the American Revolution and it developed with the American nation.  As European settlers built the nation out of seemingly infinite natural resources, romantic writers hewed their imaginary poetry and prose out of the forests, mountains, flora, and fauna of the land.  According to Simone Rieck, “Europe’s history, which includes hundreds of years of war and disease, helps to create the natural setting for darkness and mystery, another gothic theme. Without the capacious history, American authors were forced to create a new gothic effect by using the lush untapped natural settings of their young country.”

In the letters of Columbus, we see the first romantic vision of the New World.  Columbus paints this dream in terms of the breathtaking beauty he beholds.  Columbus looks upon his voyages as an otherworldly enterprise, but he describes the land in terms of its rich natural beauty.  In his “Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage” (26-27) Columbus writes:  “The island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so.  In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous.  Its lands are high, and there are in it very many sierras and very lofty mountains, beyond comparison with the island of Tenerife.  All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes, and all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky….  Española is a marvel” (26-27).

In his “Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage” (27-29), Columbus suggests “That lands which here obey Your Highnesses are more extensive and richer than all other Christian lands” (28).

In Columbus’ letters, we see the American romantic spirit being born.  Columbus likens his arrival in the New World to visiting the Garden of Eden.  Imagining an earthy paradise and describing it in vivid natural terms has always been characteristic of romanticism.  But Columbus does not become a part of that idyllic natural realm as the true romantics do later.  He seeks to take possession of the land and to exploit it.  As Adam does in Genesis 2, Columbus exerts dominion over the land by naming the islands and some of their creatures.  Eventually, Columbus, too, will be banished from paradise.

The English sought to colonize and not to merely exploit, as did the Spanish.  Captain John Smith romanticized his time in America and through these writings helped propel its colonization by describing the potential of the land.  In General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, Smith writes, “And now the winter approaching, the rivers became so covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpkins, and putchamins, fish, fowl, and divers sort of wild beasts as fast as we could eat them, so that none of our tuftaffety humorists desired to go for England” (47).  Europeans were learning to live more in harmony with the new land.

A countercurrent to the Age of Enlightenment was the “Great Awakening” of the early and middle 18^th Century.  By this time, the American colonies were fully established and the Puritan movement was playing out.  It was at this moment in a New England pulpit that the pre-romantic spirit became embodied in Jonathan Edwards who rose to challenge the skeptical and materialistic spirit of the age.  In typical romantic fashion, Edwards looked to nature for clear descriptions of God and man.  Edwards had a keen eye for observation and a brilliant mind for analysis.  But Edwards did not love science for science sake only.  He published scientific and philosophical works as a way to refute atheism and materialism.  For Edwards, nature was a way of experiencing God.

Mary Brooks writes that “Jonathan Edwards uses a combination of the sublimity of nature and the sublimity of God in his Personal Narrative.  Edwards describes his experience of finding God’s presence in nature’s ‘… majesty and meekness joined together: it was sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; high and great, and holy gentleness.’  God being all encompassing is often equated with nature because human comprehension requires that even a vast entity without form be visible.  Edwards managed to find his religious peace and center in nature’s plethora of vistas and phenomena.  Edwards uses the sublime to describe nature’s phenomena such as thunderstorms as ‘… scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightening… and hear the majesty and awful voice of God’s thunder….’  As often happens with nature’s fury, it is so vast and incomprehensible that a religious component is often added to explain seemingly random events as signs of the sublime in God and nature.  Nature and God in Edwards’ narrative are inseparable.  Edwards finds his sublime religious meaning from being alone in the vastness of nature and from encountering all the vast array of phenomena that nature has to hold.”

God in nature, in gothic and sublime forms, is also evident in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” preached by Edwards at the height of the Great Awakening.  Edwards warns his congregation:  “The souls of the wicked are in Scripture compared to the troubled sea, Isaiah 57.20.  For the present, God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of the troubled sea…” (210).  Likewise, “There are black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you.  The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays His rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor” (213).

Washington Irving is a bridge from the Age of Reason to the Romantic Era.  He possesses some classical attributes, such as satire, humor, and detachment.  But he also writes distinctively romantic narratives, such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in which the hero becomes detached from society and is relocated to a gothic, natural environment.  However, the reader is never instructed on how to interpret these stories.  Are these romantic tales of the supernatural?  Or, should the enlightened reader realize that the hen-pecked Rip Van Winkle wants to escape from a bad marriage, thus skipping town and returning after his wife’s death and concocting his tale.  In Sleepy Hollow, does Brom Bones disguise himself as the Headless Horseman to scare away his competition?  Whether one is a rationalist or a romantic may determine how one answers these questions.  Irving stands astride both camps.

With the rise of a new nation a new literature was needed to truly reflect the land and its people.  From the naked landscape James Fenimore Cooper carved out the first truly romantic vision of America.  Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales place imagination above reason; they are truly romantic stories in which history is only a frame, and nature is the backdrop.  In The Pioneers (Chapter III), Cooper displays an early environmentalist sentiment—Natty Bumpo complains of the wholesale slaughter of pigeons.  This is a developing facet of romanticism:  the sanctity of nature and man being a part of nature.  This represents a change from the early and pre-Romantics who cherished nature, but looked upon nature as if they were separate from it.  

Last of the Mohicans is an example of “The Wilderness Gothic,” in which the medieval haunted castle of traditional European gothic romance is transformed into the foreboding power of the wilderness.  Such dark recesses are the sites of hidden sins.  The romantic hero, on a quest, arrives and stirs up the ghosts of past disputes.  Cora and Alice are like heroines of old entering a haunted castle.  Magua personifies the spirits of lust and revenge, and the racial elements serve as gothic symbols for light and dark, good and evil.

Yvonne Hopkins writes that “Of the two sisters, Alice represents the old world, removed from nature, the inhabitant of an artificial environment. In Cora, however, the mystery of her heritage, her dark looks, and her determination mark her as a woman suited to the challenges of the environment. While Alice projects the damsel in distress, Cora projects the survivor, able and willing to adapt; and, therefore, eminently worthy of taking her place in the natural setting of the frontier.”

The frontier allows characters to commune with nature in its sublime beauty.  But nature also can be cruel and can allow ferocious violence, such as the Indians’ massacre of the English at Fort William Henry.  Nature poses real danger.  The travelers struggle to make it through the wilderness.  However, because they have become a part of nature they are able to use nature to their advantage.  For example, they use the fog as cover and hide their tracks by walking through the stream (Chapter 14).  Hawkeye lives the idealized life of the wilderness.  He is at home in the Indian and white cultures, and he lives according to the natural rhythms of the land.  The Last of the Mohicans idealizes nature over against European civilization.

That man can become part of nature is shown when Hawkeye successfully disguises himself as a bear (Chapter 24) or when Chingachgook poses as a beaver (Chapter 27).  In reality an Indian eye would have caught on immediately.  But in Cooper, romanticized characters can merge into their natural surroundings.

Writes Hopkins, “The significance of man’s oneness with nature is further emphasized in Uncas’s connection to the mythological turtle, the giver of life.  In tracing his heritage to the turtle, Uncas establishes a noble lineage and a direct link with the natural world.”

The new spirit of man as part of nature is contrasted with the character, David Gamut, a Calvinist psalmist.  His pitch-pipe, a symbol of civilization, is of little use in the wilderness.  Hawkeye and friends are able to thwart nature’s challenges, subtly refuting the Calvinist notion of man being unable to alter his destiny, which according to Calvinism is predetermined.  This new sense of freedom, based on the assumption that since man is part of nature he has the power to determine its outcome, embodies the new free spirit of America.