American Literature: Romanticism research assignment Student Research Submissions 2013 research post 2

Daniel B. Stuart

May 2, 2013

European vs. American Romanticism:

A Matter of Time and a Question of Space

            There is perhaps no better literary visualization of the early American frontier than the verse of William Cullen Bryant. His 1821 poem "The Prairies" exudes such an air of divine presence inhabiting the country's landscape that careful readers will be sure to identify early strains of Transcendentalism in his fitting descriptions of "unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful . . . encircling vastness . . . magnificent temple of the sky" (Bryant 495-496). The author, however, is not unaware of the impending mark of mankind upon such a majestic plain ("I listen long/To this domestic hum, and think I hear/The sound of that advancing multitude/Which soon shall fill these deserts.") (Bryant 495-498). He is well-informed of the effect civilization will have, knowledgeable that such an "encircling vastness" cannot remain untouched by time; a classical scholar as well, Bryant was a man familiar with the ravages of time upon the natural world. As a Romantic artist, he was perhaps one of the few in America to conspicuously acknowledge such a distinguishing characteristic within the movement's transatlantic distinctions. In the untainted splendor of the American frontier, there was everywhere a "tonic of wildness" (Thoreau 866) while in Europe, as Bryant himself would state in a letter to his friend and painter Thomas Cole, there is "everywhere the trace of men" (McLean 64). Consequently we have the one thing vital to American Romanticism--space--which could not be categorized as a symptom of the European movement's endeavors as any "wildness" had already been encroached upon by human encounters. Likewise it was America, its bards and essayists, who strove to establish American Romanticism as void of much of the very thing Europeans prized about the subject of Romanticism--time, or rather its allusions to a past.

            Romanticism in America, in a sense, was every bit the timeless motif, or at least one absent of memory, as the movement in Europe was concerned with retrospection. Emerson, not to mention the likes of Thoreau and even some American Modernists like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, celebrated the ever-present (Reuben 13). We only need to look at some selections from "Nature" for an example: "But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory? . . . In nature every moment is new" (Emerson 515). Such an antipathy to the past was no doubt intermingled with American growth and expansionism (an anticipatory angle on the space motif), with an enthusiasm toward a future that held such promise and utopian dreams. But more immediately it was a response, an intellectual as well as spiritual inclination toward a new ideal for mankind, one free from  institutions which had so long held an authority over personal destiny (Tanner 95).

            Europe could not disentangle herself of institutions. As if it hadn't already a mind to abide by formal constraints of civilization and, reminders were at every turn. Layers (literally) of society past existed in every corner of the continent. Even the "Age of Heroes" of antiquity lay in stratified archaelogical order in places like Greece and Rome. Revolution, Reformation and Renaissance could only reconfigure and reintroduce old consolidations of power and hierarchy. Despite the early European Romantics', particularly English poets', highest hopes realized through the French Revolution and the spirit of a new age awakened by humanistic endeavors, a reversion to a similar mode of societal conditions was once again established. Disillusionment over the fallout from the events of 1789 would contribute to these symptoms, though pre-dated events no doubt held as much authority (Tanner 94). Though an emphasis on individuality and a realization of sensory perception in nature could be said to have altered a change in artistic objectives, as well as emotional and behavorial sensibilities, the setting for such a phenomenon could no more allow the manifestation of it to a higher plane of transcendence than it could prevent the limitation of such an effort due to pre-existing conditions.

            America on the other hand, with the aid of Emerson and his "divinity of man" opened the possibility for the complete "recovery of man" (Emerson 515-516). The limitations placed on the moral, spiritual and interrelational attributes of man by institutions, chiefly the stringent Calvinist theological precepts but other formalized modes of authority as well, were now de-emphasized in place of self-reliance and personal immanence. Emerson's ideas, centered in the rhetoric of philosophy rather than traditionalist religion, threw open to an expectant American audience the potential for moral and spiritual perfection of the individual. It was not only possible but wholly adaptable that man could achieve maximum personal development free from external institutions (Reuben). Now free of formative control systems that rendered it independent of the constraints of time, America was free to explore its own unblemished, timeless space--literally, figuratively, and intellectually. Confinement, as it might relate to space or more metaphorical connotations, was no longer a contingency to life.

            There is a sense that America's loss was Europe's gain, and vice-versa. But there is something to be said about the one thing which the European Romantics had which the new world neither shared nor, seemingly, cared to entertain any thought of. It was not just the notion of a more personalized and sufficiently rendered history, but the gift of physical and intimate proximity. Not to be diminished by time, proximity is not so much an appropriation of space as it is a heightened awareness of its significance. In Book Eight of The Prelude, Wordsworth's crowning achievement and among the most original works of long poetry in the English language, we get a since of this significance of proximity as he dwells upon the past and his surroundings. "But a sense/Of what had been here done, and suffer'd here/Through ages, and was doing, suffering, still/Weigh'd with me, could support the test of thought," (Travacchi 204). It was this "deliberate cultivation of an awareness and a sense both of society's historical past and the past of the individual" which afforded the European Romantic with one of his most distinguishing and persistently remonstrated themes (Tanner 99).

            It is not as if American Romantics were prone to ignore the past altogether. Nor were they altogether prejudiced against a Romantic landscape populated by other people. Indeed it would be very difficult, especially for novelists and prose fiction authors, to rely impose a strict discipline of timeless, ever-present self-reliance and still create original work. Hawthorne had to work extensively at extracting elements of the past (sitting in his customs house), an American past, in order to arrive at his own voice in Romanticism. Poe and Irving likewise could no more ignore the implications of historical context and time-honored traditions if they were to invent their own American Romantic elements which further defined and refined the movement (Tanner 100). Here we can also revert back to Bryant who, unlike Emerson, is able to pair the sublimely beautiful yet blank American pastoral with human history as he details in the intermittent stages of "The Prairies." "Are they here--/The dead of other days!--and did the dust/Of these fair solitudes once stir with life/And burn with passion?" (Bryant 496). Bryant, it should be mentioned, was an avid reader of the English lake poets and was heavily influenced by Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (Baym 491).

            In an 1842 letter to a lifelong friend, the English poet Thomas Carlyle wrote the words "you seem to me in danger of dividing yourself from the Fact of this present universe" (Slater 328). The friend in question was none other than Emerson and though the poet, who always spoke with a measured tone, delivered the address in the context of a response to Emerson's newly published Dial, he seems to be thinking what quite a few other Romanitics must have at the time questioned about their colleague's idealism. Their friend was so much in the moment, living in the conceivable reality of a self-emanating, self-relying, self-manifesting selfhood that he'd lost touch with the world around him, with the visceral reality of communal existence. Of course this wasn't the case. Emerson may have seemed distant at times, just as the inner direction of his prose seemed to lose coherence at times, but he always adhered to a structured (if unorthodox) mode of interaction with the world and nature. The careful reader only needs to understand the context of his writing to conceive of that. But it is telling to notice how one man a continent away can percieve of his American peer as out of touch when so much was going on in his [Carlyle's] neck of the woods, where it had always been going on for centuries. It shows that even among transatlantic scholars of like-minded inclinations, differences on doctrine and ideology can be persistent. It may be the case that where there was nostalgia and interpenetration of daily realities in Europe (Tanner 101), there was room to "grow" and abundant solitude in America. But this should not provide a misconception about the overall fundamental truth of Romanticism--a movement emphasizing the primacy of emotion and individualism. Where America had the frontier and space, Europe had a history and a concept of time and its effects. Those were the two primary distinctions. And though Romanticism on each continent would diverge with respect to those distinctions, it did not, in most respects deteriorate from the efficacy or the importance, not to mention the artistic merit, of the soul of the movement.

Works Cited

Baym, Nina. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Eighth Ed. Vol. 1: Beginnings To 1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Bryant, William Cullen. "The Prairies" The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Eighth Ed. Vol. 1: Beginnings To 1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature" The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Eighth Ed. Vol. 1: Beginnings To 1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

McLean, Albert F. William Cullen Bryant. New York: Putnam, 1989.

Reuben, Paul P. American Transcendentalism: A Brief Introduction Ch. 4. PAL: Perspectives in American Literature-A Research and Reference Guide. Online.<www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/intro.html>

Slater, Joseph, Ed. The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964.

Tanner, Tony. "Notes for a Comparison between American and European Romanticism" Journal of American Studies, Vol. 2. No. 1 (Apr., 1968). pp. 83-103.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Walden [Selections]" The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Eighth Ed. Vol. 1: Beginnings To 1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Travacchi, Norma, ed. Wordsworth: Complete Poems. New York: Penguin, 1987.