Ode to the Classics

Ode to the Classics: An Analysis of the ways in which Romanticism Derives from Greek and Roman Classicism

            In 1916, Percy Shelley declared to Lord Byron that the French Revolution was, “ the master theme of the epoch in which we live". Letters from France echoes this sentiment, dictating many early-Romantic writers’, including Burke, Paine, and Wollstonecraft, feelings on the French Revolution. While the French Revolution was a major source of inspiration for early Romantic writers, its roots can be better derived from early Greek and Roman Classicism. In a way, one can view the Romanticism as a recapitulation of Early Greek and Roman thought, inspired by the French Revolution, similar to the way in which the Renaissance was a recapitulation of the same ideas, inspired by multiple impetus, including the Black Death and the corruption within the Catholic Church. History and Romanticism are intertwined, with Romantic writers seeing themselves as prophets with the ability to sense “historical depth in the inanimate world” (Underwood). This paper will explore and analyze the ways in which ‘Romantic’ writers 1) glorify the Roman tradition through form 2) use Greek mythology through allusion to create meaning within their writings.

            In his essay “Of History and Romance,” William Godwin wrote, on the subject of the Greeks and Romans, that there was “something in their nature…that expanded and fired the soul”. He continues, stating definitively that any man that cannot recognize the brilliance of these “ancient giants” must be “destitute” of some of the “first principles of discrimination.” Additionally, one who fails to appreciate the ancients must possess an “unelevated” soul. For Romantic writers, the Greek and Roman tradition possessed an untouchable power and influence; the ancients possessed wisdom completely absent in the artists that followed due to their “free and undaunted spirit”. History damaged the classical ideas of wisdom and freedom, and by replicating the classical tradition, Romantic writers attempted to also achieve a sense of that lost wisdom and freedom.

            This link between antiquity and Romanticism is evident even in the naming; the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘romance’ as being “descended from Latin” literally, but also in the figurative sense. Romanticism is clearly descended from the Latin tradition; it is language, as an art rather than a literal form of communication, transcended from Roman origins. Additionally, it was Romantics who coined the term Romanticism further demonstrating the deliberate attempt to recreate the classical tradition.

            The way in which Romanticism derives from Roman tradition is clearly evident in the construction of the classical ‘Romantic’ ode. Many of the ‘Romantic’ odes are clearly derived from famed Roman poet Horace’s traditional ode. The Horatian ode employs, “unified stanzas…with the same metrical pattern” and also tended to employ subjects that were more “personal,” “meditative,” and “restrained”. The Horatian model is apparent in poems from both generations of Romantics, particularly in the odes of late Romantic John Keats.

                                     

                                  

Keat’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” clearly exemplifies the Horation tradition in both form and content. His poem maintains ten line stanzas with a nearly consistent rhyme scheme. His rhyme scheme, in the first four lines, is consistently alternating couplets of ABAB, however, the last six lines of his poem alternate between slightly differing rhyme schemes. The first and last stanzas employ the same rhyme scheme of CEDDCE, while the second employs a scheme of CDECED, and the third and fourth stanzas utilize a more ‘traditional’ CDECDE scheme. While Keats diverges from the traditional Horation ode in his rhyme scheme, by starting and ending with the same metrical pattern Keats, in way, indicates that the ‘proper’ scheme is the one that begins and ends the poem. Perhaps Keats utilizes the same scheme in the first and last stanzas understanding that, from a spectator’s point of a view, the first and last stanzas are the most ‘critical’. Additionally, his modifications to the traditional Horatian rhyme scheme demonstrate the way in which his knowledge of Horatian form is obscured by time and death; it would be impossible, according to Keats, to completely replicate the Horatian ode because Horace is dead. Keats is merely recreating the form from the writings Horace left behind.  

 Additionally, content wise, Keats’ ode is entirely Horatian, concerning itself with the most personal subject of all: mortality. It is interesting that Keats uses the Roman ode considering the subject of his poem; he parallels the idea of an artistic legacy, “beauty is truth,” by using a poetic form created by one of the greatest Roman poets. Keats, through the ode, evokes the Classical tradition to understand his own mortality, as an artist. By evoking the classical tradition, Keats’ affirms the mundane nature of his own mortality, arguing that, like all other men, he will die, and his only immortal self is the one he, himself, immortalizes in his art. Horace himself is noted for saying, “He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world,” with Keats affirming this when he writes that following his generation’s demise, “Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe.” Here, Keats, exemplifies Horace’s mundane idea of death, declaring that when all have died they will return to the Earth and continue to exist, just in other mediums. In a way, Keats is both deeply personal and deeply impersonal in this poem, struggling to understand to his own mortality while lamenting the most archaic struggle, defining one’s inexistence. While some have viewed Keats’ poem as generic and passé, his fusion of the deeply personal with the impersonal makes his art truly unique in the way it conveys meaning. He uses the traditional form and content, but creates meaning in a truly ‘Romantic’ way.

The Roman tradition is continued in the construction of the Romantic sonnet, as well. While the Petrarchan sonnet that many Romantics employ only arose in the 15^th century, in the works of Italian poet Petrarch, their decision to use the Italian sonnet over the traditional English Shakespearean sonnet indicates the connection to the Roman tradition. The Italian language is, in its purest form, the spoken form of Latin; therefore, the Italian sonnet is more inherently Roman, in its linguistic roots, than Shakespeare’s sonnet. While Petrarch’s sonnets were revolutionary for being written in Italian, Romantic poets see the Italian form as the most classical because of the implications of it being written it Italian. In a way, their exemplification of Petrarch’s form inherently rejects their native British interpretation, in favor of the classical one. However, it is obvious from the Romantic interpretation that writers attempted to, in a way, Anglicize it, creating a British Petrarchan sonnet.

This fusion is apparent in early Romantic William Wordsworth’s poem “I Griev’d for Buonaparte,” where Wordsworth fuses the rhyme schemes of both the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets. The first four stanzas utilize the traditional Petrarchan scheme of ABBA. Contextually, the first stanza is also in accordance with the Petrarchan tradition. The theme of unrequired love, the prevalent in Petrarchan sonnets, presents itself as unappeasable confusion, in a sense. Wordsworth’s confusion derives from his inability to understand his own reaction to Carlo’s existence and the way in which he grieves a man who suppressed freedom. His grief is not literal mourning, but a feeling of burden. Wordsworth cannot comprehend the burden left behind by Carlo’s actions. Due to his gambling addiction and prominent position in Louis XVI’s court, Carlo contributed heavily to the French revolution through his selfishness, apparent in Wordsworth’s choice to describe the burden left as  “vain” and “unthinking” (Wordsworth, 1-2).

The second stanza completely diverges from the first, exemplifying the ABAB rhyme scheme present in Shakespeare’s sonnet, while also changing his subject from the selfish and vain Buonaparte to the subject of kind and nurturing fathers. While his adjectives in the first stanza, “vain,” “unthinking” are cacophonous and harsh sounding, his adjectives in the second are far more pleasing (Wordsworth, 1-2). He describes the governor as “wise and good” possessing a “sternness of the brain” (Wordsworth, 6-7). The personal aspect of the English sonnet is obvious here, as Wordsworth is not criticizing Carlo for his political actions, but for his role as a father and the legacy with which he has burdened his children with. He argues that, while many praise a mother’s love, it is a father’s kindness that dictates a child’s future character. He also recognizes that “true Sway” is rooted not in wealth or name, but in “wisdom,” also characterized as having “children round her knees,” demonstrating not only power of the mind but the power of parenthood (Wordsworth, 9/14). Wisdom is characterized as a mother because it is through one’s parents that one learns to understand the world. The idea of wisdom and reason as prevailing source of power is a traditionally classical idea, considering the structure of Greek and early-Roman politics; in a democracy or a Republic, one achieves power through their wisdom and ability to reason, not through blood. Wordsworth, in this poem, is celebrating the Greek and Roman tradition, in a way, accrediting its fall to men like Carlo.

While the Roman tradition is exemplified in the Romantic form, the Greek tradition presents through mythology in the Romantic construction of allusion. While it is obvious that Romantics embrace the Roman heritage more than the Greek one, their mythology is more predominantly used to create meaning within the text. While their myths are obviously fantastical, they typically convey deeper meanings that extend to humankind, providing a sense of wisdom. Romantic writers utilize Greek myths in their writing to convey a similar sense of wisdom.

                                                  

Writer William Blake, in paticular, was obsessed with Greek mythology, considering it to contain the “substance of spiritual truth concerning the nature and destiny of the human soul.” (Raine) His devotion for mythology is apparent in his poems, “Little Girl Lost” and “Little Girl Found,” where he compares the titular little girl to the Greek goddess Persephone through use of her nickname, “Lyca.” Blake’s allusion to myth is clear from his repetitive use of the name Lyca, also the most frequently used word in the poem. He names the little girl frequently and explicitly to make obvious the fact that his little girl is a version of Greece’s Persephone.

According to myth, Persephone, the Goddess of the Harvest, was the most beautiful woman in the realm. Hades, desiring her beauty, kidnapped her, forcing her parents, Zeus and Demeter, to furiously search for her, refusing to give up until Hades released Persephone from hell. He eventually released her from hell, giving her a pomegranate that, when eaten, cursed Persephone to spend a third of the year in the Underworld with Hades.

Blake uses the myth of Persephone to both detail the journey of the little girl, but also to formulate a relationship between loss of innocence and death. In both “The Little Girl Found” and “The Little Girl Lost,” Blake euphemizes sleep as death, which results from loss of innocence. The little girl’s “heart does ache” when her mother is awake and weeping, yet if the mother is ‘sleeping’, “Lyca shall not weep” (Blake, 25-28). Lyca watches, in the first poem, “The Little Girl Lost” as her parents sleep, trying to sleep alongside them. However, she has trouble sleeping as she is “lost in desert wild”; yet, she is not literally lost, but lost in fantasies due to her innocence. In “The Little Girl Found,” Lyca is discovered sleeping by her parents, demonstrating her own loss of innocence. Additionally, even though the poem is titled “The Little Girl Found,” this poem, from Songs of Experience, portrays her as being literally lost. She is only ‘found’ because she has fallen from innocence. Additionally, there is a sexual connotation to her lost innocence, apparent in Blake’s drawing through the image of a man and woman embracing. Persephone lost her innocence because one can assume Hades took her purity, so to speak and thus Blake’s lost girl loses her own innocence with sexual intercourse and maturity.

Blake also uses this myth to reject childlike innocence, arguing it inherently damns one to a hellish. When Persephone thinks she has gotten out of hell the first time, she innocently eats a Pomegranate that damns her there for one third of eternity. The Little Girl similarly thinks that she has achieved happiness through sleep, but then she dies and loses her identity completely. Her death is Blake’s literal way of stating that happiness cannot exist without innocence, but that particular happiness is not happiness but naivety masquerading as happiness. Innocence is damaging because it is the naivety it produces that negatively determines one’s fate: death.

The Romantics were clearly not innovators, but rather deep thinkers with a profound appreciation for antiquity that attempted to recreate the wisdom and knowledge the ancients possessed. They were not revolutionary for their wisdom, but their presentation of ancient ideas. The ancients were simply the best, and, thus, the primary goal was to achieve brilliance relative to their brilliance. While the Romantic Era is inherently an ode, in itself, to history, the movement does not represent another period more clearly than that of antiquity.

Works Cited:

Romantic Historicism and the Afterlife

Ted Underwood

PMLA , Vol. 117, No. 2 (Mar., 2002), pp. 237-251

Blake and Tradition by Kathleen Raine;

The Review of English Studies , New Series, Vol. 22, No. 85 (Feb., 1971), pp.93-95

"Horatian ode." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/271664/Horatian-ode>.

"Persephone." Encyclopedia Mythica. 2012. Encyclopedia Mythica Online.

18 Apr. 2012 <http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/persephone.html>.