Only The Good Die Young

~ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG~

Over the course of the semester, we have discussed many texts that deal with mortality and the loss of innocence or the loss of the ideal.  The course description describes the Romantic period saying, “Amidst massive political and social upheaval, Romantic period authors were awakened to the importance of the past for both the immediate present and the hoped-for future.  The theme of the end of the ideal and a transition into how this affects the social and political problems is found when one traces Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Hemans throughout the sections of this survey course.

In an attempt to connect to the common man and everyday life, Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads.  In his poem, “We are Seven,” the poem opens with a description of the young girl who was eight years old “her hair was thick with many a curl/that clustered round her head/she had a rustic, woodland air,/ and she was wildly clad: / her eyes were fair, and very fair” (566).  She is a pleasant-natured girl and the speaker can’t understand “what should it know of death?”  When asked how many brothers and sisters are in her family, she responds “’Seven are we;/And two of us at Conway dwell,/And two are gone to sea” (566).  Conway, being a church, is where two of her siblings are buried and the man can’t comprehend how the young girl continues to believe that there are seven of them.  The young girl is relentless in her responses and, in the final stanza, the man says, “’But they are dead; those two are dead!/ Their spirits are in heaven!’/’Twas throwing words away; for still/The little Maid would have her will,/And said, ‘Nay, we are seven!’”(566).  The little girl believes that her lost siblings are still with her, as she continues to play on their graves and live as though they were still with her, while being conscious about the fact that they are dead.  The perception of the man, who doesn’t want to accept the death of loved ones, is juxtaposed by the young girl’s perception whose innocence is not necessarily corrupted by experiencing the death of a loved one, but continues to live her life as a joyous young girl.    

 

http://www.greatorme.org.uk/conwy7.html

 The above image is from Conway Parish Churchyard and is associated with Wordsworth’s poem because it has a plaque that reads “We are Seven” and has seven crosses.  This is the image most commonly related to the poem because Wordsworth specifically mentions Conway when the girl is describing the location of her siblings.  This image depicts the end of the idealization that the girl expresses in the poem, despite the loss of two of her siblings.  In “We are Seven,” Wordsworth tells a story of idealization using a young girl who lost two of her siblings, but is persistent about telling the older man she is talking to that she is part of seven.  Wordsworth makes an argument for what can be learned from the innocent child who seems to know more about the idea of loss than the old man.  Chaplin and Faflak comment, “This characterization of the lost innocence of childhood, and more generally for a mythologized past for which the poet yearns” (41).  The reader’s position is complicated, as well as the man’s perspective, as Alex suggested on the blog, stating, “However, we come to understand, as does the man, that the young girl actually fosters a more advanced conception of death than even he has.  She understands that it exceeds the physical and that one’s state of belonging in a family does not necessitate earthly ties.” When considering the girl’s idealization of death, although her siblings died at a very young age, Wordsworth creates a tension, noted in Kathcal’s post, “between the solemnity of death and the unspoiled beauty of childhood.”  Wordsworth suggests that innocence is something to be cherished because it is lost with age. 

Keats continues the idea of a loss of innocence switching the focus to him, ultimately afraid of not being able to fulfill his potential.  His poem, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” presents an internal paradox Keats struggles with between immortality and mortality.  To understand the poem, the reader must first understand the significance of the Elgin Marbles, as described on the Victorian Web at this link: http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/orientalist/warner.html .  As Kat suggests, the poem is written in a Petrarchan sonnet, composed of an octet that describes the pain Keats is experiencing in realizing his mortality followed by the sestet in which he identifies the reasons and essentially comes to terms with what it means to be mortal.  He begins the poem saying “My spirit is too weak-mortality/Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,” using words like ‘heavily’ and ‘unwilling’ to express his reluctance to accept this burden of mortality.  Out of desperation, Keats continues, “And each imagined pinnacle and steep/ Of godlike hardship tells me I must die/ Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.”  The simile of the eagle to Keats expresses a tension of being unable to fly, left helpless watching life pass him by.  His sestet seeks to answer the question of mortality referencing the Elgin marbles, “So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,/That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude”(1261).  Described as an ‘indescribable feud,’ the struggle with the desire to be immortal brings Keats an odd comfort because there is a lasting feel to the marbles and their ability to last through the ages.  He concludes the poem noting, “Wasting of old time-with a billowy main-/A sun-a shadow of a magnitude,” exposing the ambiguity and the less than idealized notion of mortality. 

http://pearlinparis-pearl.blogspot.com/2011/02/elgin-marbles-at-british-museum-summer.html

The above image is a picture of the Elgin Marbles as they appear in the British museum.  Keats’ focus in his poem is on the relics that are left from history and includes a commentary on the passage of time and the immortality found in art versus the mortality that Keats is afraid of because he is afraid of the loss of his ability to produce poetry.  As Laura suggests in her post, “Keats envies the immortal gods depicted in sculpture as his health is weaning and laments his own temporality.  Yet thought the figures are representing beings that transcend mortality, the stone of which they are wrought betrays the effects of time.  This paradox prompts an internal struggle as Keats seemingly wonders whether anything is immortal.”  The idealization of mortality present in Wordsworth’s “We are Seven” is dismantled in Keats poem because he suggests that art is our only form of immortality.  Keats expresses a worry that he will not be immortalized, like the gods present on the Elgin Marbles. 

Keats’ concern for his own immortality translates to the concern that poets during the French Revolution had about problems with social and political institutions and young deaths.  The French Revolution, and Napoleon Bonaparte, are the center for much of the criticism that writers, like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron, exposed in their pieces.  To further understand the nature of the French Revolution, it is necessary to be familiar with its history as is laid out by the following link: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist7.html After reading “We are Seven,” it is interesting to compare Wordsworth’s idealization with his view of Napoleon as a source of wasted potential in “I Griev’d for Buonaparte.”  As Andrey points out, “Wordsworth misspells “Bonaparte” by using the Italian word for ‘good,’ which reflects on Napoleon’s Italian heritage.”  Wordsworth writes, “…the vital blood/ Of that man’s mind what can it be?  What food/ Fed his first hopes?  What knowledge could he gain?” (597), contending that Bonaparte’s leadership was a result of knowledge gained in his youth which led to bloodshed and the loss of human lives that died too young.  Wordsworth attributes Napoleon’s failure to the education he learned from his mother suggesting, “Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk/ Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk/ Of the mind’s business: these are the degrees/By which true Sway doth mount; this is the stalk/True power doth grow on; and her rights are these”(597).  If Napoleon would have received a proper education from his mother with nurturing, as a mother should, many of the problems of fulfilling Napoleon’s potential could have been avoided. 

http://www.world-history-movies.com/french-revolution.html

The above image is one of the most widely circulated images of Napoleon Bonaparte.  It captures his essence as a conceited ruler with ambitions that he could only dream of reaching. As Carly suggested, “Wordsworth mourns these qualities [learned from a mother] were never instilled upon Bonaparte, because it is implied that he would have been a more powerful, respected, and successful leader.”  Similar to Wordsworth, many authors expressed their feelings of the loss of ideals with the loss of the French Revolution.  It did not get rid of any problems and caused the loss of the lives of many soldiers.  This loss of innocence that essentially comes with growing old also brings about a destructiveness of experience and how it transforms the knowledge of a man.  Wordsworth is concerned with the wasted potential of Bonaparte as it relates to his quest for knowledge in conjunction with power.

The political ramifications of the loss of innocence and the end of ideals are also translated into social ramifications, in which the feminists argue that innocence is essentially worthless and a form of weakness.  In Hemans, “Bride of the Greek Isle,” she gives her woman protagonist, Eudora, agency as a woman that extends beyond the domestic sphere that is a domestic life.  The poem initially begins with Eudora as a submissive woman and utilizes language of sentiment and emotion in its descriptions, such as “Jewels flash’d out from her braided hair; Like starry dews midst the roses there;” and “She goes unto love yet untried and new” (?).  This is the expected role of Eudora as an innocent domestic caretaker.  Hemans initial descriptions are transformed after the invasion, in which Eudora is stripped of any kind of domestic role.  Towards the end of the poem, Hemans writes “And her eye with an eagle-gladness fraught,-/ Oh! Could this work be of woman wrought?/ Yes!  ‘twas her deed!-by that haughty smile/ It was hers-she hath kindled her funeral pile!/Never might shame on that bright head be,/Her blood was the Greek’s, and hath made her free!” (?).  The eagle is a symbol of freedom and power by which Eudora is compared because with her ‘haughty smile’ she realizes that she is no longer held back by gender constraints and is now free to sustain her own freedom.  Eudora’s death at the end of the poem ultimately leaves the reader questioning the reasoning behind her decision to commit this act: triumph or failure? 

http://wn.com/Casabianca__Felicia_Dorothea_Hemans

The image above is a depiction of the burning of the ship that affirms the freedom Eudora experiences as described above.  Hemans presents Eudora’s decision to die as a source of liberation.  John Rudy, a critic of Hemans, notes “And yet, it must be said, the space Hemans creates for passionate flow leads almost inevitably to either insanity or death, and frequently to both. Indeed, Records of Woman rarely offers up a lyric moment unless it produces a corpse, such is the awkward position of passionate lyricism--and especially lyric poetry by women--in the late-Romantic period.”  This inevitability of ‘insanity or death’ Rudy comments on is in direct contrast to the original argument Wordsworth makes in “We Are Seven” about the essence of innocence the little girl has and the old man doesn’t realize he lost.  Hemans does not see innocence as a beneficial attribute, but rather seeks to create a female character that is liberated against submissiveness to men and is knowledgeable about her situation and her position in society.  The title of this post is “Only the Good Die Young,” not only referring to the literal death of people at a young age during the romantic period, but also the loss of innocence and the loss of ideals that plagues the texts of the Romantic Period. 

Sources

Chaplin, Susan, and Joel Faflak. The Romanticism Handbook. London: Continuum, 2011. Print.

Mellor, Anne Kostelanetz., and Richard E. Matlak. British Literature, 1780-1830. S.l.:

     Wadsworth, 1996. Print.

Rudy, Jason R. "Hemans' Passion." CBS Interactive. CBS Interactive Business Network, 01 Aug.  

     2007. Web. 26 Apr. 2012.

     <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb297/is_4_45/ai_n29344213/pg_7/?tag=content;col1>.