Realization of Mortality

The Realization of Mortality in the Romantic Era

Miranda Smith

When a set of common themes begins to surface across all the works from a particular time period or historical context, a literary movement is born. Romanticism came to exist in just this way—in around 1780 art and literature alike began reflecting Europe’s response to the spread of revolution and rationalism. People’s perspectives of imagination, nature, gender, religion, and human rights were more divided than ever before, and the attitudes assumed by contemporary artists and writers reflect these changes. Another issue that receives a great deal of attention throughout Romantic works is the realization of one’s own mortality. 

This 1827 painting by Delacroix titled "The Death of Sardanapalus" demonstrates the vivid detail with which Romantic artists portrayed death. In fact, the painting itself was actually inspired by the extremely Romanticized play, "Sardanapalus," written by Lord Byron.

The reality and temporality of life and nature were being confirmed with each new scientific discovery of the era. As scholar Hans Eichner wrote, prior to the Romantic Era, “the ancients explained the world of dead matter in terms of the living. With Galileo and Newton, all this began to change … planets are not the seats of great gods … but lumps of dead matter” (Eichner 9). Poetry from throughout the span of Romanticism communicates a yearning to know what it means to die and watch others die. See this essay by Dr. Salah Mahajna to better understand how death worked itself so deeply into the Romantic context. 

This post will examine the progression of these sentiments through the Romantic era via analysis of several poems written by Wordsworth, Bürger, Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Although not in chronological order by the dates produced, the poems to be discussed demonstrate the different extents to which mortality is faced throughout Romantic poetry, ranging from thoughts on the demise of a distant antihero to the solemn contemplation of one’s own death.

The sonnet, “I Griev’d for Buonaparte” combines Wordsworth’s acknowledgement of loss with a bit of controversial political commentary, thus presenting the idea of mortality in a form that contemporaries were sure to read. The poem moves through the speaker’s thoughts as he ponders a powerful leader’s fall from influence. See this site to better understand how Napoleon's reign affected Romantic writers and their works. Although composed long before Bonaparte’s actual death, the sonnet’s inclusion of the words “griev’d” and “grief” and the consistent use of past tense work powerfully to frame the poem with a death-like imagery and tone. Furthermore, the poem’s discussion of all that Bonaparte might have been given just a bit more maternal guidance, proper education, and “books, leisure, perfect freedom” (10), is so reminiscent of a eulogy that it could easily be interpreted as such. “I Griev’d for Buonaparte” presents the Romantic theme of mortality in a distant and figurative way, proving that to watch even a stranger be reduced to nothing can be emotionally tolling. Though Wordsworth does not address the actual death of anyone in this work, his sensitivity to the collapse of a tyrant he certainly did not love demonstrates how the essence of Romanticism called everyone to examine the meaning of fatality—whether of person or, in this case, power.

Death appears in a Gothic style throughout Gottfried August Bürger’s poem, “Lenora.” It is not surprising, then, that this poem’s portrayal of mortality is much more graphic than in the previously examined piece “grieving” Bonaparte. Moreover, the protagonist of this narrative poem experiences death much more directly than Wordsworth’s speaker, as the life of her lover is actually taken in battle. Her response to this loss is one that brings her face-to-face with death herself. She pleas, "O mother, mother! gone is gone;\My hope is all forlorne;\The grave my onlye safeguarde is--\O, had I ne'er been borne!\Go out, go out, my lampe of life;\In grislie darkness die:\There is no mercye, sure, above!\For ever let me lie" (61-68). Through Lenora, Bürger makes a powerful statement about how acknowledging the mortality of loved ones and coping with their losses can breed eagerness for one’s own death. This transition from grief to pure despair communicates the Romanticism’s commitment to emotion and expression, but it also demonstrates another phase in the Romantics’ realization of and preoccupation with the consequences of mortality. Lenora wishes for her life to be ended, and her request is met by none other than death personified. Though adorned in Gothic imagery, language, and metaphor, “Lenora” details a realistic reaction to the realization that mortality is real and has claimed the life of a lover or close friend.

This is one of many artistic portrayals of Bürger's "Lenora." Notice the use of shadowing and movement in the drawing to communicate the looming inevitability of death.

A true elegy, Shelley’s “Adonais” follows the grieving process from misery to optimism. However, near the middle of the poem, the reader is exposed to a desperate reaction similar to that of Lenora in the previously discussed piece. In stanza 26, the speaker expresses that Keats’s death has made him long for his own when he says, “Now thou art dead, as if it were a part\of thee, my Adonais! I would give\All that I am to be as thou now art!\But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!” (231-234) His realization upon the death of a close friend and fellow artist that he is “chained” to this life further demonstrates how confronting death affected the Romantic poets. Shelley’s ending is much happier than that of Bürger, however, as he is eventually able to find peace in the prospect of Keats’s work and influence surviving long after his body does. Shelley provides a separate perspective on loss in which the mortality of a human cannot claim his contributions to society, as is communicated by the lines “Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,\The soul of Adonais, like a star,\Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are” (493-495).

Returning to the work of Wordsworth, the poem “We Are Seven” portrays yet another perspective on mortality. This piece explores the level of confusion that goes into confronting mortality, and also goes as far as to look at the issue through the eyes of a child. The conflict that arises between the poem’s speaker and the young girl with whom he is talking is a matter of what it actually means to be dead. For example, the girl does not consider her deceased siblings less a part of her family than any of its living members. The speaker contends that to have passed away is to be removed from the earth entirely—both physically and in the minds of others. To prove his point, he goes as far as to compare the girl to her siblings:  “You run about, my little maid,\Your limbs they are alive;\If two are in the church-yard laid,\Then ye are only five.” (33-36). The dialogue between these two characters demonstrates how one’s perception of mortality depends on at what stage in his life he first confronts it. The Romantic Movement’s focus on the human imagination permeates “We Are Seven,” as both the speaker and the little girl have formulated his or her own ideas as to how the reality of mortality fits into the reality of life. This Romantic poem testifies to both the role of the individual and the confrontation of death that are so pertinent to the era.

An impersonalized, more generic contemplation on mortality is found in Byron’s poem published under the title “[A Fragment]”. This work approaches the subject from the viewpoint that death is more a physical phenomenon than anything else. For example, Byron includes the imagery of “insensate dust” (22) and “mingled millions decomposed to clay” (24) to express how all things once living have come to be nothing more than these earthly particles. He promotes the idea of the past and persons lost as those very components on which the living walk around each day in the lines “The ashes of a thousand Ages spread\Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread” (25-26). In this sense, mortality does not entirely strip humans of their existences; rather it recycles them and renders them a part of the very nature about which the Romantic poets were so passionate to portray. Byron’s “[A Fragment]” blends Romanticism’s emphasis on nature with its acknowledgement of mortality to portray death as that action which brings people full-circle to the nature from which they were created.

The last attitude toward mortality to be examined is one of great hopelessness. In Keats’s “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” the speaker contrasts his own mortality with the resilience he observes in a powerful collection of Greek statues. He is consumed by the notion that, unlike the artwork, he will one day perish from this earth completely. He imagines himself dying “like a sick eagle looking at the sky” (5), signifying that, unlike in Byron’s “[Fragment]”, the speaker does not view death as a form of release back into nature. Rather, Keats’s realization of his own mortality is something that holds him back while still alive, just as sickness rejects the eagle’s desire to fly. This work addresses a sphere of Romantic poetry in which the realization of one’s own mortality evokes a crippling sensation in the body and of the spirit. 

Keats cannot helped but feel temporally inferior to these grandeur statues standing the test of time.

A poem written by Keats two years later and titled “Ode to a Nightingale” revisits mortality. In it, Keats writes, “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!\No hungry generations tread thee down.” Scholars interpret this evocation as Keats’ means of again distinguishing the immortality of art from the mortality of man, because “the bird, or more accurately, its song is the composite lyric voice of poetry as it has sounded throughout the ages and whose life extends beyond the deaths of successive individual bards” (Kappel 270). Again, contemplation on the relative temporality of his life in comparison with the longevity of artwork both frightens and inspires Keats to create.

Throughout the span of Romanticism, many poets addressed the concept of human mortality in their works. Despite the emergence of this common theme, however, a survey of just a few such works reveals just how many different interpretations of death were being put forth by the Romantics. Although a number of Romantic poems are obviously inspired by the realization of self-mortality, each individual work portrays its own nuanced version of what it means to perish and/or watch lovers, friends, and strangers perish. Romanticism itself is defined by this combination of commonality and diversity, and it is no surprise that the works of Wordsworth, Bürger, Shelley, Byron, and Keats stand out as some of the greatest from the period for their assumption and consequent modification of this common theme.

Eichner, Hans. “The Rise of Modern Science and the Genesis of Romanticism.” PMLA.  97.1

(1982): 8-30. Print.

Kappel, Andrew J. “The Immortality of the Natural:  Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale.’” ELH. 45.2

(1978): 270-284. Print.