Romantic Poetry Session — August 25, 2023

Poets for the session on Aug 25, 2023

In addition to the usual English suspects, Shelley and Keats, we had two American poets Whitman and Emerson, a French poet Victor Hugo, and a Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz. 

Within the English Romantic poets there was the younger generation consisting of Shelley, Keats, and Byron, that rebelled against the the older generation, signified by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Not only was the lifestyle of the youthful poets freer, but they were uncompromising in their support for the French Revolution, and for greater freedom of speech and belief, which they hoped would usher in a freer Britain. Byron’s contempt for Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge (the old guard) led to the creation of a freer and even more Romantic era of poetry.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were close collaborators in writing poetry and in developing theories about poetic values and how poetry arises, culminating in the Lyrical Ballads. That joint collection of poems, first published in 1798, is generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The 1800 edition had the famous Preface that set out the changes Wordsworth hoped to bring about by treating poetry not as elevated speech, but common speech enlivened “with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness” toward Nature. He gave his famous definition of Poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”  

The Young Romantics – Keats, Shelley, and Byron

The younger generation knew each other’s work and generally had good opinions to share. Keats did not come from nobility as Shelley and Byron did, and did not have the benefit of University education that came as a birthright for the well-born. However he made up for it by reading everything he could get his hands on via his friend Cowden Clark. 

Shelley and Byron did collaborate during their famous 1816 sojourn in Switzerland. Poems like Julian and Maddalo by Shelley about two friends: Julian the idealist who is like Shelley, and Maddalo the aristocrat who resembles Byron.  That Swiss contact made by Lake Geneva where the Shelleys and Byron rented villas, had many other literary consequences. There Byron found the medieval Château de Chillon, which inspired his long poem, Prisoner of Chillon. Mary Shelley wrote her famous thriller, Frankenstein, Or, the Modern Prometheus. And Byron finished the third canto of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in the villa Diodati.

Villa Diodati in Cologny, Switzerland by Lake Geneva where the Shelleys and Byron met in 1816

The modern poet Vijay Seshadri writes about how he was inspired by the grand old poet – Whitman. Seshadri says in an interview that he is amazed by the delicacy of Whitman’s technique, the more so because he is thought of historically, as “massive and powerful.” Seshadri says Whitman “has a control over the minutiae of poetry that is of the same order as Emily Dickinson’s. You can just marvel and marvel at the little effects, and the little changes.” But the greatest challenge in Whitman is “the visionary life and the prophetic experience” he brings. Can one rise to that?

Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev – July 21, 2023

 

Turgenev – Fathers and Sons, First Edition, 1867, English translation bay Eugene Schuyler

Fathers and Sons is a novel by Ivan Turgenev published in 1862. Its reputation in Russia and abroad remains stout as ever after it gained a following in continental Europe as the foremost Russian novel of the 19th century. It highlights the conflict between the established order and the younger, more radical generation in society. In a way it is a preview of the Bolshevik revolution to come. 

Statue of Turgenev, made by the sculptors Yan Neiman and Valentin Sveshnikov, using Turgenev's death mask when sculpting the writer's face

Bazarov, the central character of the novel, representing the younger generation, is represented as a ‘nihilist’, or a skeptic about any political causes and philosophical –isms that are advocated in society by their champions. However, though Bazarov sets himself up as a nihilist, he has humanist tendencies; for example, he puts his medical skills in the service of the peasants he freely associates with, though he is the son a small landowner himself. So too the brothers Kirsanov with whom he has arguments have long since freed their serfs; their liberal-minded egalitarian nature is evident.

Falling in love is treated in various ways. There is the simple seigneurial manner in which Nikolai Kirsanov takes to Fenechka; the romantic manner in which Arkady ultimately falls for Katya, sister of Odintsova; and finally the more intellectual, and at the same time refined attraction that emerges between Odintsova and Bazarov. Bazarov’s first reaction is: “What a magnificent body; shouldn't I like to see it on the dissecting-table.” But when his plan to possess her physically fails, he won’t fall for chivalrous sentiments. He has to admit finally the fact that he is in love with a real but unattainable woman.

The duel scene in Chapter 24 is set up on the flimsiest of excuses, that Bazarov who stole a kiss from Fenechka, the concubine-mistress of Nikolai, has been caught in the act by Pavel, Nikolai’s brother. Some see it as the dramatic high point of the novel, but it is in fact a comic absurdity. Whether Turgenev meant it thus is debatable, but our readers derived only general merriment from the scene.

Turgenev lived in Paris in the latter part of his life with his friends, Madame Pauline Viardot and her husband. Turgenev, it seems, had a passion for painting and was a discerning critic. 

Turgenev, Pauline Viardot, celebrated mezzo-soprano, and husband Louis, cultural entrepreneur and art dealer, critic