Humanistic tradition volume 2 7th edition

5 Book SEVENTH EDITION

The Humanistic Tradition Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

LK055_P0001EDBook5_i-xii_AG.indd i 02/12/2014 15:48

LK055_P0001EDBook5_i-xii_AG.indd ii 02/12/2014 15:48

Gloria K. Fiero

5 Book SEVENTH EDITION

The Humanistic Tradition Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

Boston Burr Ridge, IL Dubuque, IA New York San Francisco St. Louis Bangkok Bogotá Caracas Kuala Lumpur Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City

Milan Montreal New Delhi Santiago Seoul Singapore Sydney Taipei Toronto

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Front cover Richard James Lane, Marie Taglioni in the Ballet Flore et Zephyre (detail), 1831. After a drawing by Alfred Edward Chalon. Hand- coloured engraving, 143∕4 × 101∕2 in.

Frontispiece and page x Thomas Phillips, Lord Byron Sixth Baron in Albanian Costume (detail), 1813. Oil on canvas, 50 × 40 in.

THE HUMANISTIC TRADITION, BOOK 5 ROMANTICISM, REALISM, AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY WORLD SEVENTH EDITION

Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous edition © 2011, 2006, 2002, 1998, 1995, 1992. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent of McGraw-Hill Education, including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.

Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available to customers outside the United States.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Permissions Acknowledgments appear on page 351, and on this page by reference.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fiero, Gloria K. The humanistic tradition / Gloria K. Fiero. -- Seventh edition. volumes cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: BOOK 1. The First Civilizations and the Classical Legacy -- BOOK 2. Medieval Europe and the World Beyond -- BOOK 3. The European Renaissance, the Reformation, and Global Encounter -- BOOK 4. Faith, Reason, and Power in the Early Modern World -- BOOK 5. Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World -- BOOK 6. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Global Perspective -- VOLUME I. Prehistory to the Early Modern World -- VOLUME II. The Early Modern World to the Present.

ISBN 978-1-259-36066-4 (volume 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-36066-0 (volume 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35168-6 (volume 2 : acid-free paper)) -- ISBN 1-259-35168-8 (volume 2 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-0-07-337666-0 (looseleaf : book 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 0-07-337666-3 (looseleaf : book 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35209-6 (looseleaf : book 2 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35209-9 (looseleaf : book 2 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35210-2 (looseleaf : book 3 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35210-2 (looseleaf : book 3 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35539-4 (looseleaf : book 4 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35539-X (looseleaf : book 4 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35540-0 (looseleaf : book 5 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35540-3 (looseleaf : book 5 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35211-9 (looseleaf : book 6 : acid-free paper)

1. Civilization, Western--History--Textbooks. 2. Humanism--History--Textbooks. I. Title. CB245.F47 2015 909’.09821--dc23

2014037553

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the author or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites

www.mhhe.com

This book was designed and produced by Laurence King Publishing Ltd., London www.laurenceking.com

Commissioning Editor: Kara Hattersley-Smith Production: Simon Walsh Designer: Ian Hunt Picture Researcher: Louise Thomas Text Permissions: Rachel Thorne Copy-editor: Rosanna Lewis

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vSERIES CONTENTS

BOOK 1

The First Civilizations and the Classical Legacy Introduction: Prehistory and the Birth of Civilization 1 Mesopotamia: Gods, Rulers, and the Social Order 2 Africa: Gods, Rulers, and the Social Order 3 India, China, and the Americas 4 Greece: Humanism and the Speculative Leap 5 The Classical Style 6 Rome: The Rise to Empire 7 China: The Rise to Empire

BOOK 2

Medieval Europe and the World Beyond 8 A Flowering of Faith: Christianity and Buddhism 9 The Language of Faith: Symbolism and the Arts 10 The Islamic World: Religion and Culture 11 Patterns of Medieval Life 12 Christianity and the Medieval Mind 13 The Medieval Synthesis in the Arts 14 The World Beyond the West: India, China,

and Japan

BOOK 3

The European Renaissance, the Reformation, and Global Encounter 15 Adversity and Challenge:

The Fourteenth-Century Transition 16 Classical Humanism in the Age of the Renaissance 17 Renaissance Artists: Disciples of Nature,

Masters of Invention 18 Cross-Cultural Encounters: Asia, Africa,

and the Americas 19 Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order

Series Contents

BOOK 4

Faith, Reason, and Power in the Early Modern World 20 The Catholic Reformation and the Baroque Style 21 Absolute Power and the Aristocratic Style 22 The Baroque in the Protestant North 23 The Scientific Revolution and the New Learning 24 The Enlightenment: The Promise of Reason 25 The Limits of Reason 26 Eighteenth-Century Art, Music, and Society

BOOK 5

Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World 27 The Romantic View of Nature 28 The Romantic Hero 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 31 The Move Toward Modernism

BOOK 6

Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Global Perspective 32 The Modernist Assault 33 The Freudian Revolution 34 Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Arts 35 The Quest for Meaning 36 Liberation and Equality 37 The Information Age 38 Globalism: The Contemporary World

VOLUME I

Prehistory to the Early Modern World Chapters 1–19

VOLUME II

The Early Modern World to the Present Chapters 19–38

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vi CONTENTS

Book 5 Contents

Letter from the Author ix

Preface x

27 The Romantic View of Nature (ca. 1780–1880) 209

LOOKING AHEAD 210

The Progress of Industrialization 210

Early Nineteenth-Century Thought 210

Hegel and the Hegelian Dialectic 211

Darwin and the Theory of Evolution 211

EXPLORING ISSUES Creationism versus

Evolution 213

Nature and the Natural in European Literature 213

Wordsworth and the Poetry of Nature 213

READING 27.1 From Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a

Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” 215

The Poetry of Shelley 216

READING 27.2 Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” 216

The Poetry of Keats 217

READING 27.3 Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 218

Blake: Romantic Mystic 219

READING 27.4 Blake’s “The Tiger” 219

Nature and the Natural in Asian Literature 219

READING 27.5 From Shen Fu’s Six Chapters from a

Floating Life 220

Romantic Landscape Painting 221

MAKING CONNECTIONS 221

Constable and Turner 222

Landscape Painting in France 225

American Romanticism 225

Transcendentalism 225

LOOKING INTO Emerson’s “Brahma” 226

READING 27.6 From Thoreau’s Walden 227

Walt Whitman’s Romantic Individualism 228

READING 27.7 From Whitman’s “Song of Myself” 228

American Landscape Painting 229

America and Native Americans 231

American Folk Art 233

LOOKING BACK 236

Glossary 236

28 The Romantic Hero (ca. 1780–1880) 237

LOOKING AHEAD 238

Nationalism and the Hero 238

Napoleon as a Romantic Hero 238

READING 28.1 From Napoleon’s Diary 240

The Promethean Hero 240

The Promethean Myth in Literature 240

READING 28.2 From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

(Chapters 4 and 5) 241

Bryon and the Promethean Myth 242

READING 28.3 Byron’s “Prometheus” 244

Pushkin: The Byron of Russia 244

READING 28.4 From Pushkin’s “Napoleon” 245

The Abolitionists: American Prometheans 245

Frederick Douglass 246

READING 28.5 From Douglass’ My Bondage and

My Freedom 246

Sojourner Truth 247

READING 28.6 From The Narrative of Sojourner Truth 248

Slave Songs and Spirituals 248

Goethe’s Faust: The Quintessential Romantic Hero 248

READING 28.7 From Goethe’s Faust 250

Romantic Love and Romantic Stereotypes 254

READING 28.8 Heine’s “You are Just Like a Flower” 254

The Female Voice 254

LOOKING BACK 256

29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music (ca. 1780–1880) 257

LOOKING AHEAD 258

Heroic Themes in Art 258

Gros and the Glorification of the Hero 258

Popular Heroism in Goya and Géricault 258

Delacroix and Revolutionary Heroism 260

MAKING CONNECTIONS 262

Heroic Themes in Sculpture 263

Trends in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Architecture 266

Neomedievalism in the West 266

Exoticism in Western Architecture 267

The Romantic Style in Music 267

The Genius of Beethoven 268

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CONTENTS vii

Art Songs 270

The Programmatic Symphonies of Berlioz 270

The Piano Music of Chopin 271

The Romantic Ballet 273

Romantic Opera 275

Verdi and Italian Grand Opera 275

Wagner and the Birth of Music-Drama 275

LOOKING BACK 276

Glossary 277

30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style (ca. 1850–1900) 278

LOOKING AHEAD 279

The Global Dominion of the West 279

Advancing Industrialization 279

Colonialism and the New Imperialism 279

READING 30.1 From Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” 280

China and the West 281

READING 30.2 From Lin Zexu’s Letter of Advice to

Queen Victoria 281

Social and Economic Realities 283

EXPLORING ISSUES Islam and the West 283

Nineteenth-Century Social Theory 284

EXPLORING ISSUES The Limits of Authority 285

The Radical Views of Marx and Engels 285

READING 30.3 From Marx’s and Engels’ Communist

Manifesto 286

Mill and Women’s Rights 288

READING 30.4 From Mill’s The Subjection of Women 288

The New Historicism 289

Realism in Literature 289

The Novels of Dickens and Twain 289

READING 30.5 From Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop 290

READING 30.6 From Twain’s The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn 291

Russian Realism: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy 293

READING 30.7 From Dostoevsky’s Crime

and Punishment 294

The Literary Heroines of Flaubert and Chopin 295

READING 30.8 From Flaubert’s Madame Bovary 296

READING 30.9 Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”

(“The Dream of an Hour”) 296

Zola and the Naturalistic Novel 297

READING 30.10 From Zola’s Germinal 298

Realist Drama: Ibsen 299

READING 30.11 From Ibsen’s A Doll’s House 299

Realism in the Visual Arts 300

The Birth of Photography 300

Courbet and French Realist Painting 302

Daumier’s Social Realism 303

LOOKING INTO Courbet’s Burial at Ornans 304

The Scandalous Realism of Manet 307

Realism in American Painting 310

MAKING CONNECTIONS 311

Late Nineteenth-Century Architecture 314

Realism in Music 316

LOOKING BACK 318

Glossary 318

31 The Move Toward Modernism (ca. 1875–1900) 319

LOOKING AHEAD 320

Late Nineteenth-Century Thought 320

Nietzsche’s New Morality 320

READING 31.1 From the Works of Nietzsche 320

Bergson: Intellect and Intuition 321

Poetry in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Symbolists 322

Mallarmé 322

READING 31.2 From Mallarmé’s “The Afternoon

of a Faun” 322

Music in the Late Nineteenth Century: Debussy 323

Painting in the Late Nineteenth Century 324

Symbolism 324

Impressionism 325

Monet: Pioneer Impressionist 325

Renoir 327

Pissarro 327

Degas 328

Japanese Woodblock Prints and Western Art 329

Cassatt 331

MAKING CONNECTIONS 332

Toulouse-Lautrec 333

Art Nouveau 333

LOOKING INTO Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge 334

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viii CONTENTS

Sculpture in the Late Nineteenth Century 336

Degas and Rodin 336

The Arts of Africa and Oceania 341

Africa 341

Oceania 343

Primitivism 343

Postimpressionism 345

Van Gogh 345

Gauguin 346

Seurat 347

Cézanne 349

LOOKING BACK 350

Glossary 350

Picture Credits 351

Literary Credits 351

Index 352

MAPS 28.1 The Empire of Napoleon at its Greatest Extent,

1812 239

30.1 European Colonies and Independent Nations in 1900 281

31.1 The Kingdoms of Yoruba and Dahomey 341

31.2 The Islands of the South and Central Pacific 343

MUSIC LISTENING SELECTIONS Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, The Eroica,

first movement, excerpt, 1803–1804 268

Schubert, Erlkönig, 1815 270

Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14, “March to the

Scaffold,” fourth movement, excerpt, 1830 271

Chopin, Etude in G-flat Major, Op. 10, No. 5, 1833 272

Debussy, Prélude à “L’après midi d’un faune, 1894 323

ANCILLARY READING SELECTIONS From Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads 213

From Melville’s Moby Dick 238

From Byron’s Don Juan 242

From Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 246

Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” 247

Austen’s Pride and Prejudice 255

The Qianlong Emperor of China’s letter to King George III of

Great Britain 281

From Mill’s On Liberty 285

From Dickens’ David Copperfield 290

From Tolstoy’s War and Peace 293

From Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov 293

From Bergson’s Time and Free Will 322

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ixLETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

The Humanistic Tradition originated more than two decades ago. As a long-time humanities instructor, I recognized that the Western-only perspective was no longer adequate to understanding the cultural foundations of our global world. However, none of the existing humanities textbooks served my needs. The challenge was daunting—covering the history of Western literature, philosophy, art, music, and dance was already an ambitious undertaking for a humanities survey; how could I broaden the scope to include Asia, Africa, and the Americas without over-loading the course?

I found the solution in my classroom: Instead of assuming a strictly historical approach to the past, (as I did in my history classes), I would organize my humanities lectures topically, focusing on universal themes, major styles, and significant movements---gods and rulers, classicism, imperialism, the Romantic hero, racial and sexual equality, globalism---as they reflected or shaped the culture of a given time or place. What evolved was The Humanistic Tradition, a thematic, yet global and chronological approach to humanities, one that provokes thought and discussion without burying students under mountains of encyclopedic information.

Now in its seventh edition, The Humanistic Tradition continues to celebrate the creative mind by focusing on how the arts and ideas relate to each other, what they tell us about our own human nature and that of others on our planet. Its mission remains relevant to the present, and essential (I would hope) to enriching the future of each student who reads its pages.

The Seventh Edition of The Humanistic Tradition To the seventh edition of The Humanistic Tradition I have added a new feature: Looking Into is a diagram- matic analysis of key works, such as Neolithic stone circles (including the latest archeological discoveries in Southeast Turkey), the Parthenon, the sonnets of Petrarch and Donne, Shiva: Lord of the Dance, Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Double Portrait, and Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party.

The new edition expands two popular features that promote critical thinking: Exploring Issues,

which focuses on controversial ideas and current debates (such as the battle over the ownership of antiquities, and creationism versus evolution); and Making Connections, which brings attention to con- trasts and continuities between past and present. To Exploring Issues, I have added the debate over the origins of India’s Vedic culture (chapter 3). To Making Connections I offer a novel illustration of the con- temporary affection for Chinese landscape painting (chapter 14).

The chapter-by-chapter integration of literary, visual, and aural primary sources remains a hallmark of The Humanistic Tradition. In an effort to provide the most engaging and accessible literary works, some selected readings in this edition appear in alternate translations. Marginal logos have been added to direct students to additional literary resources that are dis- cussed but not included in the text itself.

Additions to the art program include the Nebra Sky Disk, Hellenistic mosaics, Delacroix’s Women of Algiers, Oceania’s art of tattoo, Japan’s Amida Buddha, Charles Willson Peale’s Portrait of Yarrow Mamout (the earliest known portrait of a Muslim in America), Ai Wei Wei’s Forever Bicycle, Ernesto Neto’s Anthropodino, and Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center. Chapters 37 and 38, which treat the Information Age and Globalism, have been updated to present a cogent overview of contemporary issues, including terrorism, ecological concerns, ethnic conflict, and the digital arts.

The Humanistic Tradition pioneered a flexible six-book format in recognition of the varying chronological range of humanities courses. Each slim volume was also convenient for students to bring to classes, the library, and other study areas. The seventh edition con- tinues to be available in this six-book format, as well as in a two-volume set for the most common two-term course configuration.

In preparing the seventh edition, I have depended on the excellent editorial and production team led by Donald Dinwiddie at Laurence King Publishing. Special thanks also go to Kara Hattersley-Smith at LKP and Sarah Remington at McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Letter from the Author

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x PREFACE

Each generation leaves a creative legacy, the sum of its ideas and achieve- ments. This legacy represents the response to our effort to ensure our individual and collective survival, our need to establish ways of living in harmony with others, and our desire to understand our place in the universe. Meeting the challenges of survival, communality, and self-knowledge, we have created and transmitted the tools of science and technology, social and political institutions, religious and philosophic systems, and various forms of personal expression—the totality of which we call culture. Handed down from generation to generation, this legacy constitutes the humanistic tradition, the study of which is called humanities.

Understanding that a global humanities course is taught in varying ways, Gloria Fiero redefines the discipline for greater flexibility via a variety of innovative digital tools. Enhanced by McGraw-Hill Education’s LearnSmart and SmartBook, Fiero delivers a learning experience tailored to the needs of each institution, instructor, and student. With the ability to incorporate new extended readings, streaming music, and artwork, The Humanistic Tradition renews the understanding of the relationship between world cultures and humankind’s creative legacy.

Personalized Learning Experience

In Connect Humanities, you can access all of the art and music from The Humanistic Tradition on your computer or mobile device. Music logos (right) that appear in the margins of the text refer to listening selections available for streaming.

As part of McGraw-Hill Education’s Connect Humanities, LearnSmart is an adaptive learning program designed to personalize the learning experience. LearnSmart helps students learn faster, study smarter, and retain more knowledge for greater success. Distinguishing what students know from what they don’t, and touching on concepts they are most likely to forget, LearnSmart continuously adapts to each students’ needs by building a personalized learning path. LearnSmart is proven to strength- en memory recall, keep students in class, and boost grades. By helping students master core concepts ahead of time, LearnSmart enables instruc- tors to spend more meaningful time in the classroom.

Enhanced by LearnSmart, SmartBook is the first and only adaptive reading experience currently available.

• Making It Effective SmartBook creates a personalized reading expe- rience by highlighting the most impactful concepts a student needs to learn at that moment in time. This ensures that every minute spent with SmartBook is returned to the student as the most valuable minute possible.

• Make It Informed Real-time reports quickly identify the concepts that require more attention from individual students—or the entire class.

The Humanistic Tradition—a personalized learning

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xiPREFACE

Personalized Teaching Experience Personalize and tailor your teaching experience to the needs of your humanities course with Create, Insight, and instructor resources.

Create What You’ve Only Imagined No two humanities courses are the same. That is why Gloria Fiero has personally hand-picked additional readings that can be added easily to a customized edition of The Humanistic Tradition. Marginal icons (right) that appear throughout this new edition indicate additional readings, a list of which is found at the end of the Table of Contents.

To customize your book using McGraw-Hill Create™, follow these steps: 1. Go to http://create.mheducation.com and sign in or register for an

instructor account. 2. Click Collections (top, right) and select the “Traditions: Humanities

Readings Through the Ages” Collection to preview and select readings. You can also make use of McGraw-Hill’s comprehensive, cross-disciplinary content as well as other third-party resources.

3. Choose the readings that are most relevant to your students, your curriculum, and your own areas of interest.

4. Arrange the content in a way that makes the most sense for your course. 5. Personalize your book with your course information and choose the

best format for your students—color, black-and-white, or ebook. When you are done, you will receive a free PDF review copy in just minutes.

Or contact your McGraw-Hill Education representative, who can help you build your unique version of The Humanisitic Tradition.

Powerful Reporting on the Go The first and only analytics tool of its kind, Connect Insight is a series of visual data displays—each framed by an intuitive question—that provide at-a-glance information regarding how your class is doing. • Intuitive You receive an instant, at-a-glance view of student performance

matched with student activity. • Dynamic Connect Insight puts real-time analytics in your hands so you

can take action early and keep struggling students from falling behind. • Mobile Connect Insight travels from office to classroom, available on

demand wherever and whenever it’s needed.

Instructor Resources Connect Image Bank is an instructor database of images from select McGraw-Hill Education art and humanities titles, including The Humanistic Tradition. It includes all images for which McGraw-Hill has secured electronic permissions. With Connect Image Bank, instructors can access a text’s images by browsing its chapters, style/period, medium, and culture, or by searching with key terms. Images can be easily downloaded for use in presentations and in PowerPoints. The download includes a text file with image captions and information. You can access Connect Image Bank on the library tab in Connect Humanities (http://connect.mheducation.com).

Various instructor resources are available for The Humanistic Tradition. These include an instructor’s manual with discussion suggestions and study questions, music listening guides, lecture PowerPoints, and a test bank. Contact your McGraw-Hill sales representative for access to these materials.

and teaching experience in global humanities

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Text The text of a primary source refers to its medium (that is, what it is made of), its form (its outward shape), and its content (the subject it describes).

Literature: Literary form varies according to the manner in which words are arranged. So, poetry, which shares rhythmic organization with music and dance, is distinguished from prose, which normally lacks regular rhythmic patterns. Poetry, by its freedom from conven- tional grammar, provides unique opportunities for the expression of intense emotions. Prose usually functions to convey information, to narrate, and to describe.

Philosophy (the search for truth through reasoned analy- sis) and history (the record of the past) make use of prose to analyze and communicate ideas and information.

In literature, as in most forms of expression, content and form are usually interrelated. The subject matter or form of a literary work determines its genre. For instance, a long narrative poem recounting the adventures of a hero constitutes an epic, while a formal, dignified speech in praise of a person or thing constitutes a eulogy.

The Visual Arts: The visual arts employ a wide variety of media, ranging from the traditional colored pigments used in painting, to wood, clay, marble, and (more recently) plastic and neon used in sculpture, to a wide variety of digital media, including photography and film. The form or outward shape of a work of art depends on the manner in which the artist manipulates the elements of color, line, texture, and space. Unlike words, these formal elements lack denotative meaning.

The visual arts are dominantly spatial, that is, they operate and are apprehended in space. Artists manipu- late form to describe or interpret the visible world (as in the genres of portraiture and landscape), or to create worlds of fantasy and imagination. They may also fabri- cate texts that are nonrepresentational, that is, without identifiable subject matter.

Music and Dance: The medium of music is sound. Like literature, music is durational: it unfolds over the period of time in which it occurs. The major elements of music are melody, rhythm, harmony, and tone color—formal elements that also characterize the oral life of litera- ture. However, while literary and visual texts are usually descriptive, music is almost always nonrepresentational: it rarely has meaning beyond sound itself. For that reason, music is the most difficult of the arts to describe in words.

Dance, the artform that makes the human body itself the medium of expression, resembles music in that it is temporal and performance-oriented. Like music, dance

exploits rhythm as a formal tool, and like painting and sculpture, it unfolds in space as well as in time.

Studying the text, we discover the ways in which the artist manipulates medium and form to achieve a charac- teristic manner of execution or expression that we call style. Comparing the styles of various texts from a single era, we discover that they usually share certain defining features and characteristics. Similarities between, for instance, ancient Greek temples and Greek tragedies, or between Chinese lyric poems and landscape paintings, reveal the unifying moral and aesthetic values of their respective cultures.

Context The context describes the historical and cultural environ- ment of a text. Understanding the relationship between text and context is one of the principal concerns of any inquiry into the humanistic tradition. To determine the context, we ask: In what time and place did our primary source originate? How did it function within the society in which it was created? Was it primarily decorative, didactic, magical, or propagandistic? Did it serve the religious or political needs of the community? Sometimes our answers to these questions are mere guesses. For instance, the paintings on the walls of Paleolithic caves were probably not “artworks” in the modern sense of the term, but, rather, magical signs associated with religious rituals per- formed in the interest of communal survival.

Determining the function of the text often serves to clarify the nature of its form, and vice-versa. For instance, in that the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Roland, and many other early literary works were spoken or sung, rather than read, such literature tends to feature repetition and rhyme, devices that facilitate memorization and oral delivery.

Subtext The subtext of a primary source refers to its secondary or implied meanings. The subtext discloses conceptual messages embedded in or implied by the text. The epic poems of the ancient Greeks, for instance, which glorify prowess and physical courage, suggest an exclusively male perception of virtue. The state portraits of the seventeenth-century French king Louis XIV bear the subtext of unassailable and absolute power. In our own time, Andy Warhol’s serial adaptations of Coca-Cola bottles offer wry commentary on the commercial mental- ity of American society. Examining the implicit message of the text helps us determine the values of the age in which it was produced, and offers insights into our own.

BEFORE WE BEGIN

Studying humanities engages us in a dialogue with primary sources: works original to the age in which they were produced. Whether literary, visual, or aural, a primary source is a text; the time, place, and circumstances in which it was created constitute

the context; and its various underlying meanings provide the subtext. Studying humanities from the perspective of text, context, and subtext helps us understand our cultural legacy and our place in the larger world.

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The Romantic View of Nature ca. 1780–1880

“Beauty in art is truth bathed in an impression received from nature.” Corot

27 Chapter

Figure 27.1 J. M. W. TURNER, The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying: Typhoon Coming On), 1840. Oil on canvas, 2 ft. 113∕4 in. × 4 ft. 1∕4 in. Turner infused many of his paintings with a golden glow, achieved by working from a white (rather than a dark) ground and by the use of new yellow pigments commercially available after 1817. His detractors accused Turner of “yellow fever.”

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210 CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature

The Progress of Industrialization During the nineteenth century, the population of Europe doubled in size. At the same time, material culture changed more radically than it had in the previous thou- sand years. The application of science to practical inven- tion, begun in the eighteenth century, had already sparked the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution—the mass production of material goods by machine. The first phase of industrialization occurred in mid eighteenth-century England, with the development of the steam engine and the machinery for spinning and weaving textiles (see chap- ter 25). Monopolized by the English for a half-century, the Industrial Revolution spread to the rest of Europe and to the United States by the 1830s. As increasing production of coal, iron, and steel encouraged the further expansion of industry and commerce, the West was transformed from an agrarian to an industrially based society. Goods that had been hand-produced in homes and workshops were increasingly manufactured in newly constructed factories, mills, and mines. Industrialization demanded enormous investments of capital and the efforts of a large labor force; it stimulated growth in Europe’s urban centers. And ultimately, it provided the basis for the West’s controlling influence over the rest of the world (see chapter 30).

Early Nineteenth-Century Thought Romanticism found its formal philosophers largely among nineteenth-century German intellectuals. Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), Friedrich Schiller

(1775–1854), and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

followed the philosophic idealism of Immanuel Kant, who exalted the role of the human mind in constructing an idea of the world (see chapter 25). According to the German idealists, the truths of empirical experience were not self-evident, as Locke had argued, and the truths of the mind were not clear and distinct, as Descartes had held. Much like Rousseau (see chapter 25) and the Romantic poets (discussed later in this chapter), the idealists prized the powers of human instinct and viewed nature in deeply subjective terms.

Schopenhauer defended the existence of a “life-will,” a blind and striving impersonal force whose operations are without purpose or design, and whose activities give rise to disorder and delusion. In Schopenhauer’s view, the only escape from malignant reality was selfless contempla- tion of the kind described in Hindu literature and the mystical treatises of Johannes Eckhart (see chapter 15). Welcoming the influence of Indian religious philosophy, Schopenhauer wrote: “Sanskrit literature will be no less influential for our time than Greek literature was in the fifteenth century for the Renaissance.”

While Schopenhauer perceived existence as devoid of reason and burdened by constant suffering, others moved in the direction of mysticism. Some allied with notable visionaries, such as Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis (1772–1801). Novalis shaped the German Romantic movement through poems and essays that expressed longing for the lost mythic past and a spir- itually inspired future. “If God could become man,” wrote Novalis, “then He can also become stone, plant, animal, and element and perhaps in this way there is redemp- tion in Nature.” The Romantic reawakening of religion embraced the doctrines of mysticism, confessional emo- tionalism, and pantheism, the last of which stressed the

LOOKING AHEAD

The nineteenth century is often called “the Romantic era.” The term “Romanticism” describes a movement in the history of culture, an aesthetic style, and an attitude of mind. As a cultural movement, Romanticism reacted against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the depersonalizing effects of Western industrialization. Spanning the late eighteenth century and continuing well into the twentieth, the Romantic movement revolted against academic convention, and authority, and opposed the limitations to freedom in personal, political, and artistic life.

As a style, Romanticism provided an alternative to the Enlightenment values of order, clarity, and rational restraint. In place of Neoclassical formality and the objective exercise of the intellect, Romanticism celebrated spontaneity and the subjective exercise of the imagination. In all the arts, the Romantics abandoned traditional formal constraints to explore new, imaginative avenues of expression.

As an attitude of mind, Romanticism may be seen as an assertion of intuitive individualism and the primacy of feeling. Romantics did not reject the value of reason as such, but they regarded emotions (and the role of the senses) as equally important to human experience—and as essential to creativity. They looked to nature as a source of divine inspiration and seized on the tumultuous events of their time: the exotic, the catastrophic, and the fantastic. They often indulged in acts of nonconformity that alienated them from conventional society.

The lives and works of the Romantics were marked by deep subjectivity—even self-indulgence. If their perceptions and passions were intense, their desire to devise a language adequate to that intensity of feeling often drove them to frustration, melancholy, despair, and early death: the poets Shelley, Keats, and Byron; the composers Chopin and Schubert; and the painters Gros and Géricault, all died before the age of forty.

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unity of God, man, and nature. According to the foremost German Protestant theologian and preacher, Friedrich E. D. Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the object of religion is “to love the spirit of the world” and “to become one with the infinite.”

Hegel and the Hegelian Dialectic The most influential philosopher of the nineteenth cen- tury was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). A professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, Hegel taught that the world consists of a single divine nature, which he termed “absolute mind” or “spirit.” Spirit and matter obey an evolutionary process impelled by spirit seeking to know its own nature. He explained the opera- tion of that process, or dialectic, as follows: every condition (or “thesis”) confronts its opposite condition (or “antith- esis”), which then generates a synthesis. The synthesis in turn produces its opposite, and so on, in a continuing evolution that moves toward the ultimate goal of spiritual freedom. For Hegel, all reality is a process that operates on the principle of the dialectic—thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—a principle that governs the realm of ideas, artis- tic creation, philosophic understanding . . . indeed, history itself. “Change in nature, no matter how infinitely varied it is,” wrote Hegel, “shows only a cycle of constant repetition. In nature, nothing new happens under the sun.”

Hegel’s dense prose work The Philosophy of History (1807), a compilation of his own and his students’ lec- ture notes, advances the idea that the essence of spirit is freedom, which finds its ultimate expression in the nation- state. According to Hegel, human beings possess free will (thesis), which, although freely exercised over property, is limited by duty to the universal will (antithesis). The ultimate synthesis is a stage that is reached as individual will comes into harmony with universal duty. This last stage, which represents real freedom, manifests itself in the concrete institutions of the state and its laws. Hegel’s view of the state (and the European nation-state in particu- lar) as the last stage in the development of spirit and the Hegelian dialectic in general had considerable influence on late nineteenth-century nationalism, as well as on the economic theories of Karl Marx (see chapter 30).

Darwin and the Theory of Evolution Like Hegel, the British scientist Charles Darwin (1809– 1882) perceived nature as constantly changing. A natu- ralist in the tradition of Aristotle, Darwin spent his early career amassing enormous amounts of biological and geological data, partly as the result of a five-year voyage to South America aboard the research vessel HMS Beagle. Darwin’s study of fossils on the Galápagos Islands of the Pacific Ocean confirmed the view of his predecessors that complex forms of life evolved from a few extremely simple organic forms. The theory of evolution did not originate with Darwin—Goethe, for example, had already suggested that all forms of plant life had evolved from a single primeval plant, and the French biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744–1829) had shown that fossils give evi- dence of perpetual change in all species. Darwin, however,

substantiated the theory of evolution by explaining the process by which evolution occurs. Observing the tendency of certain organisms to increase rapidly over time while retaining traits favorable to their survival, he concluded that evolution operates by means of natural selection.

By natural selection, Darwin meant a process whereby nature “prunes away” unfavorable traits in a given species, permitting the survival of those creatures that are most suited to the struggle for life and to reproduction of that species. The elephant’s trunk, the giraffe’s neck, and the human brain were evidence, he argued, of adaptations made by each of these species to its environment and proof that any trait that remained advantageous to continuity would prevail. Failure to develop such traits meant the ultimate extinction of less developed species; only the “fit- test” survived.

In 1859 Darwin published his classic work, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Less than a year later, a commentator observed: “No scientific work that has been published within this century has excited so much general curiosity.” But curiosity was among the milder responses to this publication, for Darwin’s theory of evolu- tion, like Newton’s law of gravity, challenged traditional ideas about nature and the world order. For centuries, most Westerners had held to the account of the Creation described in Scripture. Some, in fact, accepted the chro- nology advanced by the Irish Catholic bishop James Ussher (1581–1656), which placed earthly creation at 4004 b.c.e. Most scholars, however, perceived the likelihood of a far greater age for the earth and its species.

Darwin’s thesis did not deny the idea of a divine crea- tor—indeed, Darwin initially speculated that “it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.” But Darwin’s theory implied that natural selec- tion, not divine will, governed the evolutionary process. By suggesting that nature and its operations were impersonal, continuous, and self-governing, the theory of natural selection challenged the creationist view (supported by the Bible) that God had brought into being a fixed and unchanging number of species. Equally troubling was Darwin’s argument (clarified in his later publication The Descent of Man, 1871) that the differences between humans and less complex orders of life were differences of degree,

Science and Technology

1799 paleontologist William Smith (British) theorizes that rock strata may be identified by fossils characteristic to each

1830 Charles Lyell (British) provides foundations for the modern study of geology in his Principles of Geology

1859 Darwin publishes The Origin of Species

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not kind, and that all creatures were related to one another by their kinship to lower forms of life. The most likely ancestor for Homo sapiens, explained Darwin, was “a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits . . .” (Figure 27.2).

Clearly, Darwin’s conclusions (which nurtured his own reluctant agnosticism) toppled human beings from their elevated place in the hierarchy of living creatures. If the cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo had displaced earth from the center of the solar system, Darwin’s theory robbed human beings of their preeminence on the planet. At a single blow, Darwin shattered the har- monious world-views of both Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment philosophes.

Yet, the theory of evolution by natural selection comple- mented a view of nature in keeping with Romanticism. As Thoreau (see Reading 27.6) mused, “Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?” And numerous passages from the writings of Wordsworth, Shelley, Emerson, and Whitman (the Romantics treated in this chapter) exhibit a similar pantheistic sentiment. At the same time, Darwin’s ideas encouraged the late nineteenth-century movement of “scientism” (the proposition that the methods of the natural sciences should be applied in all areas of rational investigation). Darwin’s writing also stimulated the rise of natural history museums, which, unlike the random collec- tions of previous centuries, gave evidence of the common order of living things.

The consequences of Darwin’s monumental theory were far-reaching, but his ideas were often oversimplified or misinterpreted. Among some thinkers, the theory of evolution provided the rationale for analyzing civilizations as living organisms with identifiable stages of growth, matu- rity, and decline. Then too, Darwin’s use of the phrase “Favored Races” in the subtitle of his major work contrib- uted to the theory of social Darwinism, which freely applied some of his ideas to political, economic, and cultural life.

The term “social Darwinism” did not come into use until 1879, but the idea that natural selection operated to determine the superiority of some individuals, groups, races, and nations over others was effective in justifying European policies of imperialism (see chapter 30). By their intelligence and wealth, argued the social Darwinists, Westerners (and white people in general) were clearly the “fittest,” and therefore destined to dominate the less fit. Since Darwin meant by “fitness” the reproductive success of a species, not simply its survival, most appli- cations of his work to contemporary social conditions represented a distortion of his ideas. Nevertheless, social Darwinism, expanded on by political theorists, would provide “scientific” justification for European colonialism. It also anticipated more threatening and extreme theo- ries, such as eugenics (which focused on the elimination of society’s “less fit” members) and the racist ideology of Adolf Hitler.

In the course of the twentieth century, modern biology, and particularly the science of molecular genetics (the study of the digital information preserved in DNA), has provided evidence to support Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Nevertheless, today’s scientists continue to probe the origins of life—where and how it first came into being. In the context of the nineteenth century, however, Darwin remains a leading figure. Like all Romantics, he was a keen and curious observer of nature, which he described as vast, energetic, and unceasingly dynamic. In The Origin of Species, he exults:

When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a long history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each

Figure 27.2 Spoofing evolution, a cartoon of the day portrays an apelike Charles Darwin explaining his controversial theory of evolution to an ape with the help of a mirror. The work appeared in the London Sketch Book in May 1874, captioned by two suitable quotations from the plays of Shakespeare: “This is the ape of form” and “Four or five descents since.”

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useful to the possessor, in the same way as any great mechanical invention is the summing up of the labor, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting . . . does the study of natural history become!

And in the final paragraph of his opus, Darwin brings romantic fervor to his description of nature’s laws:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth and Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Nature and the Natural in European Literature One of the central features of nineteenth-century Romanticism was its love affair with nature. In nature, with its shifting moods and rhythms, the Romantics found solace, inspiration, and self-discovery. To Enlightenment thinkers, “nature” meant universal order, but to the Romantics, nature was the wellspring of divinity, the phe- nomenon that bound humankind to God. “Natural man” was one who was close to nature, unspoiled (as Rousseau had argued) by social institutions and imperatives.

The Romantics lamented the dismal effects of grow- ing industrialization. In rural settings, they found a practical refuge from urban blight, smoke-belching factories, and poverty-ridden slums. The natural land- scape, unspoiled and unpolluted, revealed the one- ness of God and the universe. This pantheistic outlook, more typical of Eastern than Western religious philoso- phy, came to pervade the literature of European and American Romantics.

Wordsworth and the Poetry of Nature In 1798, William Wordsworth (1780–1850) and his British contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) pro- duced the Lyrical Ballads, the literary work that marked the birth of the Romantic movement in England. When the book appeared in a second edition in 1800, Wordsworth added a preface that formally explained the aims of Romantic poetry. In this manifesto, Wordsworth described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” which takes its origin “from emotion recollected in tran- quillity.” The object of the poet is

EXPLORING ISSUES

Darwin’s Origin of Species generated much controversy in its own time and long thereafter. In the last 150 years, fossil research and molecular biology have provided overwhelming evidence to support the theory of evolution. Nevertheless, controversy continues. The debate centers on the question of origins, that is, whether human beings were divinely created or are the product of a series of biological “accidents” governed by natural selection. Creationists hold that the physical structure of the universe argues for the existence of a god whose “intelligent design” produced the world as we know it. While the defenders of Intelligent Design view Darwin’s theory of natural selection as evidence for a random and undirected universe, Darwin himself, observing the “grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally

breathed by the Creator . . . ” speculated that natural selection and biological evolution might be part of a divine design.

Many religious faiths have no difficulty in accepting the idea that biological evolution governs the diversity of living things over billions of years, and thus find evolution and religious belief compatible. However, those who hold to the literal truth of Scripture find Darwin’s theories in direct contradiction of their religious beliefs. The ongoing controversy, which flourishes mainly in the United States, centers on public education: whether creationism should be taught along with evolution in the classroom. The debate has provoked a number of related issues, including the definition and validity of “good science,” and contemporary literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis.

Creationism versus Evolution

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to choose incidents and situations from common life [and] to throw over them a certain colouring of the imagination . . . and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature.

The leading nature poet of the nineteenth century, Wordsworth was born in the English Lake District. He dated the beginning of his creative life from the time— at age fourteen—when he was struck by the image of tree boughs silhouetted against a bright evening sky. Thereafter, what he called “the infinite variety of natural appearances” became his principal source of inspiration and the primary subject of his poetry. Nature, he claimed, could restore to human beings their untainted, childhood

sense of wonder. Moreover, through nature (as revealed to us by way of the senses), one might commune with the elemental and divine forces of the universe.

Wordsworth championed a poetic language that resem- bled “the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation.” Although he did not always abide by his own precepts, his rejection of the artificial diction of Neoclassical verse in favor of this “real language” anticipated a new, more natu- ral voice in poetry—one informed by childhood memories and deeply felt experiences. Wordsworth’s verse reflects his preference for lyric poetry, which—like art song— describes deep personal feeling.

One of the most inspired poems in the Lyrical Ballads is “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” the product of Wordsworth’s visit to the ruins of a medi- eval monastery situated on the banks of the Wye River in

Figure 27.3 J. M. W. TURNER, Interior of Tintern Abbey, 1794. Watercolor, 125∕8 × 97∕8 in. At age nineteen, Turner explored the Wye Valley in search of picturesque subjects. This thirteenth- century abbey had fallen into ruin after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the 1530s.

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southeast Wales (Figure 27.3). The 159-line poem consti- tutes a paean to nature. Wordsworth begins by describing the sensations evoked by the British countryside; he then muses on the pleasures these memories provide as they are called up in recollection. The heart of the poem, however, is a joyous celebration of nature’s moral value: nature allows the poet to “see into the life of things” (line 49), infusing him with “the still, sad music of humanity” (line 91), and ultimately bringing him into the sublime pres- ence of the divine spirit. Nature, he exults, is the “anchor” of his purest thoughts, the “nurse” and “guardian” of his heart and soul (lines 109–110). In the final portion of the extract (lines 111–134), Wordsworth shares with his “dearest Friend,” his sister Dorothy, the joys of his mystical communion with nature and humankind. “Tintern Abbey” set forth three of the key motifs of nineteenth-century Romanticism: the redemptive power of nature, the idea of nature’s sympathy with humankind, and the view that one who is close to nature is close to God.

READING 27.1 From Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” (1798)

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length 1 Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, 5 That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 10 These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves ’Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines 15 Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, 20 Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye; But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din 25 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:—feelings too 30 Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 35 To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen1 of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, 40 Is lightened—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 45 In body, and become a living soul; While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— 50 In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart— How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, 55 O sylvan2 Wye! thou wanderer through the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 60 The picture of the mind revives again; While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, 65 Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man 70 Flying from something that he dreads than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all—I cannot paint 75 What then I was. The sounding cataract3

Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80 That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 85

1 Burden. 2 Wooded. 3 A descent of water over a steep surface.

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Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90 The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 95 Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels 100 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world 105 Of eye, and ear—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110 Of all my moral being. Nor perchance, If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,4 115 My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, 120 My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform 125 The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 130 The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. . . .

Q What does Wordsworth mean when he calls nature “the anchor of my purest thoughts”?

Q Which lines in this selection best capture the sublime aspects of nature?

The Poetry of Shelley Like Wordsworth, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) embraced nature as the source of sublime truth, but his volcanic personality led him to engage the natural world with greater intensity and deeper melan- choly than his older contemporary. A prolific writer and a passionate champion of human liberty, he provoked the reading public with a treatise entitled The Necessity of Atheism (1811), the circulation of which led to his expulsion from Oxford University. His pamphlet on the subject of the French Revolution, A Declaration of Rights (1812), endorsed a radical creed for political equality: “A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights [in the benefits and burdens of government].”

Shelley was outspoken in his opposition to marriage, a union that he viewed as hostile to human happiness. He was as unconventional in his deeds as in his discourse: while married to one woman (Harriet Westbrook), with whom he had two children, he ran off with another (Mary Godwin). A harsh critic of Britain’s rulers, he chose perma- nent exile in Italy in 1818 and died there four years later in a boating accident.

Shelley’s Defence of Poetry (1821), a manifesto of the writ- er’s function in society, hails poets as “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Such creatures take their author- ity from nature, the fountainhead of inspiration. Shelley himself found in nature metaphors for the inconstant state of human desire. In “Ode to the West Wind” he appeals to the wind, a symbol of creativity, to drive his visions through- out the universe, as the wind drives leaves over the earth (stanza 1), clouds through the air (stanza 2), and waves on the seas (stanza 3). In the last stanza, he compares the poet to a lyre, whose “mighty harmonies,” stirred by the wind of creativity, will awaken the world. Then, finally, he seeks his identity with the wind and nature itself: “Be thou, spirit fierce/My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!” By means of language that is itself musical, Shelley defends the notion of poetry as the music of the soul. Consider, for instance, his frequent use of the exclamatory “O” and the effective use of assonance and tonal color in lines 38 to 40: “while far below/The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear/The sapless foliage of the ocean, know.”

READING 27.2 Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” (1819)

1 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being 1 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, 5 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow4 Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy.

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Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill 10 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

2 Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion, 15 Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20

Of some fierce Maenad,1 even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,2 25 Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O, hear!

3 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30 Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,3

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 35 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: O, hear!

4 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 45

The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 50 Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 55 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

5 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 60 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, 65

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 70

Q How would you describe the function of color in this poem?

Q What does this poem reveal about the personality of the poet?

The Poetry of Keats The poetry of John Keats (1795–1821), the third of the great English nature poets, shares Shelley’s elegiac sensibil- ity. Keats lamented the fleeting nature of life’s pleasures, even as he contemplated the brevity of life. He lost both his mother and his brother to tuberculosis, and he himself succumbed to that disease at the age of twenty-five. The threat of imminent death seems to have produced in Keats a heightened awareness of the virtues of beauty, human love, and friendship. He perceived these phenomena as fleeting forms of a higher reality made permanent only in art. For Keats, art is the great balm of the poet. Art is more than a response to the human experience of love and nature; it is the transmuted product of the imagination, a higher form of nature that triumphantly outreaches the mortal lifespan. These ideas are central to Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The poem was inspired by ancient Greek artifacts Keats had seen among those brought to London by Lord Elgin in 1816 and placed on display in the British Museum (see chapter 5).

In the “Ode,” Keats contemplates a Greek vase (much like the one pictured in Figure 27.4), whose delicately

1 A female attendant of Dionysus; a bacchante (see chapter 26). 2 Tomb. 3 An ancient resort in southwest Italy.

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drawn figures are shown enjoying transitory pleasures. Frozen in time on the surface of such a vase, the fair youths will never grow old, the music of the pipes and lyres will never cease to sound, and the lovers will never cease to love. The “little town by river” and the other pastoral vignettes in the poem probably did not belong to any one existing Greek vase; yet Keats describes the imaginary urn (his metaphoric “Cold Pastoral”) as a symbol of all great works of art, which, because of their unchanging beauty, remain eternally “true.” The poem concludes with the joy- ous pronouncement: beauty and truth are one.

READING 27.3 Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1818)

1 Thou still unravished bride of quietness, 1 Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed1 legend haunts about thy shape 5

Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe2 or the dales of Arcady?3

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10

2 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20

3 Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unweariéd, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25 For ever warm and still to be enjoyed, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30

4 Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, 35 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. 40

5 O Attic4 shape! Fair attitude! with brede5

Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45 When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all

Figure 27.4 SISYPHUS PAINTER, South Italian volute krater with women making music and centaur fight, late fifth century B.C.E. Red-figured pottery, height 29 in.

2 A valley sacred to Apollo between Mounts Olympus and Ossa in Thessaly, Greece.

3 Arcadia, the pastoral regions of ancient Greece (see Poussin’s Arcadian Shepherds, Figure 21.12).

4 Attica, a region in southeastern Greece dominated by Athens. 5 Embroidered border.

1 A reference to the common Greek practice of bordering vases with stylized leaf forms (see Figure 27.4).

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CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature 219

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 50

Q How does this work of art—the painted urn— lead Keats to a perception of truth?

Blake: Romantic Mystic The British poet, painter, and engraver William Blake (1757–1827) shared the Romantic disdain for convention and authority. Blake, however, introduced a more mystical view of nature, God, and humankind. Deeply spiritual, he claimed “To see nature in a Grain of Sand,/ And Heaven in a Wild flower.” This divine vision he brought to his poetry and his paintings; the former was often conceived along with visual images that he himself drew. Trained in the graphic arts, he prepared all aspects of his indi- vidual works, designing, illustrating, engraving, and hand- coloring each page. He also illustrated the literary works of others who, like himself, were horrified by the oppres- sive and inhumane treatment of rebellious slaves in the European colonies (see Figure 28.4).

Some of the best of Blake’s artworks are illustrations for books of the Bible, and especially for such visionary landmarks as the Book of Revelation (Figure 27.5). In these impassioned designs he drew more from the mind than from the eye. (Indeed, he credited conversations with angelic emissaries as a source of his imagery.)

Blake’s early poems featured singular images with clear and vivid (and often) moral messages. “The Lamb,” a short poem from his Songs of Innocence (1789), envisions that animal as a symbol of God’s gentle goodness. In his

Songs of Experience (1794), childlike lyricism gives way to the disillusionment of maturity. The most famous poem in this collection, “The Tiger,” asks whether goodness must be accompanied by evil, and whether God is responsible for both.

READING 27.4 Blake’s “The Tiger”

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright 1 In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies 5 Burnt the first of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 10 And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? And what dread feet? What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp 15 Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 20 Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry.

Q What kind of Creator does Blake envision? What preconceptions color Blake’s view of nature?

Blake’s poetic imagination took much from the Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost (see chapter 22)—some scholars see in the fifth stanza of “The Tiger” an allusion to Milton’s powerful Satan. Regardless of whether one perceives the Maker as satanic or divine or both, the poem seems to assert the typically Romantic view of the artist as sharing God’s burden of creation and the creative process.

Nature and the Natural in Asian Literature

Although no literary movement in Chinese history has been des- ignated “Romantic,” there are clear examples of the Romantic sensibility in Chinese literature

of the nineteenth century, especially in those works that exalt the emotional identification of the individual with nature. The Chinese writer Shen Fu (1763–1809) shares with Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats the reflective view of

Figure 27.5 WILLIAM BLAKE, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, ca. 1805. Watercolor, 161∕16 × 131∕4 in.

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220 CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature

nature and a heightened sensitivity to its transient moods. A bohemian spirit, Shen Fu failed the district civil examina- tions that guaranteed financial success for Chinese intel- lectuals. Often in debt and expelled from his family by an overbearing father, he found brief but profound joy in his marriage to a neighbor’s daughter, Zhen Yuen. Shen Fu’s autobiography, Six Chapters from a Floating Life (1809), is a confessional record of their life together, a life in which poverty is balanced by the pleasures of married love and an abiding affection for nature.

In the following excerpt from Shen’s autobiography— a favorite with Chinese readers to this day—the writer describes the simple pleasures he and Zhen Yuen derived from growing flowers and designing “rockeries”: natural arrangements of rocks and soil that resemble miniature gardens. The tender story of the destruction of the “Place of Falling Flowers,” the couple’s tiny version of the natural landscape, anticipates the central event of Shen’s intimate life history: the death of his beloved wife. The story also functions as a reminder that all of nature is fragile and impermanent.

READING 27.5 From Shen Fu’s Six Chapters from a Floating Life (1809)

As a young man I was excessively fond of flowers and loved to 1 prune and shape potted plants and trees. When I met Chang Lan-p’o he began to teach me the art of training branches and supporting joints, and after I had mastered these skills, he showed me how to graft flowers. Later on, I also learned the placing of stones and designing of rockeries. The orchid we considered the peerless flower, selecting it as much for its subtle and delicate fragrance as for its beauty and grace. Fine varieties of orchids were very difficult to find, especially those worthy of being recorded in the Botanical 10 Register. When Lan-p’o was dying he gave me a pot of spring orchids of the lotus type, with broad white centers, perfectly even “shoulders,” and very slender stems. As the plant was a classic specimen of its type, I treasured its perfection like a piece of ancient jade. Yuen took care of it whenever my work as yamen secretary1 called me away from home. She always watered it herself and the plant flourished, producing a luxuriant growth of leaves and flowers. One morning, about two years later, it suddenly withered and died. When I dug up the roots to inspect them, I saw that 20 they were as white as jade, with many new shoots beginning to sprout. At first, I could not understand it. Was I just too unlucky, I wondered, to possess and enjoy such beauty? Sighing despondently, I dismissed the matter from my mind. But some time later I found out what had really happened. It seemed that a person who had asked for a cutting from the plant and had been refused, had then poured boiling water on it and killed it. After that, I vowed never to grow orchids again. Azaleas were my second choice. Although the flowers had no fragrance they were very beautiful and lasted a long time. 30

The plants were easy to trim and to train, but Yuen loved the green of the branches and leaves so much that she would not let me cut them back, and this made it difficult for me to train them to correct shapes. Unfortunately, Yuen felt this way about all the potted plants that she enjoyed. Every year, in the autumn, I became completely devoted to the chrysanthemum. I loved to arrange the cut flowers in vases but did not like the potted plants. Not that I did not think the potted flowers beautiful, but our house having no garden, it was impossible for me to grow the plants myself, and those for 40 sale at the market were overgrown and untrained; not at all what I would have chosen. One day, as I was sweeping my ancestral graves in the hills, I found some very unusual stones with interesting streaks and lines running through them. I talked to Yuen about them when I went home. “When Hsüan-chou stones are mixed with putty and arranged in white-stone dishes, the putty and stones blend well and the effect is very harmonious,” I remarked. “These yellow stones from the hills are rugged and old-looking, but if 50 we mix them with putty the yellow and white won’t blend. All the seams and gaps will show up and the arrangement will look spotty. I wonder what else we could use instead of putty?” “Why not pick out some of the poor, uninteresting stones and pound them to powder,” Yuen said. “If we mix the powdered stones with the putty while it is still damp, the color will probably match when it dries.” After doing as she suggested, we took a rectangular I-hsing pottery dish and piled the stones and putty into a miniature 60 mountain peak on the left side of it, with a rocky crag jutting out towards the right. On the surface of the mountain, we made criss-cross marks in the style of the rocks painted by Ni Tsan2 of the Yuan dynasty. This gave an effect of perspective and the finished arrangement looked very realistic—a precipitous cliff rising sharply from the rocks at the river’s edge. Making a hollow in one corner of the dish, we filled it with river mud and planted it with duckweed. Among the rocks we planted “clouds of the pine trees,” bindweed. It was several days before the whole thing was finished. 70 Before the end of autumn the bindweed had spread all over the mountain and hung like wisteria from the rocky cliff. The flowers, when they bloomed, were a beautiful clear red. The duckweed, too, had sprouted luxuriantly from the mud and was now a mass of snowy white. Seeing the beauty of the contrasting red and white, we could easily imagine ourselves in Fairyland. Setting the dish under the eaves, we started discussing what should be done next, developing many themes: “Here there should be a lake with a pavilion—” “This spot calls for a 80 thatched summerhouse—” “This is the perfect place for the six-character inscription ‘Place of Falling Flowers and Flowing Water’”—“Here we could build our house—here go fishing— here enjoy the view”; becoming, by this time, so much a part of the tiny landscape, with its hills and ravines, that it seemed to us as if we were really going to move there to live. One night, a couple of mis-begotten cats, fighting over food,

1 A government clerk.

2 A famous landscape painter (1301–1374) of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368).

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fell off the eaves and hit the dish, knocking it off its stand and smashing it to fragments in an instant. Neither of us could help crying. 90 “Isn’t it possible,” I sighed, “to have even a little thing like this without incurring the envy of the gods?”

Q What aspects of this selection reflect East Asian attitudes toward nature and the natural?

Q How does Shen Fu suggest the fragility of life?

Romantic Landscape Painting Landscape painting originated as an independent genre not in the West, but in the East. While the ancient Romans had devised naturalistic settings for mythological subjects (see Figure 6.28), it was in tenth-century China that land- scape painting first became a subject in and of itself (see Figure 14.15). By the thirteenth century, the Chinese landscape had overtaken figure painting in popularity. The genre soon spread to Japan and other parts of East Asia.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Chinese landscape paintings generally achieve a sweeping unity of air, earth, and water that dwarfs the human figure. In one typically Chinese ink-on-paper album leaf, the artist Shen Zhou (1427–1509) pictures a solitary figure (possibly himself) atop a rugged cliff, overlooking a vast natural expanse (Figure 27.6). To the painting, he has added these lines:

White clouds encircle the waist of the hills like a belt; A stony ledge soars into the world, a narrow path into space. Alone, I lean on my thornwood staff and gaze calmly into the distance, About to play my flute in reply to the song of this mountain stream.*

The paintings of the nineteenth-century German artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), while not directly influenced by Chinese art, share some of its basic features. Friedrich’s views of wintry graveyards and Gothic ruins usually show distant figures contemplating (with what the artist called “our spiritual eye”) the mysteries of time and nature. In one of Friedrich’s most notable paintings, two men stand at the brink of a steep cliff, overlooking an unseen valley (Figure 27.7). A craggy, half- uprooted tree is silhouetted against the glowing, moonlit sky. Somber colors enhance a mood of poetic loneliness. While Shen Zhou’s cosmic vista makes nature itself the subject matter, Friedrich’s landscape—more closely focused and detailed— draws our attention to the figures. Nevertheless, both artists capture nature’s power to free the individual from the confines of the material world. In spaces smaller than 2 feet square, they record the universal dialogue between humankind and nature.

*Translated by Daniel Bryant

Figure 27.7 CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, Two Men Looking at the Moon, 1819–1820. Oil on panel, 133∕4 × 171∕4 in.

Figure 27.6 SHEN ZHOU, Poet on a Mountain Top, from the “Landscape Album” series, ca. 1495–1500. Album leaf mounted as a handscroll; ink on paper or ink and light color on paper, 151∕4 × 233∕4 in.

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222 CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature

Typically vast and sweeping, Chinese landscapes achieve a cosmic unity of air, earth, and water that dwarfs the human figure (see Figure 27.6). Such landscapes are not literal imitations of reality, but expressions of a benign natural harmony. Executed in monochrome ink on silk, bamboo, or paper scrolls, they were intended as sources of personal pleasure and private retreat. Whether vertical or hori- zontal in format, they are “read” from a number of view- points, rather than from a single one. In all these features, Chinese landscapes differ from those of European artists.

In Europe, it was not until the Renaissance—among such painters as Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, and Bruegel— that the natural landscape became a subject in its own right. Most Renaissance landscapes were visual records of a specific time and place (see Figure 19.12). During the seventeenth century, French academic painters cultivated the ideal landscape, a genre in which nature became the stage for mythological and biblical subjects (see Figure 21.13). The composition was conceived in the studio; key motifs, such as a foreground tree or a meandering road (often drawn from nature), were then incorporated into the design. Seventeenth-century Dutch masters, on the other hand, rejected the ideal landscape: Vermeer and Rembrandt rendered empirically precise views of

the physical world as perceived by the human eye (see Figure 23.12). During the following century, topographic landscapes—detailed descriptions of popular or remote locales—served the public as the picture postcards of their time. It was not until the nineteenth century, however, that the landscape became a primary vehicle for the expression of an artist’s shifting moods and private emotions. The nineteenth-century “reinvention” of nature also coincided with a new interest in the age and evolution of the earth, a subject popularized by Darwin and his fellow geologists. Romantic painters would translate their native affection for the countryside into scenes that ranged from the pic- turesque to the sublime. Like Wordsworth and Shelley, these artists discovered in nature a source of inspiration and a mirror of their own sensibilities.

Constable and Turner English artists took the lead in the genesis of the Romantic land- scape. John Constable (1776– 1837) owed much to the Dutch masters; yet his approach to nature

was uncluttered by tradition. “When I sit down to make a sketch from nature,” he wrote, “the first thing I try to do is

Figure 27.8 JOHN CONSTABLE, The Haywain, 1821. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 31∕2 in. × 6 ft. 1 in. The artist originally titled this painting Landscape: Noon. On the specificity of time and place, he remarked: “No two days are alike, not even two hours; neither were there ever any two leaves alike since the creation of the world.”

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CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature 223

to forget that I have ever seen a picture.” Constable’s fresh- ly perceived landscapes celebrate the physical beauty of the rivers, trees, and cottages of his native Suffolk countryside even as they describe the mundane labors of its inhabitants (Figure 27.8). Like Wordsworth, who favored “incidents and situations from common life,” Constable chose to paint ordinary subjects—“water escaping from mill-dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork”— as he described them. And like Wordsworth, he drew on his childhood experiences as sources of inspiration. “Painting,” Constable explained, “is with me but another word for feeling and I associate ‘my careless boyhood’ with all that lies on the banks of the Stour [River]; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful.”

Constable brought to his landscapes a sensitive blend of empirical detail and painterly freedom. Fascinated by nineteenth-century treatises on the scientific classifications of clouds, he made numerous oil studies of cloud forma- tions, noting on the reverse of each sketch the time of the year, hour of the day, and direction of the wind. “The sky,” he wrote, “is the source of light in nature, and governs everything.” He confessed to an “over-anxiety” about his skies and feared that he might destroy “that easy appear- ance which nature always has in all her movements.” In order to capture the “easy appearance” of nature and the fugitive effects of light and atmosphere, he often stippled parts of the landscape with white dots (compare Vermeer; see chapter 23)—a device critics called “Constable’s snow.” His finished landscapes thus record not so much the “look” of nature as its fleeting moods.

In Wivenhoe Park, Essex, Constable depicts cattle grazing on English lawns that typically resemble well-manicured gardens (Figure 27.9). From the distant horizon, the

residence of the owners overlooks a verdant estate. Brilliant sunshine floods through the trees and across the fields onto a lake that is shared by swans and fishermen. But the real subject of the painting is the sky, which, with its wind- blown clouds, preserves the spontaneity of Constable’s oil sketches.

If Constable’s landscapes describe the gentle spirit of the English countryside, those of his English contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) invest nature with theatrical fervor. Trained in architectural draftsman- ship, Turner began his career by making elegant drawings of Gothic ruins and popular tourist sites in England and Wales. These he sold to engravers, who mass-produced and marketed them. One of his early drawings, an intricate pencil sketch of the ruined monastery of Tintern Abbey, captures with some nostalgia the transient beauty of the medieval past (see Figure 27.3). Between 1814 and 1830, Turner traveled extensively throughout England and the Continent, making landscape studies of the mountains and lakes of Switzerland, the breathtaking reaches of the Alps, and the picturesque cities of Italy. His European tours inspired hundreds of rapid pencil sketches and luminous, eloquent studies executed in the spontaneous (and port- able) medium of watercolor. His large-scale paintings of Venice, glorious explorations of the play of light on water, were among the most sought-after of his travel canvases.

In his mature style, the lyricism of Turner’s early works gave way to impassioned studies of nature’s more turbu- lent moods. Natural disasters—great storms and Alpine avalanches—and human catastrophes, such as shipwrecks and fires, became metaphors for human vulnerability before the forces of nature. Such expressions of the “sublime”—the terror human beings experience in the face

Figure 27.9 JOHN CONSTABLE, Wivenhoe Park, Essex, 1816. Oil on canvas, 1 ft. 101∕8 in. × 3 ft. 37∕8 in. While Constable often made his sketches outdoors, where he was able to capture the effects of light in the landscape setting, he finished his paintings in his studio.

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of nature’s overpowering forces—occupied the Romantic imagination. The sea, a symbol of nature’s indomitable power, prevails as a Romantic theme in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), Herman Melville’s monumental novel Moby-Dick (1851), and Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the “Medusa” (see Figure 29.5), which Turner had seen in London.

In Turner’s Slave Ship of 1840 (Figure 27.1), the glowing sunset, turbulent seas, impending storm, and fantastic fish (that appear to devour the remains of the shackled body in the right foreground) do not immediately reveal the horror of the subject described in the original title: Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying: Typhoon Coming On. While Britain had finally abolished slavery throughout its colonies in 1838, popular literature on the history of the slave trade published in 1839 recounted in some detail the notorious activity that inspired Turner’s painting: the transatlantic traders’ practice of throwing overboard the malnourished and disease-ridden bodies of African slaves, and then collecting insurance money on “goods lost” at sea. On the threshold of rising British commercialism (see chapter 30), Turner seems to suggest that the human capacity for evil rivals nature’s cruelest powers.

Two years later, in Snowstorm (Figure 27.10), Turner mounted his own Romantic engagement with nature: the 67-year-old artist claimed that, at his request, sailors lashed him to the mast of a ship caught for hours in a storm at sea so that he might “show what such a scene was like.” He subtitled the painting “Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water . . . the Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich.” Since no ship by that name is listed in the records of the port of Harwich, Turner’s imagination may have exceeded his experience. Nevertheless, as with many of Turner’s late works, Snowstorm is an exercise in sensation and intuition. A swirling vortex of wind and waves, it is the imaginative transformation of an intense physical experience, which, recollected thereafter, evokes—as Wordsworth declared— “a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply inter- fused,/ Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/ And the round ocean and the living air,/ And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.” Turner’s “landscapes of the sublime” come closer to capturing the spirit of Wordsworth’s nature mysticism than do Constable’s gentler views of the physical landscape. Their expanding and contracting forms and startling bursts of color, comparable to the impassioned

Figure 27.10 J. M. W. TURNER, Snowstorm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth, 1842. Oil on canvas, 3 × 4 ft. Turner’s claim that he was lashed to the mast may have been inspired by a similar event in the Greek epic the Odyssey. The English writer John Ruskin described Snowstorm as “one of the very grandest statements of sea motion, mist, and light that has ever been put on canvas.”

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Figure 27.11 JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE COROT, Ville d’Avray, 1870. Oil on canvas, 215∕8 × 311∕2 in. Even in his own time, forgeries of Corot’s late paintings were produced in great numbers. Some of these were the result of Corot’s practice of allowing his students to copy his works. One French collection is said to contain almost 2500 Corot forgeries.

rhythms and brilliant dynamics of much Romantic music, were daringly innovative at the time. Critics disparagingly called Turner’s transparent veils of color—resembling his beloved watercolors—“tinted steam” and “soapsuds.” In hundreds of canvases that he never dared to exhibit, Turner all but abandoned recognizable subject matter; these experiments in light and color anticipated those of the French Impressionists by more than three decades.

Landscape Painting in France On the Continent, the artists of the Barbizon School— named after the picturesque village on the edge of the for- est of Fontainebleau near Paris—were among the first to take their easels out of doors. Working directly from nature (although usually finishing the canvas in the studio), they painted modest landscapes and scenes of rural life. These unsentimental views of the local countryside were highly successful in capturing nature’s moods.

The greatest French landscape painter of the mid- nineteenth century, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796– 1875), shared the Barbizon preference for working outdoors, but he brought to his compositions a breath- taking sense of harmony and order. Corot’s early land- scapes, executed for the most part in Italy, are as formally composed as the paintings of Poussin and David; they are, however, more personal and more serene. Corot’s luminescent late paintings are intimate and contempla- tive (Figure 27.11). He called them souvenirs, that is,

“remembrances,” to indicate that they were recollections of previous visual experiences, rather than on-the-spot accounts. Like many artists, Corot kept notebooks in which he jotted his everyday thoughts. One passage per- fectly captures the Romantic point of view:

Be guided by feeling alone. We are only simple mortals, subject to error, so listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own feeling . . . Beauty in art is truth bathed in an impression received from nature.

Corot’s poetic landscapes, filled with feathery trees and misty rivers, and bathed in nuances of silver light, became so popular in France and elsewhere that he was able to sell as many canvases as he could paint.