Chapter - 15

French Revolution

Question- What was the impact of the French Revolution on Romanticism?

Or
Write an essay on the influence of the French Revolution on the English Romanticism.

Answer-

The influence of the French Revolution on the English romanticism can be discussed in three phases which are as follows :

(i) First Phase of the French Revolution : The first phase of the French Revolution is known as the doctrinaire phase. This phase of the French Revolution comprised the period of Rousseau's writings and their impact upon the European mind. 'Rousseau's sentimental influence, Godwin, and through Godwin, Shelley.' Rousseau called for solitude and reverie. His man was not half-grown, but holy innocent. When he said that men have become evil because they left uncontaminate nature, he made an appeal to return to nature. He wanted humanity to start afresh from the lap of nature. He shunned artificiality and laid emphasis on simplicity, naturalness and innocence. So the cult of childhood begins. A companion figure to the child is the rustic. Rousseau's emphasis is on the individual, the innocent, solitude and reverie. He denounced force, and emphasized upon love. In his opinion, there is no compulsion with anything but love. Thus, the cult of childhood and the love of nature originate from the same source. Rousseau provided the inspiration, Wordsworth proved to be the greatest exponent of both of the cult of childhood and love of nature, also of naturalism in English Poetry. He sang

"The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
Life we see in nature that is ours.

Further, he goes to the extent of saying that he would better like to be "A pagan suckled in a creed outgrown." Wordsworth love of nature, cult of childhood and mysticism are fused together. 

Blake's Political Sketches', 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience' reflect his love of the country, of simple life, of childhood and home. Of the naturalistic kind of poetry, which was later on perfected by Wordsworth. Blake was the pioneer. Rousseau's intellectual influence on Blake is marked in Blake's spiritual creed. Freedom to Blake was a kind of mystical rapture.

Rousseau's intellectual influence on Godwin was the maximum. According to Rousseau, "There is no way of creating a new social order except by the light of pure reason." Godwin picked up the idea from Rousseau, and in his 'Political Justice' taught the perfectibility of human reason. Shelley read Godwin's Treatise with avidity. He declared that he had learned "all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue." Shelley came in very close contact with Godwin. He felt in love with Godwin's daughter, Mary Godwin, and eloped with her to Italy. Later on they got married. It may be recalled that Shelley was already a married man and had two children from his first wife Harriet.

(ii) Second Phase of the French Revolution : The second phase of the French Revolution was the political phase, which began in 1789. "Liberty, equality and fraternity" were the watchwords, the guiding stars, the motivating principles of the Revolution. The poets belonging to the elder group of the Romantic poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were immensely inspired : Wordsworth exclaimed:

"Bliss was in it that dawn to be alive,
But to young was very heaven."

The Revolution appealed to Coleridge, and as a result of which he welcomed it in some youthful verses. Southey gave vent to the most violent radical ideas in 'Joan of Arc', an epic, and in a drama, 'Wat Tyler' and in several minor poems.

Among the younger group of the Romantic poets, Shelley was the most whole-hearted singer of the Revolution. Ideas inspired him, not episodes. Shelley had a passion for abstract speculation. "And so it was that the catch phrases of the Revolution, liberty, equality and fraternity, found no more impassioned champion or more eloquent singer, than Shelley. But it was the Revolution as an idea not as a concrete historical event'

(iii) The Third Phase of the French Revolution : The third phase of the Revolution covers the age of Napolean. While the poets of elder generation. - Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were totally disillusioned with the outcome of the Revolution, it was otherwise in the case of Byron. Wordsworth lost all his faith in the Revolution. It revived for a moment on the fall of Roberspierre. The rise of Napolean and the events which followed destroyed Wordsworth's faith for ever. He repudiated the abstract principles behind the Revolution. Thus, Wordsworth, who began as an adherent of the Revolution, ended as an extreme conservative.

Byron was not influenced by the intellectual side of the Revolution, as was Shelley. He did not look towards the historical side of the Revolution. In Byron's poetry, the last phase of the Revolution with Napolean as the great figure finds full expression. This was on account of his inherent nature. Byron was an extreme egotist. The tremendous force of Napolean's personality intoxicated him. According to J.B. Priestley, "If Rousseau was the prophet of the Romantic age, Byron became its hero." Europe accepted him as the archetypal and symbolic figure of romance.

Inspired by Rousseau the Romantics concentrated on solitude, reverie and the unconscious. The magical images of the unconscious are projected by the Romantic poets on Nature and women. Wordsworth and Shelley excelled in projecting the images of the unconscious on Nature; Byron in doing so on women, the women who, according to his fancy, would lead him out of the dream of love. Ordinary, sensible women, the product of the pseudo-classical variety would not satisfy the imagination of the poet. Byron and Shelley had similarities in this respect both as men and as poets. In their life as well as in their poetry women play the most crucial role.

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