The Writers of the Romantic Period have a Reputation for Favouring Imagination over Reason. Is this
- Emma Henderson
- May 18, 2009
- 11 min read
The Writers of the Romantic Period have a Reputation for Favouring Imagination over Reason. Is this Reputation Justified?
The importance of the Imagination for the Romantic poet has been exhaustively discussed; however the Imagination was an alternative for those disillusioned with Reason so in this essay we will concentrate on the opposite end of the spectrum, with why the Romantics had a problem with Reason in the first place by looking at representations of reason, science and philosophy.
The era of Romantic Movements was also an era of great philosophical and scientific significance: the Enlightenment saw the advance of scientific theory accomplished through new advances in equipment, meanwhile extreme scepticism stumped epistemology into a stand still, ‘Hume’s influence effectively paralysed conventional philosophy of knowledge in the late eighteenth century’ (Milnes, 2003, p.6). Such intellectual influences embed themselves on English Romantic poets, for example, Voltaire, Bacon, Rousseau, Newton and Locke personally named by Blake for example in (1982, p.218, 66.12-14).
Descartes revolutionised epistemology with the Cogito, the idea that even a doubting self proves the existence of a consciousness to do the doubting:
[Having convinced] myself that there is nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies…Does it now too follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed …I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true.
(1996, p.17).
At first glance, it seems this revolutionary statement makes all knowledge subjective because the individual becomes central, the existence of the self the only epistemological certainty, forming a solid foundation for all other facts, also supporting mathematics on the grounds of also sharing this self-evident quality. Since Romantic poetry is associated with the subjective rather than the objective truth, we might at first expect poets to embrace Descartes outlook. However, the ego-centric nature of Descartes’ first principle is not really a subjectivism: it is merely a result of a quest after perfect objectivism. The initial extreme scepticism caused by the fearful possibility of physical senses deceiving the mind lingered throughout late eighteenth century philosophy. The Romanticist reaction to such paranoid doubt was to either to use the Imagination or spiritual justifications; or to not mind that nothing could be proved by opting out of formal philosophy altogether.
In Romantic epistemology, the self still plays a central role. Keats criticises this kind of Romantic poet as egocentric however, thinking particularly of Wordsworth because you only find the author in his works, not any universal truth (2006, p. 1375). More positively, Romanticism is considered the first movement to suggest knowledge can be created by humans, making the imaginative mind just as valid as the rational mind in terms of truth making:
in its fluctuating course between seeking and resisting knowledge, Romanticism formulates the first but enduring creed for non-foundationalists…the dictum that, in Nietzsche’s phrase, Truth is not ‘something there’, but something ‘created’.
(Milnes, 2003, p.5).
Keats summed up this stance by saying that he was:
certain of nothing but…the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth, whether it existed before or not…[O]h for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts! (Keats, 2008, p. 1349)
Before this, knowledge was either seen in terms of Platonic idealism, as eternal and pre-existing the human, existing on a higher plain of true Forms; or in a more Aristotelian or Lockean sense that there is only a physical world which the mind can actively gather facts about, through the senses.
In Blake’s Milton, we find explicit reference to Platonic idealism with the idea that Eternal Forms pre-exist and survive their physical examples (Blake, 1982, p. 132, 33.35-39):
…the Reason is a State
Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created
Whatever can be Created can be annihilated Forms cannot
The Oak is cut down by the Ax. the Lamb falls by the Knife
But their Forms Eternal Exist, For-ever. Amen Halleujah
While his path to the Forms may be Imagination based rather than Reason based, this passage still contains the confusing contradiction that Blake uses Platonic, philosophic idealism (which has previously been put under the heading of Reason) to argue against Reason. The idea that ‘Reason is a State’ for Blake exemplifies how and for other Romanticists, science was usually seen as an artificial structure placed on top of an unwilling Nature, strangling Imagination. However, from the scientific perspective, the whole point of Newton’s theories were that they described the universe as it was, that the rules of gravity were themselves eternal Forms which did not change even when the ephemeral appearance of Nature seemed to be in constant flux.
It should be no surprise then that the bleakest representation of Reason found in Romantic poetry is Blake’s Urizen: a reoccurring personification of all the problems of ‘Scientific dogma’, especially the urge to control and organise chaos (Parkhurst Easson and Easson, 1978, p.83). The unusual juxtaposition of science and dogma, usually associated with religion, shows how Blake sees the Enlightenment’s organisation of reason as an equal threat to man’s spirituality as false or abusive religious organisations despite both ostensibly being concerned with truth and the greater good.
Among the possible roots for Urizen’s name are puns on ‘your reason,’ ‘your horizon’ and also etymologically from a Greek word meaning to bound or limit – so we can see that for Blake Reason actually means a restriction of knowledge (Parkhurst Easson and Easson, 1978, p.69). The excessive listing of Urizen’s mathematical and scientific instruments make it explicit that he represents a particular kind of empirical reasoning based on measurement: line, plummet, rule, scales, weights, quadrant and compasses which dissect up space (Blake, 1982, p.80, pl.20, VII, L33-39).
The form of the book (associated for Blake with the negative connotations of scientific encyclopaedias, books of law, and restrictive religion) is subverted, even in predominately text based plates, Blake does not follow the conventional layout of books, the pages are ‘divided with budding tendrils of wild flowers…as if to say that life, not rules and laws, organizes this book…this is the pattern and organization of life, not abstracted geometric design’ (Parkhurst Easson and Easson, 1978, p.91).
Lamb complains of ‘Damned Philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold & unnatural & inhuman’ – Milnes notes the pun on Humeian and inhumane because it highlights the association of philosophers to be out of touch with everyday experience (2003, p.7). These cold connotations often accompany representations of reason in Romantic poetry. Accordingly, Urizen is surrounded by a lexical field of frigidness: he is described as ‘cold’ more than thirty times over his various appearances in Blake’s entire oeuvre as well as ‘icy’ and ‘hoary.’ In addition to cold, the word ‘hoary’, carries connotations of age and mustiness (OED). Another lexical field of slavery, restraint, chains and bars supplements Urizen’s cold imagery – examples of both can be seen here in an extract of America A Prophecy
Urizen’s appearance in is accompanied by the same imagery of constraint and cold:
Around the smitten bands, clothed in tears & trembling shudd'ring cold.
His stored snows he poured forth, and his icy magazines
He open'd on the deep. and on the Atlantic sea white shiv'ring.
Leprous his limbs, all over white, and hoary was his visage
(1982, p.57, 14.8-11).
Keats negative representations of Reason take these cold and restraining imageries on, and adds to the cutting, dissecting metaphor we have already seen in Urizen’s instruments. The character of Apollonius the philosopher is associated with sharp, piercing language:
[T]he sophist’s eye,
Like a sharp spear, went through [Lamia] utterly,
Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging…
(Keats, 2008, p. 1419, L.299-301)
Earlier in Lamia, we meet an even harsher criticism of Reason:
…Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was once an awful rainbow in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture – she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things,
Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine,
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-personed Lamia melt into a shade.
(Keats, 2008, p.1417, L.229-238).
The number of destructive verbs, ‘clip’, ‘empty,’ ‘conquer,’ ‘unweave’ and ‘melt’ make the case for the destructive nature of science. Control is another theme here, philosophy not only conquers but does so ‘by rule and line’, in a description similar to Blake’s Urizen. The ‘dull catalogue of common things’ insults the scientific encyclopaedias which were becoming increasingly popular in the eighteenth century which promised to deliver the sum of all human knowledge in organised, manageable chunks. This tying down and over simplification of knowledge was not popular with Blake either because ‘that which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth [his] care’ (Blake, 1982, p.702). Without Keat’s destructive representation of Reason it would seem strange that Lamia, as an agent of the Imagination, comes off as the victim despite being the deceptive character, in comparison to Apollonius a student of truth, who paradoxically features as the villain. His character is condemned by his punishing wreath of ‘spear-grass and spiteful thistle’ because for Keats the Imagination was a beautiful and harmless illusion, the blame is placed at Apollonius’ door for unnecessarily ruining Lycius’ dream (L228).
In opposition to most of the Romantics, Coleridge saw the necessity of Reason but it did not lessen his reliance on the power of the Imagination. While his readings of Hegel and Kant inspired his rational mind the depression they caused stunted his Imagination, but he would not have it any other way because he still prized absolute truth, metaphysics in his opinion coming under this heading, above personal happiness.
There was no high-road back to Platonic idealism for those who felt that the weight of the arguments of Bacon and Locke pressed them towards the uncanny conclusions of Berkeley and Hume.
(Milnes, 2003, p.6).
This certainly applies to Coleridge whose poems often betray a longing for the state of happiness caused by ignorant beliefs while at the same time accepting that the depressing conclusions of rational philosophy and science are not only undeniable but necessary – living in ignorance is depicted as more negative still.
Coleridge could not go back to a fake innocence or ignorance now that he was aware of metaphysics, and so while this ignorant period is described as ‘dreams of happiness’ the positive aspect of happiness is negated by the dreamlike qualities of living a lie, he can no longer be comforted once he realises these fake coverings of ‘fruits and foliage [were] not [his] own’ (2008, p.676, L79-81). However, his ‘abstruse research’ steals all his ‘natural’ Imagination
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of [the] soul
(Coleridge, 2008, p.676, L89-93).
No longer mere musings, Reason has become the ruling force in Dejection: An Ode with the intellect infecting the whole being. There is a tension between prizing Reason and simultaneously depicting it as a disease. Keat’s metaphor of Reason becoming a ‘habit’ for the soul is mirrored in The Book of Urizen where these depressing, rational musings again take on physical, garment form, this time as a cloak of cold ‘cloud’ and ‘web’ which can be seen trailing behind Urizen’s figure in the illustration on plate 23 of Copy G (Blake, 1982, p.83, 25.9-14). This image reoccurs again when Keats describes ‘[Lycius’] mind wrapped like his mantle’ (2008, p.1408, L241). It is important to note how the attire of Reason is always negatively portrayed: as disease-like, restrictive or entrapping, especially Urizen’s which is also described as a Net on numerous occasions. Garments are symbolically linked to the Biblical Fall because Adam and Eve first wore clothes only after their eating of the Fruit of Knowledge which brought on shame as well as self-consciousness. Clothing, like Reason, also forms a barrier between the self and Nature, and so the Imagination it was associated with it.
Nature and the Imagination are still important for Coleridge but unlike Wordsworth and other contemporaries, his philosophical readings had convinced him of the active role of the mind: the sublime was not inherently present in physical Nature but a product of the active mind projecting onto Nature, for example, in Frost at Midnight the narrator asserts that the ‘mind…infers the existence of an inner life in external objects’ (Wu, 2008, p.624). Despite this faith to rational, metaphysical philosophy, it caused depression, and yet Coleridge damns his comforting imagination as ‘idle thoughts!’ despite bringing the only from comfort the wretched feelings caused by his ‘abstruser musings’ (2008, p.624, L.20 and 6 of the 1798 version). This was a paradox encountered by philosophers themselves: Hume himself was aware of ‘the contradictory movements of [his] own reasoning consciousness’ and found that he had to go play cards and relax with friends to find relief from the ‘depression caused by his mental exertions’ (Beer, 2003, p.11).
T'was Conscience who brought Melancholy down Conscience was sent a Guard to Reason. Reason once fairer than the light till fould in Knowledges dark Prison house. For Knowledge drove sweet Innocence away.
(Blake, 1982, p.447, L59-62)
Melancholy is associated with Reason in Blake too then, not just for Coleridge. Notice here that Reason in itself is not evil, it was once a ‘fair light’ but is corrupted by ‘Knowledges dark Prison house [sic]’. In this context, ‘Knowledge’s prison house’ could be another metaphor for the encyclopaedia – man’s rational mind has useful qualities but can be used to ill effect in created false constructions of rules and sciences, trying to bind up Nature. Blake reiterates the difference between pure Reason and the corrupted version associated with science and scepticism:
Reason and Newton they are quite two things…
Reason says Miracle. Newton says Doubt
Aye thats the way to make all Nature out
Doubt Doubt & don’t believe without experiment
That is the very thing that Jesus meant
When he said only Believe Believe & try
Try try & never mind the Reason why
(Blake, 1982, p.501, L5-12).
The appeal to ‘Believe Believe’ without evidence reveals a Kierkegaardian stance in which Blake affirms Reason is not always a requirement of knowledge.
So despite presenting one of the austere depictions of Reason, Reason was not all bad for Blake however and we must resist such a generalisation. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Reason appears in the list of necessary human qualities – the problem is with twisted Reason which has become isolated because ‘without contraries is no Progression’ (Blake, 1982, p.34, pl.3).
Blake understood that…dualism originates in failure to acknowledge the relationship of reciprocal contrary states.
(Parkhurst Easson and Easson, 1978, p.68).
When Coleridge describes the soul or mind as a ‘living spirit in our frame’ he recreates this classic Western dualism which Blake sees as the root of all spiritual problems (2008, p.624, L.21). In Romantic poetry the body is often seen as a cage for the mind, hence all the imagery of chains, bars and slavery. But this imagery occurs because philosophy and religion have placed the mind at a higher level of importance over the body. As we have already discussed, Descartes Meditations renewed such discrimination because the bodily senses were fallible and could not be proved to exist in the same undeniable way the mind could.
For Hegel, Reason was not really a separate thing from the rest of the understanding soul: it was essential to ‘understand [the spirit] as a whole – to see the interrelation of its own elements as something essential to understanding itself’ (Jarvis, 2007, p.135). This resonates with Blake’s personifications of Reason in Urizen and the Imagination in Los who is ‘rent from his side,’ ruining their previous state which allowed seeming opposite forces to co-exist (p.74, 6.4). In Blake’s mythology, the four Zoas balance each other out and the problems we have seen linked to with Reason only occur because it has split itself off independently as a ruling force without Imagination to curb or guide it. The importance of reining Reason in features in The Voice of the Ancient Bard where the scientific, philosophic character is criticised for their ‘wish to lead others when they should be led’ (Blake, 1982, p.31, 54.11). A more explicit warning is made in the conclusion to There is No Natural Religion declares (Erdman, 1982, p.3, b):
If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character. the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things. & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again.
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