Wordsworth and the Romantic Sublime

 

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)

While these words have made their way into collections of Romantic poetry, it is the words that follow that tie the idea together wholly. Wordsworth goes on to say that mulling about the emotion leads the condition of tranquility to disappear and be replaced by the feeling itself, allowing the feeling to take control of the poet's mind. The poet begins his composition in this mood, and in articulating his passions, he finds his mind traversing happiness. This conclusion about 'excellent poetry' doubles as an unintentional postulation about the Romantic Sublime because the poet experiences, and is able to convince the reader of, a pleasure in pain emotion that leads up to the 'complex feeling of ecstasy.
The Romantics held the power of imagination in tremendous admiration. The power to awaken memories so they can be recollected and recreated in the present was meant by imagination.
While these words have made their way into collections of Romantic poetry, it is the words that follow that tie the idea together wholly. Wordsworth goes on to say that mulling about the emotion leads the condition of tranquility to disappear and be replaced by the feeling itself, allowing the emotion to take control of the poet's mind. The poet begins his composition in this mood, and in articulating his passions, he finds his mind traversing happiness. This conclusion about 'excellent poetry' doubles as an unintentional postulation about the Romantic Sublime because the poet experiences, and is able to convince the reader of, a pleasure in pain emotion that leads up to the 'complex feeling of ecstasy.'

'For our continuing influxes of sentiments are modified and guided by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our previous feelings.' (Wordsworth)

Coleridge's Kubla Khan is an expression of this belief. The poem is supposed to be Coleridge's opium-induced contact with the sublime. Kubla Khan appeared as a spontaneous outpouring after his meeting with Xanadu. The words flow just up to the point of clear remembrance of that magnificent environment, and the poem is left incomplete so that the ability of imagination is not diminished. Coleridge had nailed the magnificent in the three stanzas that he did relive. The poem's deconstructed grammar, which is eager to capture the environment, is a standout feature.

'But oh! that huge romantic abyss that slanted down the green hill behind a cedarn cover! 

A wild location! Grammatical requirements cannot be met because they would restrict the ultimate sublime.' (Coleridge)

It was the Romantic concept that poetry is created outside of the real world, within the folds of the imaginative.

'We fall asleep in body and awaken as a living soul'
(Wordsworth)

However, not all imagination is aimed at the sublime. Keats was a firm believer in the power of the imagination. 'I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of imagination—what the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth—whether it existed before or not...The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream—he awoke and found it true,' Keats wrote in a letter to Benjamine Bailey. 'Beauty is truth, Beauty is truth' (Keats). Through his Negative Capability, he acknowledged a poet's ability to perceive this beauty. The concept of Negative Capability necessitates that the poet maintains an aesthetic distance from the object
under consideration, and hence not surrender to the object. Keats' poetry expresses appreciation rather than absorption. However, in order to experience the Sublime, the poet must have surrendered his mind to the object of his adoration. This is not an exception to the rule, but rather exclusion from the concept of the Sublime. Beauty, not sublimity, was what Keats sought and experienced. The two concepts are diametrically opposed and should not be confused.
The Sublime assaults the senses with its sheer immensity, while Beauty indulges in the aesthetic pleasure of harmony, balance, and symmetry. 'The picturesque world would be represented by diversity, the beautiful by smoothness, and the sublime by grandeur.' (Leighton 12) Shelley's Mont Blanc exhibits the distinction through the Alps' visible gradation. Lower slopes that surround 'fields, lakes, forests, and streams are described as 'daedal,' and thus have an aesthetic appeal.
The Sublime is mainly characterized by its ability to elicit strong emotions. In The Prelude, Wordsworth explores the idea of the sublime's ability to evoke mysterious sentiments in its reader.

'The Power which these
Acknowledge when thus affected, which Nature thus
 Thrusts forth upon the senses.' (Wordsworth)

Astonishment is the emotion that this power evokes in the poet. 'Bewilderment is the passion induced by the immense and magnificent in nature, and astonishment is the state of the spirit in which all its actions are suspended, with some degree of fear' (Burke). Burke has also claimed that 'anything is any kind of terrible...or functions in a manner comparable to dread, is a source of the sublime.' The Sublime is thus capable of eliciting the poet's heightened intense emotion of fright. This powerful sensation of horror has fascinated the Romantics. In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Byron exclaims, "And if the freshening sea/ Made them a terror- 'twas a delicious fear." This overwhelming sensation includes the pleasure-in-pain flux that appears to provide fleeting transcendence. Byron's Darkness personifies dread in the sublime.
 The unconquerable, pervasive darkness, with its ominous foreshadowing of impending death, and the ultimate annihilation and mutual hideousness' of the human race that will follow, elicits a tumultuous surge of intense emotions. The brisk flow of the poem, as well as the numerous enjambments, demonstrate frantic bewilderment bordering on hysteria. The image of total devastation depicts humanity's awful degeneration.

'I had no idea who he was, on whose brow Famine had written Fiend' (Byron)

The peaceful acceptance of Darkness's supremacy and the imagined, infinite emptiness that would follow is frightening. The Romantics depict infinity as an unfathomable void that is most disturbing. The frightening quality should be enough to qualify it as seductiveness. 'Another source of the sublime is infinity; infinity has the tendency to fill the mind with that wonderful fear, which is the most authentic effect and the purest test of the sublime.‘The concept of nothingness is prevalent in Romantic poetry. The captivating descriptions of Nature are enveloped in an atmosphere of seclusion, desolation, and loneliness.