13.1. Victorian poetry.

The name of a talented English poet, Robert Browning, stands along with those of great masters of English poetry. In the whole context of literary process of the XIX c. Browning represents the transit point from Romanticism to Realism. His ethetical principles are expressed in his manifesto “On the poet Objective and Subjunctive; on the Latter’s aim; On Shelley, the man and the Poet”. Browning speaks of two types of poetry – Subjunctive and Objective. The first is represented by Shelley, the second – by Shakespeare. Each of the two has its specific nature and has its own advantages. A “Subjunctive”poet sees the truth behind the concrete phenomena, but subjective poetry based on the individualistic conception is transitive. The Objective Poetry, not revealing a poet’s personality, creates the true picture of the world and that’s why it has longer life. Browning’s ideal is the combination of Subjective and Objective in poetry. His poetry is characterized with introspection, philosophical intensity of thoughts, deepen psycologism and interests in hero’s life conditions, attentions to details and historical colour.

In early works of Browning there predominates the interest in heroic personage and the theme of heroic deed. As it is in his poem “Paracelsus”. The protagonist is a scholar Paracelsus, he is moved by lust for knowledge; devoted to sciences he finds the sense of life in serving people. His belief in humanity and its abilities supports Paracelsus in his work, helps him to overcome the bitterness of offences and life difficulties.. His will and burning fire within him make him kin with Prometheus from Shelley’s poem.

One of his successful dramatic poem is “Pippa Passes”. In this a girl, Pippa, wanders through the town singing, and her song influences people who hear it. The naïve, kind, candid girl sings of happiness and justice. Her songs awake in all people (rich or poor), the wish for good, retain them from cruelty. Part of her songs is as cheerful as Browning himself:

The year’s at the spring

The day’s at the morn

Morning’s at seven

All’s right with the world.

The early poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson were much criticized, but in his later books he rewrote some and omitted others altogether. His poems, chiefly lyrical, and poems were an improvement, though they were still the work of a young man. The music is there already, but the though they were still the work of a young man. The music is there already, but the thought is not deep. The Lotos Easters, a poem on wanderings of Ulysses and his men gives a taste of the rhythm of which Tennyson was a master.

“Surely, surely slumber is more sweet that foil

The shore than labour on the deep Mediterranean ocean

Wind and wave and oar.

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.”

Tennyson knew well that more thought was needed in great work, and in 1842 he published two books of poems which are serious and thoughtful as well as musical.

Tennyson had become a very careful artist, choosing each word and its exact place with close attention. In “Morte D’Arthur” he put Malory’s story into blank verse in which the magic voice may clearly be heard:

“So all day long the noise of battle rolled

Among the mountains by the winter sea,

Until King Arthur’s table, man by man,

Had fallen in Lyonesse about their lord

King Arthur”.

In “Idylls of the King” included this short poem and others on the same story: “Enid”, “Vivien”, “Claine” and Guinevere” appeared in 1859, and others in 1869, 1871-1872, and 1885. The “Passing of Arthur” describes at the end How Sir Bedivere places the wounded King in the ship which is carrying the queen. Sir Bedivere, in sorrow became of the end of the Round Table and death of the other Knights, asks what he can do now:

“And slowly answered Arthur from the barge

The old order changeth, yielding place to new

And God fulfils himself, in many ways

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world

Comfort thyself?What comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done

May he within himself make pure! But thou

If thou shouldst never see my fall again

Pray for my soul.”

Tennyson used many metres and made experiments with new ones. For example, he tried hexameters, and he was fond of four-line stanza rhyming abba:

“Yet waft from the harbour mouth

Wild wind I seek a warmer sky

And I will see before I die

The palms and temples of the south”

This is also the metre that he used for his long poem “In memoriam”, an elegy for his friend Hallam, who died in Vienna at the early age 22. Though the poem has its fine qualities, it is two long for a discussion of death alone, and the sorrow for the loss of a friend gradually changes into an expression of a wider love of God and man.

In general Tennyson’s shorter poems are better than the long ones. Ulysses expresses in fine lines the leader’s decision to “sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until I die”, “Princess contains finne lyrics; here is a verse of one which has been set to music”.

“Sweet and low, sweet and low

Wind of the Western sea

Low, low, breathe and blow,

Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon and blow

Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.”

Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne differs from that of Tennyson. If the latter was enthusiastic at idyllic motives, of depicting simple feelings, Swinburne filled his poems with passions, stormy feelings. If Tennyson was faithful to patriarchal theme of Wordworth , Swinburne inherited the rebellious spirit of Shelley. He defied the Victorian conservatism, opposing the ideal of political and moral freedom to bourgeois vulgarity. Antivictorian rebellion predetermined his basic theme – the one of freedom, connected with his Republican and atheistic beliefs, and the theme of undisguised sensual love.

Freedom –loving ideas are expressed in verses, devoted to the struggle of Italia for her independence. These are poems published in a “A song of Italy”, “Songs before Sunrise”. He bestows praise on fighters against tyranny, among them he names Madzini, Garibaldi.

13.2. The English novel of the 19^th century were written at a time of great confidence in British society, culture and political organization, and although different novelists present groups of characters from different levels of society and explore different themes, there is a sense of confidence in the basic structure of society, and the place of people in it, that underlies their work. The writers of the late 19^th century couldn’t share this confidence.

Robert Louis Stevenson represents neoromanticism in English literature. This is revealed in extremely dramatic situations, in an acute psycologism, fantastic elements and exotic scenery. The writer is interested in moral problems.

The problem of good and evil in the human nature is revealed in the tale “The strange cause of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. It is based on the theme of a person’s double, theme of double-faced existence of the protagonist. Dr. henry Jekyll from time to time turns into a cruel Mr. Hyde, who was the embodiment of all evil and mean. Mr. Hyde’s crimes resulted in horrible consequences; evil in Dr. Jekyll’s nature begins to force out good and this drew the main character to ruin. His suicide speaks that the human that still remained in his nature rebelled against the cruelty and evil.

Stevenson’s matter of adventure novels like well-known “Treasure Island”, “Kidnapped”, “Catriona”, “The Black Arrow”, “The Master of Balantral”. In this adventure books the author frequently uses the historic material, but he doesn’t give a wide description of historic events. History for him is just a background, in which he describes dramatic situations and characters of brave and courage men. Romantic deeds for good’s sake are opposed by the author to the dull prose of bourgeois life. In victorious finals of his novels the author ascertains the romantic dream of life, where high moral ideals and human dignity are victors.

Oscar Wilde came into the history of English literature as the leader of aestheticis as literary movement. He expressed his poetic credo in articles “Intentions”. He detached from the commonness of bourgeois society, where injustice reigns, and seeked for asylum in the abode of Beauty.

Proclaiming the cult of beauty as an antipode of bourgeois vulgarity, Wilde separates beauty from the morality and falls into hedonism, amorality and decadency.

Meanwhile, he reviews his ideas and writes things that detest and reject his previous viewing.

Such are his fairy tales for children, well-known by you “The happy prince”, “The devoted friend”, and his famous novel “The picture of Dorian Gray”.

The plot of his novel, including fantastic element, in series discredits the worship of Beauty, deprived of spirituality and morals. Created by an artist the picture of a handsome youth, Dorian Gray used to be, is a symbol of his conscience. The fantastic element is that Dorian Gray remains young and handsome, and his portrait, as if it were his double, reflects all the changes in the soul of real Dorian Gray and his getting old. Every new step in Dorian’s moral degradation is reflected in his portrait. The face, painted by the artist, got features of cruelty and hypocracy. The thought of the picture chases Dorian and he considers him to be the cause of all his misfortunes. His vicious life began to burden him, but he went too far and can’t turn off from this path. Hence his last step – he stabbed the portrait with a knife, but kills himself. Dorian and his portrait exchanged their places. Before the portrait lies an ugly old man with a knife in the chest, and in the portrait is depicted a handsome young man.

Dorian’s Gray story condemns individualism aesthetic heartlessness and hedonism.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling refers to newromantic literature which differs from that of R. L. Stevenson.

In contrast to weak-willed and anaemic decadent poetry Kipling creates literature of actions, and glorifies human activity, courage and firmness. One of the best Kipling’s poem is “If”.

The most famous Kipling’s book is “The Jungle Book”- where he explained the richest material of Indian folklore. In this book we can see Kipling’s ideas, who insists that absolute jungle laws are when the strongest survives. However, this idea are steps back before the element of lifelovingness and poetical glorifying of human energy and will.

Herbert Wells often took characters from a lower social level, but many of his characters are given a chance of happiness. “Kipps” and “the History of Mr. Polly” both deal with men working in shops who find that the things they thought would change their lives (money in the first case, running away in the second) do not bring them what they hoped for, but at the end of the novels they know better what they need to be happy. Wells also used modern scientific advances in his novel, in a new way: “The Time Machine” is about a machine that can travel in a new way; “The War of the Worlds” describes an attack on this world by men from Mars, who can conquer everything but Man’s diseases. “The First Man on the Moon” shows men flying to the moon about seventy years before this actually happened. He also wrote “Ann Veronica” - about a girl who wants to choose for herself what to do in life, which in many ways also looks ahead to the women’s movement much later this century.

Lecture 14.