Romantic Intensity - William Blake and S. T. Coleridge
In Romantic poetry , intensity is the crucial aspect related to the poet ' s perception of reality . The romantics see reality through the eye of the imagination , rather than through sensuous perception, a fact that naturally replaces the dryness of objective representation with the intensity of subjectivism . Romantic subjectivism is not meant merely as a personal view of reality , creating thus a multiplicity of individual representations , but it is in fact a pretext for romantic intensity , as something that encourages in the poet not only originality , but the deep involvement in reality. Thus , intensity is directly related to the use of imagination , and therefore self -involvement in reality , as an intermediary between the poet and reality . Thus romanticism comes to identify aesthetic pleasure with truth , as Keats states in his Ode to a Grecian Urn : " Beauty is truth , truth beauty -that is all Ye know on earth and all you need to know . " ( Keats , 313) Thus the quest for beauty and the quest for truth become one and the same , as for Keats the Grecian urn becomes a symbol of artistic beauty and of the eternal , at the same time .
In the lines cited above , as well as in the rest of the poem , that continues in the same manner emphasizes the idea that there are no acknowledged limits to material reality, and thus the grain of sand is a world in itself if it is perceived , like it should be , through the eye of the imagination, and as a mere physical entity . " O Rose ,thou art sick ! / The invisible worm / That flies in the night , / Has found out thy bed / Of crimson joy : / And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy ." ( Blake , 213 ) Thus the imagination is man's most important sense, and this is what brings intensity to the poet's perception of reality, objects being no longer things in themselves , as spiritual existence is involved in everything . To the romantic poet reality is not made of scientific general truths, there is only the world of the imagination , by which he means that the spiritual, inner world should not be conceived of as separate from the external , " real " world , in the same way as , to him , the body cannot be considered as a separate entity from the soul of man . " To see a World in a Grain of Sand And drunk the milk of Paradise . " Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand The same idea of innocence is given by one of the poems in the " Pickering Manuscript " , where the romantic intensity appears very clearly in the form of a seeming exaggeration , or excessive emphasis on "minor " elements of reality :
Some common words found in the essay are:
Kubla Khan, Kubla Khan's, , Rose Rose, Keats Grecian, Imagination God, Hold Infinity, Experience Ignorance, William Blake, Urn Beauty, romantic intensity, pleasure dome, immediate reality, eye imagination, kubla khan, romantic poet, romantic poetry, bed / crimson, bed /, thy bed, material world, / crimson joy, milk paradise , thy bed /, found thy bed,
Approximate Word count = 1381
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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