The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition

Abrams advances his discussion of “organic aesthetics” (187) with a short survey of the development of organism-based philosophy of nature. From Aristotle through German theorists in the 18th and early 19th centuries there was a conflict between a more mechanistic and intentional model of the universe and an organic living model of the universe. Abrams focuses on three elements of art—natural genius, inspiration, and grace—to explore the living model as it applies to poetry, especially in the early 19th century.

Throughout the history of aesthetics and literary criticism, there was a belief that continued through the Romantic period that the greatest works of art were the product of natural genius. In other words, Shakespeare and Homer, for example, were born endowed with a gift for art and creation. This idea comes into conflict with a model of the world based on an analogy of mechanics or physics, which relies on deductive reasoning and observation—logical thinking—rather than sparks of divine brilliance. As a result, various theorists still committed to the concept of a born genius used organic metaphors to describe the creative process, breaking from the Enlightenment commitment to mechanical creation.

Similarly, inspiration was part of the general theory of creative thought and production of art and literature. In the Classical period through the 18th century, the inspiration described by essentially all artists was treated as a divine intervention into the mind of the artist. Even in the Enlightenment, the concept of the Watchmaker and intelligent design figured into the act of creation. Romantic thinkers, however, especially Shelley, departed from the supernatural/divine model of creative imagination to a natural or organic model that described the poetic inspiration as growing from the artist’s own soul.

For Romantics like Shelley, the poem was grown and born, like a plant or a child, and was therefore alive rather than made and mechanical. Moreover, they believed that great poetry has a sense of something undefinable and indescribable that is felt by poet and reader rather than codified by philosophers and critics—grace. In trying to describe or hint at this element of beauty, the only metaphorical model that functioned was that of the natural world and the experience of being struck by inherent beauty.

Abrams ties the 18th century discussions of grace, nature, natural genius and inspiration to late-18th and 19th-century German thinkers who formed the other half of Romantic philosophy and literature. He begins with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), who believed that all matter in the universe were elements of the supreme divinity of existence, with the soul and mind of the human being forming elements of that divinity. This connects to the theories of Johann Georg Sulzer (1720-1779), who explored mystery and je ne sais quoi in literature and human thought. The mystery of how a plant moves and adjusts is akin, then, to the mystery of beauty and profundity in a poem.

Moving to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Abrams demonstrates how each applied biology to aesthetic theory, just as the empiricists applied physical science to the same topic. Though Goethe was more committed to the connection, Kant uncharacteristically allowed for uncertainty via the organic analogy of creative thought in art. After Kant, Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) argued that creative imagination in the service of making art combined all the natural functions of mind to resolve conflict, and acted as the origin of philosophical thinking.

From Schelling and those like him came the foundation of the psychological concept of the unconscious mind that Abrams connects to the organic analogies he’s traced through early theories of psychology. He connects the unconscious to the natural, showing how later British writers like Coleridge and Carlyle used that concept to argue that true poetry grows naturally from the unconscious mind in opposition to the idea that poetry is carefully crafted according to set rules from the conscious mind. Therefore, poetry is inherently natural rather than artificial.

Coleridge’s discussion of the imagination, Abrams argues, advanced the German psychologies of creation based on a natural analogy, as Coleridge combined elements of organic history, organic evaluation, and organic law into the broader philosophy. According to this view, organic history is the historical context of the work of art, and just as soil influences the type of plant, so too does the socio-historical context of the artist affect the art. Organic evaluation determines the beauty and excellence of a poem based on how well it represents the parts of the poem as a unified whole. Organic law replaced the earlier rules-based literary criticism of the neoclassicists, arguing that the natural and spontaneous genius of the artist’s mind grows and deliberately nurtures the work of art.

Abrams turns to the fundamental shift in the Romantic period to the artist/poet as the primary focus of analysis in criticism. He outlines three approaches to poet-centered scholarship: “One looks to an author for the explanation of his work; another reads an author out of his work; and the third reads a work in order to find its author in it” (227). Abrams argues that the third of these, discovering the individual within the poem, is the most philosophical and potentially profound approach.

Historically, though critical focus was either on the universe or the audience, there is some foundation for the turn to the artist in the Romantic period. A major concern from the Classical era to the 18th century was the moral value of poetry, and for a poem to be morally instructive, the poet had to be morally sound. The author was generally considered to be important only insofar as the poet’s unique style affected the body of work as a whole. Until the very late 18th century, the only real concern beyond the demonstrated morality of the poet was how the poet’s biography could impact an understanding of the poetry.

This movement to focus on the artist involved the emerging dichotomy of the objective/subjective split in philosophy, especially German philosophy. Abrams identifies August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845) and Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) as the primary philosophers who connected objectivity, subjectivity, and the artist as a focus of literary criticism. He explains how Schlegel’s theories led to a creator-focused discussion of literature that connected the poet to God, which in turn led to viewing literature both as a representation of reality and reflection of the artist’s inner will. In English criticism, the objective was often tied to epic poetry and the subjective to lyric poetry. However, in the early 19th century, critics like Keble argued that all poetry is inherently subjective because it expresses the poet’s inner truths rather than any objective truths.

Abrams then turns to the literary criticism surrounding the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), the ancient Greek poet Homer (c. 8th century BCE), and John Milton (1608-1674) to discuss the 19th-century connection between literary criticism and philosophical theory. Criticism on Shakespeare from the 18th and early 19th centuries—especially criticism by Coleridge, Keats, and Hazlitt—concluded that Shakespeare’s identity was obscured in his plays. Rather than revealing Shakespeare’s identity, they argued, his plays reveal essential truths about humanity. However, the sonnets were treated differently in criticism, as there are several critics Abrams cites who constructed a biography of Shakespeare via his sonnets. That line of thought extends into the mid-19th and 20th centuries with theories that all of Shakespeare’s characters, especially Hamlet, reflect the inner man as well as the universal artist.

In contrast to Shakespeare, most criticism of Milton involved connecting his biography to his work. Abrams shows how William Blake, Shelley, and Coleridge, as well as earlier and later scholars, connected Milton to his characters, primarily in Paradise Lost (1667). Each scholar Abrams cites argued for different aspects of Milton’s spiritual, political, and personal beliefs, but all agreed that Milton shows himself in his poetry. Abrams additionally ties the contrasting interpretations to the critics/poets themselves to argue that, in considering the poet, the interpreter views the poet and poem through their own lens of experience.

In contrast to most of his contemporaries, John Keble’s quest to interpret Homer biographically led to a largely subjective interpretation of The Iliad. Abrams shows how Keble broke down the poem into “canons” (259), which lay the foundation for 20th-century biographical criticism. Keble’s conclusions were that Homer writes from a sense of nostalgia, and though born humbly was pious and politically conservative. This, Abrams argues, is remarkably similar to Keble’s own personality, which further supports Abrams’s earlier argument that biographical criticism can easily become as—or even more—reflective of the critic than of the poet or poem.