Survey. You can't eat just one romanticism chip.

The definitions of "Romanticism" which were supplied to us nearing the end of the course caused me to re-examine what we had read. With a more experienced lens, and with new knowledge gained from the course, I could more clearly and vividly understand our chosen collection of "legislators."

Since romanticism was an art, a brilliance, that sprung individually from the artists' minds, the writers works which we examined were all purely original. The interesting thing is that they all shared extremely common viewpoints on life. Their lives must have been fascinating, especially with no interruptions (cell phones and other external intrusions). How amazing it must have been for the romantic poets to meet each other, realizing that they all had similar, tortured, inspired, beautiful, painful images of the world around them. DeQuincey comes to mind here, because as a true wanderer, he was outcast even from the outcasts, themselves.

DeQuicey's "Confessions of an English Opuim Eater" was one of the most interesting works we have read, because it was so unique and he was so removed from the other romantics. DeQuincey's split persona of being on opium all of the time yet functioning added to his particular lifestyle and writing; always in search of himself. He had many realities and went about his life in a self-inflicted and self-invented madness. He is completely in his own mind, trapped within his physical self in a Blakian hell. His skull and heart blissfully bursting forward at the instant intake of opium, while he ached without it. His confessions are a glimpse into his life, exiled and looking down onto a smaller world. His walks among the streets and alleys at night must have awarded him a great feeling of freedom and creative energy, but at the same time a feeling of loneliness. The wider eyes of romantic poets take in more than they can handle, at times, and as they lament what has been lost, they destroy themselves in order to create brilliant works.

Speaking of a tortured, seemingly all-knowing soul, let's examine Percey Shelley. Examine him like the monster his second wife created through Victor in her birth of Frankenstein.Shelley's "Mutability" makes a good point about "Embrac(ing) fond woe, or cast(ing) our cares away" (ln. 12). DeQuincey or Coleridge may have appreicated some of Shelley's words, especially in the last stanza of this poem when he writes "It is the same! -- For be it joy or sorrow,/ The path of its departure still is free:/ Man's yesterday may ne'er be like this morrow;/ Nought may endure but Mutability" (ln. 13-16). Mutability, or subject to constant change, is what DeQuincey modeled his life around. Never having a planned night, mingling with whoever he ran into on the street, marketplace, or in a pub, always in an opium induced cloud-like.

“Mutability”. It’s just so perfect. “We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;/ How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,/ Streaking the darkness radiantly! – yet soon/ Night closes round, and they are lost for ever” (ln. 1-4). If the romantic writers are the “we” in this poem, they dart with complete, inspired, freedom, moving “restlessly” and leaving a “radiantly” marked trail in their wake. Once they are put out into the world, that is, out of their minds and into reality, they are corrupted and “lost.” Their true meaning, their innermost brilliance, as Percey Shelley would agree upon in his “Defence of Poetry”. If these legislators were acknowledged, they might gleam too brightly in the night, or not “veil” the “midnight moon” enough, to get their true feelings of despair and hope across to their audiences.