A Brief Guide to Romanticism

Romanticism was arguably the largest artistic movement of the late 1700s. Its influence was felt
across continents and through every artistic discipline into the mid-nineteenth century, and many of its
values and beliefs can still be seen in contemporary poetry.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact start of the romantic movement, as its beginnings can be traced to
many events of the time: a surge of interest in folklore in the early to mid-nineteenth century with the work
of the brothers Grimm, reactions against neoclassicism and the Augustan poets in England, and political
events and uprisings that fostered nationalistic pride.
Romantic poets cultivated individualism, reverence for the natural world, idealism, physical and
emotional passion, and an interest in the mystic and supernatural. Romantics set themselves in opposition
to the order and rationality of classical and neoclassical artistic precepts to embrace freedom and revolution
in their art and politics. German romantic poets included Fredrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, and British poets such as Wordsworth,Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George
Gordon Lord Byron, and John Keats propelled the English romantic movement. Victor Hugo was a noted
French romantic poet as well, and romanticism crossed the Atlantic through the work of American poets like
Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe. The romantic era produced many of the stereotypes of poets and
poetry that exist to this day (i.e., the poet as a tortured and melancholy visionary).
Romantic ideals never died out in poetry, but were largely absorbed into the precepts of many other
movements. Traces of romanticism lived on in French symbolism and surrealism and in the work of
prominent poets such as Charles Baudelaire and Rainer Maria Rilke.
George Gordon Byron
George Gordon Byron was born on January 22, 1788, in Aberdeen, Scotland, and inherited his
familys English title at the age of ten, becoming Baron Byron of Rochdale. Abandoned by his father at an
early age and resentful of his mother, who he blamed for his being born with a deformed foot, Byron
isolated himself during his youth and was deeply unhappy. Though he was the heir to an idyllic estate, the
property was run down and his family had no assets with which to care for it. As a teenager, Byron
discovered that he was attracted to men as well as women, which made him all the more remote and
secretive
He studied at Aberdeen Grammar School and then Trinity College in Cambridge. During this time
Byron collected and published his first volumes of poetry. The first, published anonymously and titled
Fugitive Pieces, was printed in 1806 and contained a miscellany of poems, some of which were written
when Byron was only fourteen. As a whole, the collection was considered obscene, in part because it
ridiculed specific teachers by name, and in part because it contained frank, erotic verses. At the request of
a friend, Byron recalled and burned all but four copies of the book, then immediately began compiling a
revised versionthough it was not published during his lifetime. The next year, however, Byron published
his second collection, Hours of Idleness, which contained many of his early poems, as well as significant
additions, including poems addressed to John Edelston, a younger boy whom Byron had befriended and
deeply loved.
By Byrons twentieth birthday, he faced overwhelming debt. Though his second collection received
an initially favorable response, a disturbingly negative review was printed in January of 1808, followed by
even more scathing criticism a few months later. His response was a satire, English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers, which received mixed attention. Publicly humiliated and with nowhere else to turn, Byron set out
on a tour of the Mediterranean, traveling with a friend to Portugal, Spain, Albania, Turkey, and finally
Athens. Enjoying his new-found sexual freedom, Byron decided to stay in Greece after his friend returned
to England, studying the language and working on a poem loosely based on his adventures. Inspired by the
culture and climate around him, he later wrote to his sister, If I am a poet ... the air of Greece has made me
one.
Byron returned to England in the summer of 1811 having completed the opening cantos of Childe
Harolds Pilgrimage, a poem which tells the story of a world-weary young man looking for meaning in the
world. When the first two cantos were published in March of 1812, the expensive first printing sold out in
three days. Byron reportedly said, I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
His fame, however, was among the aristocratic intellectual class, at a time when only cultivated
people read and discussed literature. The significant rise in a middle-class reading public, and with it the
dominance of the novel, was still a few years away. At 24, Byron was invited to the homes of the most
prestigious families and received hundreds of fan letters, many of them asking for the remaining cantos of
his great poemwhich eventually appeared in 1818.
An outspoken politician in the House of Lords, Byron used his popularity for public good, speaking in
favor of workers rights and social reform. He also continued to publish romantic tales in verse. His personal
life, however, remained rocky. He was married and divorced, his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke having

accused him of everything from incest to sodomy. A number of love affairs also followed, including one with
Claire Clairmont, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelleys sister-in-law. By 1816, Byron was afraid for his life,
warned that a crowd might lynch him if he were seen in public.
Forced to flee England, Byron settled in Italy and began writing his masterpiece, Don Juan, an epicsatire novel-in-verse loosely based on a legendary hero. He also spent much of his time engaged in the
Greek fight for independence and planned to join a battle against a Turkish-held fortress when he fell ill,
becoming increasingly sick with persistent colds and fevers.
When he died on April 19, 1824, at the age of 36, Don Juan was yet to be finished, though 17
cantos had been written. A memoir, which also hadnt been published, was burned by Byrons friends who
were either afraid of being implicated in scandal or protective of his reputation.
Today, Byrons Don Juan is considered one of the greatest long poems in English written since John
Miltons Paradise Lost. The Byronic hero, characterized by passion, talent, and rebellion, pervades Byrons
work and greatly influenced the work of later Romantic poets.
Lord Byron and The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure, and Echo & The Bunnymen
Written by: Paul Gleason
When the British poet Lord Byron published the first two cantos of his narrative poem, Childe
Harolds Pilgrimage, in 1812, he arguably became the worlds first celebrity. The poem, which chronicled
the European and Middle Eastern travels of a weary and melancholic young man, was an instant sensation
in London. A cult of celebrity soon formed around Byron, and readers began tracing his every step, seeking
any form of personal contact with the man whom Lady Caroline Lamb called, mad, bad and dangerous to
know.
Byron self-consciously constructed and played up to Lambs description in his poetry, forging a
semi-autobiographical body of work including most famously Childe Harold, Manfred, Don Juan, She
Walks in Beauty, and The Dream in which he fashioned a persona that became a literary archetype: the
Byronic Hero.
The Byronic Hero is physically beautiful and sexually irresistible, his eyes and hair dark, his body
thin and tall, his skin pale, and his lips large, red, and full. He is androgynous and most likely bisexual. He
is charming, highly intelligent, and prone to mood swings that can send him into the deepest despair, which
leads to unrivaled depths of perception and melancholy. He is an exile from his homeland and wanders the
world as an outcast, a rebel against the conventional morality of his day and the sufferer of childhood
trauma. He is Cain. He is Satan. He is mad, bad and dangerous to know.
Byrons popularity and ubiquity made the Byronic Hero one of the most influential characters in the
19 and early 20th centuries, inspiring writers from Pushkin to Joyce. But, to my knowledge, the Byronic
Heros influence on four of the most important English rock bands of the past 30 years hasnt been dealt
with in detail and in one place. In this essay, Id like to provide a point of departure for such a study.
th

For example, any fan of The Smiths knows that Morrisseys favorite poet is Byron so much so that
fans lobbed volumes of the poets work on the stage during the bands performances.
But Morrissey, whose lyrics almost uncannily reproduce the comedic and melancholic tone of poems
like Don Juan, is more than a Byron admirer. From his physical appearance and intelligence to his selfproclaimed androgyny and melancholy, he fits the bill of the Byronic Hero and his lyrics say so.
Reel Around the Fountain the first song on The Smiths first album is the sad tale of a young
boy who suffered the trauma of sexual abuse. Half a Person begins with the line, Call me morbid, call me
pale. Cemetery Gates, with its literary references and wordplay, demonstrates an intelligence and tone
that make Morrissey the songwriting rival of the author of Don Juan. And the profound introspection and
mournfulness of There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side, Last Night I

Dreamt Somebody Loved Me, and Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want just to name a few
songs put Morrissey in Byrons despondent camp.
It goes without saying that Morrissey, like Byron, has a cult of intense followers. The same goes for
Joy Division front man Ian Curtis, who, like Byron, died at a very young age. Curtis physical appearance
was similar to that of the Byronic Hero, but his manifestation of the trope was different to Morrisseys.
For example, Curtis lyrics never displayed the strange brew of melancholy and comedy that
Morrisseys did. No, Curtis words showed more of an affinity with Byrons shorter lyrics, such as She
Walks in Beauty and The Dream.
Atmospheric and dark, The Dream considers the tragedy of two lovers who are doomed to be
apart. Curtis, of course, wrote about a similar subject in Joy Divisions biggest hit, Love Will Tear Us Apart.
This is all to say that Byron and Curtis meet at a subject that fascinated them both: the problem of
human suffering. Many of Byrons poems sometimes ambiguously and sometimes overtly refer to the
suffering wrought by the sexual abuse that he suffered as a child, of being exiled from a country that
considered homosexual acts a crime, of being separated from his daughter and the love of his life, his halfsister Augusta.
Curtis epilepsy made him an exile within his own country. It allowed him to write lyrics that
expressed his deep empathy for those who suffer. Shes Lost Control imagines the life of an epileptic girl
(Curtis actually wrote the lyric before he was diagnosed with the illness), and The Eternal imagines the
suffering of a mentally challenged boy. And it goes without saying that songs like Twenty Four Hours,
Insight, Dead Souls, and Heart and Soul indicate Curtis gut-wrenching awareness of his own despair.
Despair is an appropriate word to describe the work of The Cures Robert Smith, another front man
who presents as a Byronic Hero. Smith fills early albums like Faith and Pornography with songs of a
Byronic consciousness of the meaninglessness of life. Take the song Faith, which begins with the lines,
Catch me if I fall, Im losing hold / Cant just carry on this way, and ends with the line, Nothing left but
faith. Combined with the forlorn music and vocal melody, Smiths lyrics transform faith into a futile
proposition for the eternally dejected. And, lest we forget, the opening cut on Pornography One Hundred
Years starts off with the lyric, It doesnt matter that we all die.
In effect, Smiths early work rebels against forms of conventional morality in the forms of religious
faith and the sanctity of life. It follows Byrons poetry in this, as does Smiths greatest work, Disintegration.
Much like Byron in the poems in which he refers to the hopelessness of losing Augusta, Smith on
Disintegration uses conventional subject matter the boy-loses-girl motif to explore the disintegration of
the human psyche into a state of eternal despair. From Plainsong which opens the record with two
lovers parting to the closing track, Untitled, Smith chronicles the downward spiral of an individual into
Romantic agony. Indeed, Untitled includes the word never in the context of communication, knowledge,
and belief so much that it eliminates the prospect of, as Smith says in the title track, ever feel[ing] whole
again.
Ian McCulloch and Echo & The Bunnymen concocted perhaps the most Byronic album of all with
Ocean Rain. He and songwriting partner Will Sergeant wrote tracks like The Killing Moon, Silver, and
Thorn of Crowns, which show the same fascination with Middle Eastern culture that Byron demonstrates
in Childe Harold, Don Juan, and many of his other narrative poems. Just listen to Sergeants guitar playing.
But what makes Ocean Rain Byronic and Ian McCulloch a Byronic Hero are the lyrics and
vocals, both of which owe a lot to British Romanticism. The title track shows how this works. The Middle
Eastern-tinged music fuses with McCullochs Romantic voice and words, creating a hybrid song that
parallels Byrons hybrid narrative poems. Throughout the song, McCulloch restates the same chorus and

verse over and over again, only changing his pronouns and articles to build and make the song more
personal, more internal. All at sea again becomes Im at sea again. Screaming from beneath the
waves becomes Screaming from beneath your waves. But what remains the same is McCullochs
likening himself to a ship with a tender frame. By the time McCulloch switches your waves back to the
waves as he sings the high notes at the songs climax, his Byronic feeling of hopelessness and
homelessness has become universal singer and listener are joined in a union of suffering.
Many people have argued that Byron was not just the worlds first celebrity but also the worlds first
rock star. In their appearance, lyrics, and lives, Morrissey, Ian Curtis, Robert Smith, and Ian McCulloch are
real rock stars that follow in Byrons tradition. And the music of The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure, and
Echo & The Bunnymen continue a legacy that began when shortly after the first two cantos of Childe
Harolds Pilgrimage were published in 1812, a 24 year-old poet awoke to find himself famous.

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (The

Smiths)

Take me out tonight

Where there's music and there's people
Who are young and alive
Driving in your car
I never never want to go home
Because I haven't got one anymore
Take me out tonight
Because I want to see people
And I want to see lights
Driving in your car
Oh please don't drop me home
Because it's not my home
It's their home
And I'm welcome no more
And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure and the privilege is mine
Take me out tonight
Take me anywhere
I don't care, I don't care, I don't care
And in the darkened underpass, I thought
"Oh, God, my chance has come at last"
But then a strange fear gripped me
And I just couldn't ask

Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)

When routine bites hard and ambitions are low
and resentment rides high but emotions won't
grow
And we're changing our ways
taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again
Why is the bedroom so cold?
You've turned away on your side
Is my timing that flawed?
Our respect runs so dry
Yet there's still this appeal
That we've kept through our lives
But love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again
You cry out in your sleep
All my failings exposed
And there's taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold
Just that something so good
Just can't function no more
But love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again
Plainsong (The Cure)
"I think it's dark and it looks like rain"
You said
"And the wind is blowing like it's the end of the
world"
You said
"And it's so cold
It's like the cold if you were dead"
And then you smiled
For a second
"I think I'm old and I'm feeling pain"
You said
"And it's all running out like it's the end of the
world"
You said
"And it's so cold it's like the cold if you were dead"
And then you smiled
For a second

Sometimes you make me feel

Like I'm living at the edge of the world
Like I'm living at the edge of the world
"It's just the way I smile"
You said
Ocean Rain (Echo & The Bunnymen)
All at sea again
And now my hurricanes have brought down this
ocean rain
To bathe me again
My ship's a sail
Can you hear its tender frame
Screaming from beneath the waves
Screaming from beneath the waves
All hands on deck at dawn
Sailing to sadder shores
Your port in my heavy storms
Harbours the blackest thoughts
I'm at sea again
And now your hurricanes have brought down this
ocean rain
To bathe me again
My ship's a sail
Can you hear its tender frame
Screaming from beneath the waves
Screaming from beneath the waves
All hands on deck at dawn
Sailing to sadder shores
Your port in my heavy storms
Harbours the blackest thoughts (2x)
All at sea again
And now my hurricanes have brought down this
ocean rain
To bathe me again
My ship's a sail
Hear its tender frame
Screaming from beneath the waves
Screaming from beneath your waves
Screaming from beneath the waves (2x)
All hands on deck at dawn
Sailing to sadder shores
Your port in my heavy storms
Harbours the blackest thoughts