POEMS AND POETS
40. VICTORY OF THE VICTORIANS-2
However important colonialism might appear to be for us now, it was not the most important issue for the Victorians. In any case, colonialism was not new and the renewed focus it received was itself due to other factors, which were vastly more important.
These related to various branches of science. In 1830s Charles Lyell published 'Principles of Geology' which proposed that the earth had developed over extended periods of time. Charles Darwin published 'Voyage of the Beagle' in 1839 and 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859, proposing natural selection as the basis. But some of his ideas were current even before this time. The idea that species might become extinct in the absence of the right conditions was propounded by Robert Chambers in 1844. But the word 'Darwinism' coined by Thomas Henry Huxley caught on., and was applied to a range of ideas about evolution. Sociologist Herbert Spencer coined the terms 'survival of the fittest' and somehow it got blended with ideas of Darwinism,viz natural selection. By 1870s the idea of "social Darwinism" had gained currency. If it is only a fit species that survives in nature, why not apply this to society?If a society expands, prospers and gains, it is only by its superior nature! In course of time, this served as the basis of Fascism, Nazism and ideas of ethnic cleansing. Renewed interest in Imperialism and its association with ideas of racial superiority was also an off-shoot of this.
But the real effect of these developments on British society was shattering. If the geological findings were true, then the Biblical time-scale ( that the earth was created in 4004 B.C.) was wrong! If the species were propagated by natural selection, the Biblical story of creation was wrong! Thus in one stroke, the foundations of Christianity were shattered. By this time, 'science' had gained respectability as a profession, people had started studying about science in earnest, facilitated by the spread of literacy and print media. No one who was 'educated' could take the Bible seriously. Even earlier, German scholars had questioned the historical basis of the Bible. Faith in organised Christianity was collapsing.
One specific incident of the times is legendary. The British Association in Oxford convened a meeting in June,1860 to consider the issue of 'evolution'. ( 'On the Origin of Species' had been published by Darwin in 1859). Hundreds of people had gathered. Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford had come prepared to establish the superiority of the Church doctrine. During his speech, he turned to scientist T.H Huxley, and taunted him, asking whether he claimed descent from monkey from his grandfather's or grandmother's side! Huxley did not lose his cool; he explained lucidly and simply the basic ideas involved, pointed out the ignorance of the Bishop, and concluded by saying that descent from monkey was not so shameful as keeping company with people who obscured truth! The crowd overwhelmingly supported Huxley and Wilberforce stood humiliated. You can say this is the public funeral for Christian Faith in the Victorian era. It was indeed Science which was the real victor in the Victorian age!
However, Huxley himself was not an atheist, but only agnostic. (Agnosticism was again a word coined by Huxley himself) One statement of Huxley is worth remembering:
Well, this is as much philosophy as science!
However, Huxley himself was not an atheist, but only agnostic. (Agnosticism was again a word coined by Huxley himself) One statement of Huxley is worth remembering:
"There is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical as well as an ideal unity"Lecture 'On The Physical Basis of Life',1868
Well, this is as much philosophy as science!
These ideas of science had their repercussions in literature. This is the special characteristic of English literature: it responded to each age and was in turn shaped by it. We do not see this in other countries, in India for instance. During the same period, Mughal rule had ended in India; thousands of Muslims had been massacred and hanged in Delhi; the seven old cities of Delhi had been sacked; the old way of life and an entire civilisation was collapsing. But how many literary figures talked about it,wrote about it, sang about it? We find only a Mirza Ghalib writing about those conditions in Gazals and private letters in Urdu which not many people read; but our smart academics have interpreted it as the pessimistic outpourings of one man! Incidentally, it raises questions about the existence of a 'national' political consciousness at this time. Did people at large consider the Mughal ruler as the national king or emperor or Delhi as the national capital? Then, why has no one written about it in any other language?
But the Victorian loss of Faith in the authority of the Church and the certainty of its teachings is a major element in their literature in all forms. How it affected society is recorded in novels by Dickens; how it affected individual psyche and the inner landscape of man is depicted by Hardy. It becomes a big theme in poetry. We saw how disturbed the Romantics had been in the aftermath of Newton and they turned to Nature. But developments in science had disturbed that Nature further, and had knocked faith in God out of reckoning. Where could man now turn to? Gerard Manly Hopkins tried to reconcile science somehow with religious feeling, but others were sure that the tide of faith was ebbing out. Mathew Arnold wrote:
DOVER BEACH 1867
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
.............
.................for the world,which seems
To lie before us like the land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful,so new,
Hath really neither joy,nor love,nor light,
Nor certitude,nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The first part merely records the poet's impression that faith was fading; but the latter part is prescient. It tells us that with loss of faith, there is now no joy,love, or light; certitude is gone, there is confused struggle and fight by ignorant armies. Within 50 years after these lines were written, the nations which tried to civilise the world , all following the Book, were engulfed in the Great War; and in another 20 years, in the Second World War.
Tennyson too captures some of these problems in his poetry.
'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is about the British spirit of conquest, "theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die", sort of obeying the dictat of the times. 'Ulysses' (1833) is a song of the spirit of the times, of unending voyage and conquest:
"To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."
But where would it all lead to? Human thought had no bounds at all and in the words of Macaulay:
Extend it , and it becomes invisible in turn! Science makes everything uncertain! So what could man make of life? Darwin's theory of origin of species was published in 1859, but the ideas were current before that. It was believed that Nature was concerned with whole species and not about the preservation of the individuals and that even whole species had suffered extinction .(Georges Couvier, 1769-1832)This thought must have disturbed the faithful. Tennyson was surely seized of the matter. In his long poem In Memoriam, he takes up the issue:
IN MEMORIAM (55)
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,......
56
"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me.
I bring to life, i bring to death;
The spirit does mean but the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair.
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him franes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law-
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed-
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil,behind the veil.
What hope is there for man then? Other species had come and gone before him, so he too shall go!
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes have thou seen!
There where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go. (123)
Scientific knowledge has supplanted faith, but has given nothing but doubt and uncertainty. Each new discovery brings a new level of uncertainty, more profound doubt. So, Tennyson makes a simple U-turn and comes back to faith!
O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,......
That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last- far off- at last,to all,
And every winter change to spring.
'In Memoriam' was written over many years, but published in 1850. The ideas do not run in a straight line, but the passages written at different periods do reflect the poet's varying ideas and reactions about science, till he is so thoroughly disillusioned that only a return to simple faith could satisfy him. This he states clearly at the beginning:
Strong son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace'
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are the orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; ....
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
he thinks he was not made to die;..
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, are more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know,
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness, let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster.
Strong statement of faith, expressing the hope that knowledge and faith will be reconciled in a vaster harmony. But that was not to be. As the century advanced, science made steady inroads into the both human intellect and heart. Faith was completely disowned by the educated class. But the poem is pervaded by a strong sense of doubt . Personally I like the assessment of T.S.Eliot best:
" It happens now and then that a poet by some strange accident expresses the mood of his generation, at the same time that he is expressing a mood of his own which is quite remote from that of his generation.......Tennyson himself on the conscious level......consistently asserted a convinced, if somewhat sketchy, Christian belief......he had a good deal the temperament of the mystic- certainly not at all the mind of the theologian....Tennyson is distressed by the idea of a mechanical universe.......(but) The hope of immortality is confused (typically of the period) with the hope of the gradual and steady improvement of this world........an interesting compromise between the religious attitude, and what is quite a different thing, the belief in human perfectibility......
It is not religious because of the quality of its faith, but because of the quality of its doubt."
From: The Selected Essays of T.S.Eliot,1932
But we must note one fact. 19th Century science triumphed over organised Christian teaching- Christian theology based ideas of creationism. It did not mean Science had disproved Religion as such. Religion is more than Christianity, and their infantile ideas of Biblical creation are not the last word on the subject. But as the century advanced the fact of science V.Christian theology was presented as Science V. Religion as such; it is this notion which holds the common mind even now, even in Asia.It was scepticism, agnosticism which triumphed at the end of the Victorian age, dyed in stark intellectual colours and clothed in powerful and attractive labels and formulae. This is the ultimate victory of the Victorian Age. In this light, it has not yet ended. Whatever might be advances in astro-physics or particle physics or in other areas, it is the 19th century ideas which still run the establishment.
Note: The idea that nature favours groups over individuals for preservation is not new to us Indians. There is the well known passage in the Mahabharata which says that an individual can be sacrificed for the family, the family for the village, village for the country etc. I think the Greek story of Iphigenia and Agamemnon too illustrates this point!
DOVER BEACH 1867
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
.............
.................for the world,which seems
To lie before us like the land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful,so new,
Hath really neither joy,nor love,nor light,
Nor certitude,nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The first part merely records the poet's impression that faith was fading; but the latter part is prescient. It tells us that with loss of faith, there is now no joy,love, or light; certitude is gone, there is confused struggle and fight by ignorant armies. Within 50 years after these lines were written, the nations which tried to civilise the world , all following the Book, were engulfed in the Great War; and in another 20 years, in the Second World War.
Tennyson too captures some of these problems in his poetry.
'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is about the British spirit of conquest, "theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die", sort of obeying the dictat of the times. 'Ulysses' (1833) is a song of the spirit of the times, of unending voyage and conquest:
"To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."
But where would it all lead to? Human thought had no bounds at all and in the words of Macaulay:
"A point which was invisible yesterday is its goal today, and will be its starting point tomorrow."
Extend it , and it becomes invisible in turn! Science makes everything uncertain! So what could man make of life? Darwin's theory of origin of species was published in 1859, but the ideas were current before that. It was believed that Nature was concerned with whole species and not about the preservation of the individuals and that even whole species had suffered extinction .(Georges Couvier, 1769-1832)This thought must have disturbed the faithful. Tennyson was surely seized of the matter. In his long poem In Memoriam, he takes up the issue:
IN MEMORIAM (55)
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,......
56
"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me.
I bring to life, i bring to death;
The spirit does mean but the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair.
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him franes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law-
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed-
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil,behind the veil.
What hope is there for man then? Other species had come and gone before him, so he too shall go!
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes have thou seen!
There where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go. (123)
Scientific knowledge has supplanted faith, but has given nothing but doubt and uncertainty. Each new discovery brings a new level of uncertainty, more profound doubt. So, Tennyson makes a simple U-turn and comes back to faith!
O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,......
That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last- far off- at last,to all,
And every winter change to spring.
'In Memoriam' was written over many years, but published in 1850. The ideas do not run in a straight line, but the passages written at different periods do reflect the poet's varying ideas and reactions about science, till he is so thoroughly disillusioned that only a return to simple faith could satisfy him. This he states clearly at the beginning:
Strong son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace'
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are the orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; ....
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
he thinks he was not made to die;..
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, are more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know,
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness, let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster.
Strong statement of faith, expressing the hope that knowledge and faith will be reconciled in a vaster harmony. But that was not to be. As the century advanced, science made steady inroads into the both human intellect and heart. Faith was completely disowned by the educated class. But the poem is pervaded by a strong sense of doubt . Personally I like the assessment of T.S.Eliot best:
" It happens now and then that a poet by some strange accident expresses the mood of his generation, at the same time that he is expressing a mood of his own which is quite remote from that of his generation.......Tennyson himself on the conscious level......consistently asserted a convinced, if somewhat sketchy, Christian belief......he had a good deal the temperament of the mystic- certainly not at all the mind of the theologian....Tennyson is distressed by the idea of a mechanical universe.......(but) The hope of immortality is confused (typically of the period) with the hope of the gradual and steady improvement of this world........an interesting compromise between the religious attitude, and what is quite a different thing, the belief in human perfectibility......
It is not religious because of the quality of its faith, but because of the quality of its doubt."
From: The Selected Essays of T.S.Eliot,1932
But we must note one fact. 19th Century science triumphed over organised Christian teaching- Christian theology based ideas of creationism. It did not mean Science had disproved Religion as such. Religion is more than Christianity, and their infantile ideas of Biblical creation are not the last word on the subject. But as the century advanced the fact of science V.Christian theology was presented as Science V. Religion as such; it is this notion which holds the common mind even now, even in Asia.It was scepticism, agnosticism which triumphed at the end of the Victorian age, dyed in stark intellectual colours and clothed in powerful and attractive labels and formulae. This is the ultimate victory of the Victorian Age. In this light, it has not yet ended. Whatever might be advances in astro-physics or particle physics or in other areas, it is the 19th century ideas which still run the establishment.
Note: The idea that nature favours groups over individuals for preservation is not new to us Indians. There is the well known passage in the Mahabharata which says that an individual can be sacrificed for the family, the family for the village, village for the country etc. I think the Greek story of Iphigenia and Agamemnon too illustrates this point!
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