Wednesday Wisdom

Who were they?

“The Romantics”, Byron, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelly, the English Murder’s row of wordsmiths and a close connection of poets who brought hope and joy and tears and sorrow through their written word. Although they are often called the “Big Six” because of their influence on many other writers, there were many other writers from other countries who contributed extraordinary era of writing and enlightenment thinking making it arguably the golden age of poetry in the western world.

Responding and echoing the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, these writers sought to highlight individuals and the natural world. The name “Romantic’s” is not because of flowery prose or romance themes but an atribution to the writer’s reverence to the philosophers and storytelling of the medieval times that were often written in romance languages of French, Italian and Spanish. Informal in style and in subject, their words were both a reflection of the revolutionary change across Europe and North America in the late 1700s but was also a call to action for individualism in the place of a rigid hierarchal structure of Europe. These poets highlighted the beauty of nature in response to the growing urbanization and growth of factories across the continent. Living in a time of both revolution and early industrialization, these poets were a foil to the urbanization by presenting the aesthetics of landscapes. Their words promoted rebellion against social conventions and asked for individual imagination and courage. Known for promoting emotion over rationalization, nature versus urbanization and supernatural over logic or institutional faith.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a founding father of the Romantic Movement. He was a philosopher, theologian, and a legendary conversationalist. People would travel for miles just to hear him talk. His major works included "Kubla Khan" which is renowned for its lush imagery of a "stately pleasure-dome." Coleridge claimed he wrote it after an opium-induced dream, awoke writing 300 lines and was interrupted by “ a person on business from Porlock" (meaning just a random person), whose mundane intrusion caused him to forget the ending and having the poem with somewhat unfinished. "Christabel", a gothic, unfinished narrative poem full of eerie, supernatural tension and" Biographia Literaria", a large prose work where he coined the famous phrase "the willing suspension of disbelief."

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1798 and most well-known poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", he explores the supernatural and themes of isolation, thoughtlessness and crime against natural world. The poem starts with an argument, which is like a movie trailer and was common in 18th and 19th century in long form poetry.

Argument

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

In the poem a sailor kills an albatross with a crossbow. Initially, the crew thinks the bird brought bad luck, but when the wind dies down and the ship becomes stranded in a "silent sea," they blame the Mariner for killing the bird, which sailors considered a good omen. As a punishment and a mark of his guilt, the crew forces the Mariner to wear the dead bird around his neck. “Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks / Had I from old and young ! / Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung.” He is eventually saved only by learning to love all living things, and much like a Greek tragedy he must wander the earth forever to retell his tale as a warning to others as a penance. His isolation and torment can be felt in the famous line “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.”

2026 and still common idioms from the poem

Mary Shelly, wife of Percy Shelly and a friend of Coleridge is believed to be the first person using “the albatross” symbolically. In her book Frankenstein, her character Robert Walton as he embarks on his trip to the North Pole says, "I shall kill no albatross," meaning he won't bring bad luck upon his journey.

While the poem is over 200 years old, the phrase didn't become a common "idiom" for a general burden until the mid-20th century. The phrase "an albatross around your neck" is a metaphor that refers to a heavy burden or ongoing problem that causes significant guilt, stress, or hardship. It describes something that someone is forced to carry or deal with, often as a result of their past actions, and which negatively affects their life or well-being. When people say someone has "an albatross around their neck," they usually mean that the person is dealing with a lingering problem or responsibility they can't easily escape. This burden often prevents them from moving forward or enjoying their life fully.

In the end, the albatross is more than a bird; but a symbol of how an impulsive action can frame one’s ethics. The poem and The Romantics more broadly ask the metaphysical questions about humanity’s place in nature and ethical questions about our responsibility to the natural world.

And now you know...

Thanks, Dad, for the gift of curiosity!

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.