Romanticism in Australia
What is Romantic? For the writer in romantic period who embodied the romanticism in their literary work, romanticism uses nature as the main idea. Nature here does not only mean merely earth and the plants and animals, but complete with the substantial things include in the nature such the human itself with the characteristics, emotions, and feelings. In romanticism, the general ideas divided into six; love of nature, transcendentalism, individualism, self-consciousness, frankness, and admiration to the humble village people. These six ideas cover all around the world’s product of literary work which uses romanticism as the ideology. England romanticism tendency is more about the nature and the admiration of humble village people and the frankness, where the American is more about the individualism, self-consciousness, and transcendentalism, and the youngest nations of the three, Australian romanticism tendency is most about the love of the nature and frankness. All the ideas explained above basically tend to make literary work as the description of spontaneity and originality both of nature and human itself.
How the story and idea of Romanticism in Australia? Romanticism in Australian literature emerges as the first ideology in Australia. It caused by the time period of England when the land of Australia found in 1788 and when the literary work took the points of departure in Australia. It came along with the romanticism period in England, where the phenomenal writer such Wordsworth and Coleridge influenced the writer all along the world, include Australia. Another strong reason that romanticism is the first idea that lives in Australian people is based on the condition of the land of Australia itself. They found the new kind of plants and animals which they never seen before. Their amazement to the strange land, plants, animals, even the climate are turn to the strong idea in writing a literary work. They just cannot afford their mind to not write down about the new fantastic awkward world that they found. These two conditions make the earlier writer in full of consciousness became the romantic writer in Australia. The characteristic of Australian romanticism which take place as the different between other nations is fully based on the expansiveness, where the literary works at this time indirectly portray the searching of freedom, self evident-truth, and equality. Even said that Australian literary work showed the love of freedom in early time, but it also showed the truth at most of it. The love of freedom and truth showed trough the depiction of the landscape and the inhabitants. The freedom showed through the inhabitants of Australia that looking for freedom in their new land as the new citizen. It shows their strong willing to detach from the England Empire. As said before that the early literary work in Australia also showed the truth of the landscape that they found, the unbelievable strange of animal and plants, plus with the seasons.
Who are the writers of this age? Early poets in Australia were Charles Harpur with his strong Emersonian, Thomas Henry Kendall and Adam Lindsay Gordon with their magnificent poems. Another novelist also covers the early time of Australian literature such Alexander Harris and James Tucker with his famous Ralph Rashleigh. Other famous names are Catherine Helen Spence and Henry Kingsley also the historical novelist of Australia. All the early writers mentioned above were the romantic writers in Australian literature that filled their work with the strong tendency of Australian nature.
Romanticism in Kendall’s Selected Poems
As listed above the names of the early writers in Australia who embodied the romanticism in their works, here the one of the writers who all of his works shows the romanticism tendency to the nature of the land of Australia. Kendall is one of the history man in Australian literature, so-called the ‘Native Australian Poet’. In his book of Cambridge History of Australian Literature, Peter Pierce clearly said “He is more impressionistic and weaves a more cunningly emotional music, centered on effects of light and an atmospheric play of green and gold” (2009:81).
STANZAS
THE sunsets fall and the sunsets fade,
But still I walk this shadowy land;
And grapple the dark and only the dark
In my search for a loving hand.
For it’s here a still, deep woodland lies,
With spurs of pine and sheaves of fern;
But I wander wild, and wail like a child
For a face that will never return!
And it’s here a mighty water flows,
With drifts of wind and wimpled waves;
But the darling head of a dear one dead
Is hidden beneath its caves.
From the poem above, it clearly shows the atomic words which identify the romanticism by the wording noun. The entire noun that Kendall uses in the Stanzas is related to the nature itself. From the very first line, he started his poem with ‘THE sunsets fall and the sunsets fade, But still I walk this shadowy land’. This line and the next lines clearly show the landscape of Australia. As explained above that romanticism tendency is to show what the writer feels in spontaneous and truthful, in this Stanza, Kendall depict the landscape of Australia, frankness about ‘the shadowy land’, ‘the woodland’, and the plants like ‘Spurs of pine and sheaves of fern’ even about the ‘water flows’. This poem strongly proved what Pierce said about Kendall in his love to the green and gold. The green depiction in this poem is welcoming the reader to imagine the bush of Australia with its beautiful green land covered by the pines and ferns. These wording noun of nature clearly identify that this Stanzas is a romantic poems shows the land of Australia.
THE MUSE OF AUSTRALIA
WHERE the pines with the eagles are nestled in rifts,
And the torrent leaps down to the surges,
I have followed her, clambering over the clifts,
By the chasms and moon-haunted verges.
I know she is fair as the angels are fair,
For have I not caught a faint glimpse of her there;
A glimpse of her face and her glittering hair,
And a hand with the Harp of Australia?
I never can reach you, to hear the sweet voice
So full with the music of fountains!
Oh! when will you meet with that soul of your choice,
Who will lead you down here from the mountains?
A lyre-bird lit on a shimmering space;
It dazzled mine eyes and I turned from the place,
And wept in the dark for a glorious face,
And a hand with the Harp of Australia!
The next poem from Kendall that will be explaining here to come to the strong conclusion of Kendall’s poem as romantic is The Muse of Australia. In this poem, still, Kendall uses the noun of nature like ‘the pines with the eagles are nestled in rifts,’ again identify the romanticism. In this poem, Kendall again shows the beautiful Australia filled by the sounds of fountains everywhere by the words ‘I never can reach you, to hear the sweet voice | So full with the music of fountains!’ In this chance Kendall assume Australia as the pretty woman with her sweet voice, he also using the personification to shows the fountains, the mountains, the glorious surface to shows the landscape of Australia. This poem with its sharpness shows Kendall’s mind according his self and the beautiful Australia. As said before that Kendall and Australia is something that would never be separate each other. Kendall successfully attracts people to feel the land of Australia by his great beautiful poems with the detail of the natural condition.
He wrote to J. Brunton Stephens on 5 June 1880, ‘I was born in the forests and mountains were my sponsors. Hence I am saturated with the peculiar spirit of Australia scenery’ (Pierce, 2009:85)
As the native Australian Poet, Kendall is the greatest descriptive poems who know exactly the peculiar things, the beautiful part that will never be found in another land, the strange waves and seas, the grotesque animals and the scentless plants. It all turned into the beautiful poems through his cunning hands. No wonder, he simply the Australian-born poet.
HARPS WE LOVE
THE harp we love hath a royal burst!
Its strings are mighty forest trees;
And branches, swaying to and fro,
Are fingers sounding symphonies.
The harp we love hath a solemn sound!
And rocks amongst the shallow seas
Are strings from which the rolling waves
Draw forth their stirring harmonies.
The harp we love hath a low sweet voice!
Its strings are in the bosom deep,
And Love will press those hidden chords
When all the baser passions sleep.
In this poem, Harps We Love, Kendall still uses the words such ‘forest tree’ to show the bush of Australia, the typical of Australia. Different with the former poems explained above, this poem shows the other part of the Australia but still, Kendall kept his focus on the nature of Australia. As stated in view article about the beautiful sea of Australia with the amazing waves, Kendall cannot afford himself to avoid this characteristic of Australia. He tried to depict the sound of the seas and the waves as the ‘solemn sounds!’ in this poem, Kendall also used the specific words to show the detail about Australian nature. In the first couplet he talked about the ‘forest trees’ and then added the words ‘branches, swaying to and fro’, and then in the next couplet he talked about the sea of Australia and added the detail depiction through the word ‘rocks’. In this last poem, what Pierce said about Kendall in his book is clearly proved, the way Kendall describe the nature by his own way, the way Kendall shows his love to the land of Australia and Kendall’s haunted vision about the word beyond this world.
In most of his poem, Kendall successfully reflects his Australia as the part of him that cannot be separate like forever. In his poems, he cunningly describes his Australia’s past, and then the developing country with its beautiful nature.
Kendall was haunted by a vision of a world beyond this world, a virgin world of ‘unknown shores’, ‘undiscovered skies’ and ‘cliffs and coast by man untrodden’, ‘the land where man hath never been, the country where ethereal glory shines’ (Pierce, 2009:81)
From the three selected poems served above, it all clearly shows and proved the romanticism in Kendall’s where it is like the love of his life. Everything he saw in his daily moment turned into the beautiful lines of words in the form of poem. His amazement of his Australia cannot help him to avoid the use of the beautiful new thing he found in the nature of Australia such its fountains, shores, forests, trees, mountains, even its rocks, into his works.
Bibliography
Goodwin, Ken. 1986. A History of Australian Literature. Macmillan Publishers. Hong Kong.
Kendall, Henry. 1998. The Poems of Henry Kendall. University of Sydney Library. Sydney.
Pierce, Peter. 2009. The Cambridge History of Australian Literature. Cambridge University Press. Australia.
Narasimhaiah, C. D. 1982. An Introduction to Australian Literature. John Wiley & Sons Melbourne.
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