Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 4. Naturalism in England — Background and Themes

Contrasting Poetic Strategies

Brandes builds his argument through sharp juxtapositions. He sets Wordsworth, who chooses insignificant or unattractive themes to endow them with moral or spiritual beauty, against Moore, who detests sordid details and evades every moral with a smile. This opposition is not merely stylistic but structural: Wordsworth requires a cultivated taste, while Moore appeals to a nation. Brandes notes that Moore's faults—his inability to draw a whole object, his listing of beauties instead of outlines—stem from his being a musician and colourist, not a draughtsman. Yet in Moore's best poems, like The Last Rose of Summer, the over-abundance of imagery disappears, replaced by simple, imperishable language. The movement from artificial to natural within Moore's own work mirrors the larger arc Brandes traces.

Recurring Images of Veiling and Revelation

Brandes repeatedly uses imagery of veiling and unveiling to describe poetic style. Moore casts a soft, glittering veil over the ugly; his embroidery is so gorgeous it hardly permits nature's cloth to appear. Wordsworth, by contrast, strips away convention to reveal moral beauty in the mundane. This image recurs in Brandes's description of the period itself: a strong current sweeping away classic forms. The veil metaphor extends to Moore's love-poetry, where passion loses itself in simile, and to the broader tension between naturalism and romanticism. Brandes's own prose mirrors this movement, alternating between dense, embroidered passages and stark, simple statements—as when he declares that in Moore's best poems the tinsel is blown away by true Irish melancholy.

Movement Between Scenes and Poets

The volume's structure is itself a movement between scenes: from Wordsworth's rural life to Moore's erotic fancy, from the Lake School's conception of liberty to Byron's passionate personality. Brandes orchestrates these transitions by linking poets through contrast. He moves from Wordsworth and Coleridge, poets for a cultivated public, to Moore, the poet for a nation. The shift is not abrupt but mediated by a shared concern with nature and liberty. Within the Moore section, Brandes pivots from criticism of artificiality to praise of simplicity, using the example of Rich and rare were the gems she wore as a turning point. This choreographed progression gives the volume its coherence, as each poet is positioned within a larger argument about the evolution of naturalism.

The Role of National Character

Brandes repeatedly ties poetic style to national character. Moore is the poet for a nation, his Irish melancholy purging his style of tinsel. Wordsworth and Coleridge, by contrast, require a cultivated taste—a trait Brandes associates with English reserve. The political background, sketched in an early chapter, underpins these distinctions: the Lake School's Oriental romanticism and the poetry of Irish opposition and revolt are not merely literary movements but expressions of national spirit. Brandes's analysis of Moore's love-poetry as embodying erotic fancy rather than passion is framed as a national characteristic, and his praise of Moore's simple songs as having the significance of a national epic reinforces this link. The movement between poets thus becomes a movement between national temperaments, each contributing to the broader current of naturalism.

Brandes's volume rewards readers who attend to its structural contrasts and recurring imagery. Rather than a simple survey, it offers a dialectical argument in which each poet is defined against another. The excerpts hint at a larger pattern: the movement from artificial to natural, from national to universal, from reaction to radicalism. Readers may find it useful to track how Brandes uses specific poems—like Moore's The Last Rose of Summer—as turning points in his narrative, and to observe how his own prose shifts between embroidered and simple registers to mirror his subject.