The Romantics Are Not Radicals

In this essay I would like to address what I believe is the contention of many scholars especially, Romanticists, that the Romantics were revolutionaries, of sorts, on discussions of social issues. I want to examine Samuel Taylor-Coleridge and what his personal feelings about race meant to his poetry. Coleridge may be in principle sympathetic to the suffering of others but his thought processes, as outlined in his unpublished manuscripts, are not much different than prevailing racialist theories of the time or even now. Coleridge was writing in the midst of British Imperialism and the height of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and did not have any true contestant to battle against his racial thinking. Although a lot of his work is thoughtful and leans towards a more equality-based vision of race, Coleridge still cannot help but fall victim to the privileges that the slave trade created in Britain and all over Europe. Coleridge is not alone in this distinction. Despite the thoughtful sentiment, the Romantics, particularly, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge could not escape white supremacist ideology.

The issue of slavery and the slave trade was a crucial and essential topic during the period in English Literature known as the Romantic period. The anti-slavery movement in Britain seemingly followed the timeline of the Romantic period in Britain. Most of the Romantic poets were radicals and they became part of the anti-slavery campaign and the discourse of slavery became an important part of their poetry, as many of the Romantics published many famous poems condemning slavery.  The Romantic Period is usually said to have started in the late 1780s and officially ended sometime in the mid to late 1830s. Slavery was abolished in Britain and its colonies in 1833.¹

I have not read everything Coleridge has written but there are poems that may illuminate his thinking on race. One poem in particular, “On the Wretched Lot of The Slaves In The West Indies” seems to support a charitable view of Coleridge’s own personal racial politics. But that is deceiving. The opening ten lines of the abolitionist poem, translated from the original Greek read;

O Death, leaving the gates of darkness, come

hastening to a race yoked to misery: thou

wilt not be received with tearings of cheeks

or with lamentation, but, on the contrary,

with circles beating out the dance and with the

joy of songs: thou art Fearful indeed, but still thou

dwellest with Liberty, hateful Tyrant. Raised

on thy murky wings, through the rough swell of

the vast Ocean, let them fly to the dear

Resorts of pleasure, and to their fatherland.²

The abolitionist reading of the poem is evident as Coleridge is asking that the “Tyrant” be the absolution to the slaves need for “Liberty” instead of what was their only perceivable path to freedom as slaves, “Death.” That was the thinking of the abolitionist movements in Britain and in the United States. That the government needs to abolish slavery and let the slaves “fly to the dear / Resorts of pleasure, and to their fatherland.” Coleridge was advocating for slavery’s abolition but he was also advocating for exporting the former slaves back to Africa. This is a glimpse into his racial thinking. Although, he is willing to admit, that the “Tyrant” was raised, gained their spoils and riches and power around the globe off of the backs of African slave labor, the African should still have no part in enjoying what Britain had amassed.

Similarly, many leaders in the newly formed United States of America also echoed the same sentiment. The abolitionist movement was in its infancy, if there were any remnants of it at all, but there were forces, similarly to Coleridge, for deporting free Blacks back to Africa. The American Colonization Society³ who were not abolitionist but advocated for the deportation of free Blacks to Africa, they had great influence in the creation of the African nation of Liberia, which is where a lot of free blacks were deported. The ACS was continuing the dream of Thomas Jefferson who in 1811 considered it “the most desirable measure which could be adopted for gradually drawing off” the black population; and he added: “nothing is more to be wished than that the United States should themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of Africa.”⁴

Furthermore, the deportation of Blacks back to Africa denies the natural consequences of the oppressive Imperialism by the British and other European nations in Africa. Despite, Africa still being a very productive source of many of the raw materials needed to build and sustain, not just the cities on the continent but still supply much of the world’s raw materials. The mining, and extracting, of those raw materials and the people that suffered for standing in the way of access to those raw materials decimated the continent. The damage that was done to the “fatherland” they were supposed to return to, is incalculable and therefore Coleridge’s freed slaves would not be returning to a fatherland that did not possess any of the cultural or natural characteristics persistent on the continent before the slave trade.

Later in the poem Coleridge explicitly demonizes slavery; “O you who revel in the evils of Slavery, O you / Who feed on the persecution of the wretched, / Wanton children of Excess, snatching your / Brother’s blood, does not an inescapable Eye”⁵ and

“No longer with prophetic fear shall the Mother

Take her grimy babe to her breast: no; because

The Day of Slavery has already been stretched too far

You who, Slaves of puffed-up Masters,

have never, wretches, seen a tear moisten pity’s”⁶

Coleridge is explicitly anti-slavery but what tends to confuse a lot of people is that they believe that being anti-slavery, especially slavery in the context of the highly racialized European/White slave master and African/Black slave dichotomy, means that the abolitionist is not racist or is for the equal rights of the slaves they want to free. Similarly, to the American abolitionist movement Coleridge’s want for the abolition of slavery is connected to his sense of morals not on a pretext that African slaves should enjoy the same life or the possibility of a similar life that Coleridge indulged. When Coleridge writes “The Day of Slavery has been stretched too far” he calls for abolition but does not announce or denounce it for ever having existed. Coleridge is fully aware of the wealth that Britain gained from the slave trade and now that Britain’s wealth and the society does not have to depend as much on slave labor, now that slavery has served its purpose, now slavery can end. This is further illuminated in his poem “Fears In Solitude” where he writes;

Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on,

Steamed up from Cairo’s swamps of pestilence,

Even so, my countrymen! Have we gone forth

And borne to distant tribes of slavery and pangs,

And deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint

With slow perdition murders the whole man

His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home

All individual dignity and power

Engulfed in courts, committees, institutions,

Associations and societies⁷

Furthermore, Coleridge continually uses terms that could be considered derogatory and demeaning to describe the Africans. Specifically the word, wretches, a wretch during the period Coleridge was writing could be defined as a One who is sunk in deep distress, sorrow, misfortune, or poverty; a miserable, unhappy, or unfortunate person; a poor or hapless being” if this is how Coleridge is using the term he admits to the condition of the African without admitting to how or why the African is in that condition. If Coleridge is defining a wretch as a person or little creature, typically used as a term of playful depreciation, or to denote slight commiseration or pity or a vile, sorry, or despicable person; one of opprobrious or reprehensible character; a mean or contemptible creature.⁸ He is only admitting to the racial thinking that consumed many abolitionists in the history of European Colonialism/Imperialism, that slavery is categorically wrong, but the African is absolutely inferior to the European. That is the same thinking that helped justify slavery initially.⁹

As a caveat Coleridge does use wretch interchangeably between himself and the Britain/Europeans and the Africans also from “Fears In Solitude,”

All change from change of constituted power;

As if a Government had been a robe,

On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged

Like fancy-points and fringes, with the orbe

Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach

A radical causation to a few

Poor drudges of chastising Providence,

Who borrow all their hues and qualities

From our own folly and rank wickedness.¹⁰

He refers to himself and the British as wretched, as despicable and reprehensible not as victims because they are not victims the British are the victimizers but he rightfully admits that they are wretched because they are victimizers and for nothing but want for pleasure and gross opulence.

I am not trying to diminish Coleridge’s work (as if I could and do not want to because his work is beautiful and brilliant) but I do want to point out that a lot of artists who consider themselves white will be revolutionary when it comes to causes that benefit them and their reality and environment. But when it comes to race they are actually very narrow-minded.

Despite Coleridge’s seemingly empathetic thoughts towards slavery and the treatment of Black slaves Samuel Taylor-Coleridge was still a white supremacist. As he wrote in an unpublished manuscript known as Degeneration and Race¹¹, “The two main points in a Theory of the Races, and which constitute the only sufficient ground of the Distinction between Race and Variety, are: first to determine at what state of degeneracy and under what imaginable circumstances a Color could become germinal, and consequently independent of circumstances? The second, in what connection the causes and conditions of hereditary color . . . may be supposed to start with the modification.”¹²

This is Coleridge echoing the theories of social scientists at the time, like ideas that ranged from the commonplace attribution of differences in skin pigmentation to variation in intensity of the sun’s rays in different regions of the earth, to Johann Blumenbach’s thesis¹³ that the diet of darker races caused them to have more carbon in their blood than did the light skinned races. He was relying directly upon two physiological problems, which preoccupied those of Coleridge’s scientific predecessors, and contemporaries who were investigating race. The work of Petrus Camper¹⁴, who directed attention to variation in what he called the “facial line” of the skulls of primates. By drawing a line from the forehead to the upper lip of apes and the races of man, Camper arrived at what he thought to be a significant measurement of profile differences: “Upon inclining the facial line forward, I obtained a head like that of the ancients; but when I inclined that line backwards, I produced a Negro physiognomy, and definitively the profile of an ape.”¹⁵ These are racialist theories that may have some validation for example, climate does seem to have something to do with the development of skin pigmentation, but they were only used to reinforce the racist thinking of the time that whites or the European are innately or inherently more intelligent and closer to the ideal human being than all other races. But more importantly that the African is the least intelligent and least ideal and that it is based upon nature.

He continues, “the question of Climate is itself difficult as important as it is possible that certain climates are inhabitable without physical degeneracy only by the animalizing changes brought about by moral degeneracy? (As the Black pigment of the Negro) and yet a far higher state of moral and intellectual energy in the central Race, with the scientific powers & resources of that far higher state, might enable the Masters of the world to reside unharmed on any part of their Estate.”¹⁶ Despite all the wretchedness and wickedness that he admits to he still deems the White race not only physically superior but morally superior to the Black race and that is why the Black race or any other races for that matter, can challenge the superiority of the white race. The races of the world especially the black race are innately inferior and do not possess the ability to gain the acumen to overthrow white power.

These are racialist theories that may have some validation, for example, climate does seem to have something to do with the development of skin pigmentation, but it was only being used by Coleridge and Camper to validate and to reinforce the already formed racist thinking of the society. Again, whites or the European are innately or inherently more intelligent and closer to the ideal human being than all other races and that the African is the least intelligent and least ideal and that it is based upon nature.

Furthermore, scientific racism tends to do its best to deny that the European cannot have a controlled environment because the dominion the European created necessitated that blacks are inferior. To prove that the African is inherently inferior the European could not produce a large enough sample of Africans born with the same advantages of the European created to challenge the inferiority thinking. If you create a society that ensures that people labeled as black is set at the bottom then to demean them for being at the bottom in hindsight seems absolutely foolish. The fact that these “brilliant” men would even consider that intelligent or ripe ground to come up with all these theories about the black’s ability to succeed in society, or display the ability of exceptionalism on a far greater scale, is almost entirely based upon environment; an environment that is being purposely hostile and restrictive to blacks.

Also, in his very phrasing of the problem of physiological variation he refers to “color becoming germinal” at some “state of degeneracy.” He is relating his racialist view, as a departure from the Classical Norm¹⁷  which he believes is best preserved in the white race, which was a very common thought process by scientists and in “intellectual” circles at the time. Coleridge believes that the white race is the original and pure race and that every other race is a degenerate version of the white race, evidenced by shade and other physical markers that were also perceived by many of the time as signs of inferiority. This view by Coleridge also gives more insight into how he uses the word “wretch” to describe Africans. Furthermore, this dehumanizes the black race, the black race is not just a social or ethnic other they are closer to another species than they are to the white race.

The last paragraph of “Degeneration and Race” is perhaps most symptomatic of Coleridge’s convoluted thinking, “Finally, the evidence of the Races cannot be denied; but I am convinced that a great deal more than what is or a great deal other, than the Truth is made out of the phenomenon which easily resolves itself into the different directions of degeneracy, and the permanence into the continuance of the moral Causes. These ceasing, intermarriage would remove the rest.” The “permanence” of non-white racial features is dependent on the “permanence” of non-white moral debility. Correct the latter and the former will disappear through intermarriage.¹⁸ This could be understood as Coleridge arguing that whiteness added to a degenerate race, lessens their degeneracy. This is not Coleridge becoming an advocate for miscegenation; he is only further highlighting the superiority of the white race. The white race as the master race does not degrade when “blended” it upgrades the other race.

This premise of a master race can be said to lead to the doctrine of the white man’s burden¹⁹ and the idea of ethical-moral progress is the duty of the white race, which enunciates the cultural assumptions of British Imperialism. Coleridge is not the founder of imperialistic and racist traditions as Thomas Jefferson and others centuries earlier adopted that title. It must be noted that despite my reading of “On the Wretched Lot of Slaves In the Isles of the West Indies” only hints of his ideas on race found their way into print while he was living.²⁰ But for Romanticists and others, including myself deeming his work as radical needs to be presented with the caveat that it is only radical to a society that benefited from Slavery and had yet to publicly debate its moral efficacy. It is not radical in terms of revolutionary because despite writings of Coleridge and other Romantics during a period of rampant revolution, the Romantics denied that revolution to those who allowed for internal factions of Europeans to have anything of value to fight for, the Africans.

FOOTNOTES

¹ Islam, Monirul. "Coleridge and Slavery's Spectres." International Journal of Language and Linguistics1, no. 2 (December 2014).

² Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and William Keach. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Complete Poems. London: Penguin Books, 1997.

      "On The Lot Of Slaves In The Western Indies

³ The American Colonization Society which supported the migration of free blacks to Africa.

⁴ Sherwood, Noble Henry. The Formation of the American Colonization Society. The Journal of Negro History. 1917.

^{5, 6} Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and William Keach. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Complete Poems. London: Penguin Books, 1997.

      "On The Lot Of Slaves In The Western Indies"

⁷ Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and William Keach. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Complete Poems. London: Penguin Books, 1997.

      "Fears In Solitude"

⁸ Oxford English Dictionary definition of Wretched.

⁹ It was often posited at the time that slavery was essential for the Africans survival as they are inherently inferior to the white race.

¹⁰  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and William Keach. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Complete Poems. London: Penguin Books, 1997.

      "Fears In Solitude"

¹¹ Many unpublished manuscripts were found after Coleridge’s death. It is difficult to get is official thoughts on race from these manuscripts but they give some insight. Most are housed in London’s British Museum

¹² From an unpublished manuscript by Samuel Taylor Coleridge known at the British Museum, posthumously labeled, Degeneration and Race

¹³ Famously divided humankind into five races in his Decas Craniorum. Based on characteristics of the skull.

¹⁴ Known for his theory of facial angles. He claimed that antique Greco-Roman statues presented an angle of 100°-95°, Europeans of 80°, 'Orientals' of 70°, Black people of 70° and the orangutan of 42–58°. He stated that, out of all races, Africans were most removed from the classical sense of ideal beauty.

¹⁵ Haeger, J. H. "Coleridge's Speculations on Race." Studies in Romanticism 13, no. 4

¹⁶ Haeger, J. H. "Coleridge's Speculations on Race." Studies in Romanticism 13, no. 4

¹⁷ The belief that Greek and Roman Statues constitute the perfect human form. The white race is supposedly closest to the perfect human form.

¹⁸ Haeger, J. H. "Coleridge's Speculations on Race." Studies in Romanticism 13, no. 4

¹⁹ The idea that as the superior race it is the moral duty of the white man to lift up the other races.

²⁰ Haeger, J. H. "Coleridge's Speculations on Race." Studies in Romanticism 13, no. 4