VICTORIAN POETRY. AN INTRODUCTION

Puttind aside an obscure literary terminology, hesitant in many ways, even in the thinking of the English experts, the reception of the Victorian poetry is symptomatic for its own historical and aesthetics condition. And when we refer to condition, we take into account either his lack of identity, or an identity with multiple faces, tried by a syncretism of artistic options which induces not only problems of literary history, but also problems of interpretation. Let's not forget that the Victorians are contemporary with the Romantic poets, the Parnassiens, the Symbolists, and the great French moderns. It seems that nothing from Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme comes to them. Unfailing "insularity"? Aesthetic premeditation or something else? The Victorian poets seem to be "immunized" aestheticlly nad culturally, against all that happens in the European literature, in the poetry of countries like France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia etc. Reading their poetry, you have the impression that they are inventing it. This is why the collocation "Victorian poetry" must be understood not only as a historical label, sending to the kingdom of queen Victoria, but also as an aesthetic distinction, a complementary value of the age's moving ideas. So, the "Victorian" qualifier does not overlap on the "Romantic" mark, as one expect to. The most important paradox of the age comes from the economical prosperity, from the great scientific discoveries and from the religious doubt promoted by the "High Criticism". An age of progress. These have created optimism and superiority, an unlimited hedonism, cinism, scepticism, but also a fatalist spirit, amplified by the translation of some masterpieces of the Oriental literature, especially Persian. All these in a culture in which Christianity tottered and the religious doubt taking into account some serious religious disputes - was growing in favour of science. So, the Victorians live in an age of great spiritual anguishes, in which the traditional institutions - social, political, religious - were seriously contested. They become stiff critics of their time and they want to establish a new gnosis of modern life.