0:00:02 > 0:00:06I'm going to take you on a journey into the human imagination...
0:00:08 > 0:00:09..back to a time
0:00:09 > 0:00:14when the values and ideas and dreams of the modern world were born.
0:00:18 > 0:00:25200 years ago, monarchy was falling to the power of people's revolutions.
0:00:25 > 0:00:32Industry and commerce were becoming the driving forces of existence
0:00:32 > 0:00:33and advances in science
0:00:33 > 0:00:38were changing the way life itself was understood.
0:00:38 > 0:00:42Artists all over the world were inspired
0:00:42 > 0:00:45by these times of dramatic change.
0:00:45 > 0:00:50In Britain, a group of poets and novelists pioneered
0:00:50 > 0:00:54an alternative way of living and of looking at the world.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58Among them were William Wordsworth,
0:00:58 > 0:01:00Mary Shelley
0:01:00 > 0:01:02and William Blake.
0:01:05 > 0:01:10The enduring power of their writing haunts us to this day,
0:01:10 > 0:01:14and inspires us still with visions of nature.
0:01:51 > 0:01:54This is the story of man's escape
0:01:54 > 0:01:59from the shackles of commerce and industry to the freedom of nature.
0:01:59 > 0:02:04At a time when the world was becoming increasingly mechanised,
0:02:04 > 0:02:09the Romantics sought an intense relationship with the natural world.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12In so doing, they would revolutionise
0:02:12 > 0:02:15our perception of life itself.
0:02:25 > 0:02:30In the 18th century, Britain was being devoured
0:02:30 > 0:02:33by the voracious demands of urbanisation.
0:02:35 > 0:02:37Towns were turning into cities.
0:02:37 > 0:02:42This was the age of industry and of manufacture.
0:02:42 > 0:02:45The pulse of life was becoming less human.
0:02:45 > 0:02:51The rhythms of nature and the body were being overtaken
0:02:51 > 0:02:54by an imposed system of synchronised time.
0:02:54 > 0:02:56Public clocks were dictating
0:02:56 > 0:03:00the daily lives and activities of people.
0:03:09 > 0:03:15The cities were engulfing everything, like huge machines of trade, industry and living.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18They were forcing order and discipline
0:03:18 > 0:03:20into the lives of their inhabitants.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24The home, the school and the workplace were run
0:03:24 > 0:03:26according to clock time
0:03:26 > 0:03:30and in obedience to strict rules of human conduct.
0:03:41 > 0:03:47In the midst of this great new metropolis lived a small boy
0:03:47 > 0:03:51who dreamed of a very different world.
0:03:56 > 0:04:02One day, in July 1765, he walked from Soho in London
0:04:02 > 0:04:07to the fields of Peckham Rye, just beyond the city.
0:04:09 > 0:04:15Lying on the grass, staring up at the light filtering through the trees,
0:04:15 > 0:04:17he experienced a vision.
0:04:24 > 0:04:30He saw the trees filled with angelic beings,
0:04:30 > 0:04:34their bright wings bespangling every bough, like stars.
0:04:38 > 0:04:42'To see a world in a grain of sand
0:04:42 > 0:04:45'And a heaven in a wild flower
0:04:46 > 0:04:49'Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
0:04:51 > 0:04:53'And eternity in an hour.'
0:04:54 > 0:04:59The boy's name was William Blake.
0:04:59 > 0:05:04Throughout his life, he never forgot his childhood vision.
0:05:04 > 0:05:09He always believed that it was a glimpse of an eternal world,
0:05:09 > 0:05:12far from the horrors of the city.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17The Romantics believed that spontaneous childhood visions
0:05:17 > 0:05:20were the source of adult inspiration.
0:05:20 > 0:05:26A child allowed to play and dream would become an imaginative adult.
0:05:26 > 0:05:31But childhood itself was being destroyed by the Industrial Age.
0:05:36 > 0:05:39A new workforce was emerging.
0:05:39 > 0:05:45Boys of between four and seven were sold into labour by their parents
0:05:45 > 0:05:48and sent to clean the city's chimneys.
0:05:48 > 0:05:53Many suffocated and most became deformed.
0:05:54 > 0:05:59William Blake was touched by the wretched lives of these children.
0:05:59 > 0:06:03He began to write simple rhymes
0:06:03 > 0:06:06that expressed the yearning for their redemption.
0:06:16 > 0:06:18'As Tom was a-sleeping.
0:06:20 > 0:06:22'he had such a sight!
0:06:22 > 0:06:28'That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned and Jack
0:06:30 > 0:06:33'Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
0:06:36 > 0:06:40'Then come by an angel, who had a bright key,
0:06:42 > 0:06:47'He opened the coffins, set them all free.'
0:06:47 > 0:06:51CHIDREN'S LAUGHTER
0:07:05 > 0:07:11'Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run,
0:07:19 > 0:07:24'And wash in a river and shine in the sun.'
0:07:46 > 0:07:50Blake's short rhymes about children
0:07:50 > 0:07:56became a collection of illuminated poems, entitled Songs of Innocence.
0:07:56 > 0:08:00They were inspired by the childhood years he spent
0:08:00 > 0:08:02with his young brother, Robert.
0:08:03 > 0:08:08'Sound the flute, now with mute, birth delight, day and night.'
0:08:08 > 0:08:09'Little boy, full of joy,
0:08:09 > 0:08:12'Little girl, sweet and small.
0:08:12 > 0:08:13'Cock does crow...'
0:08:13 > 0:08:16'The moon like flower In heaven's high bower,
0:08:16 > 0:08:18'With silent delight Sits and smiles...'
0:08:18 > 0:08:20'Little boy, full of joy,
0:08:20 > 0:08:21'Little girl, sweet and small
0:08:21 > 0:08:23'Cock does crow,so do you...'
0:08:23 > 0:08:27'Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress,
0:08:27 > 0:08:35'Prays to the human form divine, Love, mercy, pity, peace.'
0:08:44 > 0:08:49But in February 1787, Blake's own innocence was shattered
0:08:49 > 0:08:53when Robert was struck by an illness.
0:09:01 > 0:09:05In the upstairs room of their house at 28 Poland Street,
0:09:05 > 0:09:08Blake sat with him for two weeks,
0:09:08 > 0:09:13hardly sleeping, watching his brother's health decline.
0:09:20 > 0:09:23At the last, solemn moment of Robert's life,
0:09:23 > 0:09:29Blake saw his spirit rise from his body and ascend through the ceiling.
0:09:29 > 0:09:34Blake recollected that the spirit had been clapping its hands for joy.
0:09:34 > 0:09:40It was one of many visions of infinity that Blake would have throughout his life.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51Robert had joined the angels
0:09:51 > 0:09:56and the spirits of the chimney sweeps in a joyful eternity.
0:10:00 > 0:10:06But Blake himself would be obliged to find joy in the human world.
0:10:16 > 0:10:17After Robert's death,
0:10:17 > 0:10:22Blake moved over the river to the leafy outskirts of London.
0:10:22 > 0:10:26He lived in Hercules Road in Lambeth,
0:10:26 > 0:10:30a place where he tried to build himself a new life
0:10:30 > 0:10:34free from the corruption of the city.
0:10:34 > 0:10:40But one morning, he looked from his window and was horrified.
0:11:04 > 0:11:08It was a sight that intensely angered Blake.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12He demanded that the boy be set free instantly.
0:11:12 > 0:11:14It seemed intolerable to him
0:11:14 > 0:11:20that any child, any man, should be subjected to such miseries.
0:11:21 > 0:11:25The image was at odds with everything Blake believed
0:11:25 > 0:11:28about the spiritual purity of childhood.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31His anger entered his poetry.
0:11:31 > 0:11:36He began to write a bleak companion to his Songs of Innocence,
0:11:36 > 0:11:39Songs of Experience.
0:11:39 > 0:11:44In these poems, there would be no redemption for the children.
0:11:50 > 0:11:53'The weeping child could not be heard,
0:11:53 > 0:11:57'The weeping parents wept in vain,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00'They'd strip'd him to his little shirt
0:12:00 > 0:12:02'And bound him in an iron chain,
0:12:02 > 0:12:07'And burned him in a holy place, Where many had been burned before,
0:12:07 > 0:12:11'The weeping parents wept in vain,
0:12:11 > 0:12:16'Are such things done on Albion's shore?'
0:12:19 > 0:12:24Blake feared for the future lives of England's children.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30His was one of the first voices raised
0:12:30 > 0:12:34to warn against the destructive potential
0:12:34 > 0:12:36of the Industrial Revolution.
0:12:42 > 0:12:46'It turns that which is soul and life
0:12:46 > 0:12:50'into a mill, a machine.'
0:12:54 > 0:13:00Blake foresaw a world where people would be engaged in endless toil,
0:13:00 > 0:13:05their lives disfigured by the laws of the factory
0:13:05 > 0:13:07and the industrial system.
0:13:07 > 0:13:11He imagined seeing the world through THEIR eyes.
0:13:16 > 0:13:21'They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.
0:13:23 > 0:13:28'And they inclosed my infinite brain into a narrow circle.
0:13:39 > 0:13:46'One command, one joy, one desire,
0:13:46 > 0:13:53'One curse, one weight, one measure,
0:13:55 > 0:14:03'One king, one god, one law.'
0:14:16 > 0:14:21Just a short walk from Blake's house in Lambeth, by the Thames,
0:14:21 > 0:14:25where now stands an office building, stood Albion Mill.
0:14:25 > 0:14:29It was the first factory in London,
0:14:29 > 0:14:34designed to produce some 6,000 bushels of flour each week.
0:14:35 > 0:14:40For Blake, the repetitive production lines of these huge new mills
0:14:40 > 0:14:44cast human identity into uniform moulds,
0:14:44 > 0:14:47endlessly repeatable.
0:14:47 > 0:14:52Spirituality and imagination were denied or forgotten.
0:14:52 > 0:14:57Blake referred to Satan as "the miller of eternity".
0:15:02 > 0:15:04In one of his poems,
0:15:04 > 0:15:10Satan's father congratulates his son on his evil creations.
0:15:16 > 0:15:22'Oh, Satan, my youngest-born,
0:15:22 > 0:15:28'to mortals, thy mills seem everything.'
0:15:31 > 0:15:34Blake expressed his fury
0:15:34 > 0:15:40in words that have become the most familiar lines of English poetry.
0:15:41 > 0:15:46'And did those feet in ancient time
0:15:46 > 0:15:48'walk upon England's
0:15:48 > 0:15:51'mountains green?
0:15:54 > 0:15:59'And was the holy Lamb of God
0:15:59 > 0:16:03'On England's pleasant pastures seen?'
0:16:05 > 0:16:12William Blake's most famous lines are now sung as Jerusalem,
0:16:12 > 0:16:15an unofficial national anthem.
0:16:15 > 0:16:19But they were written as a poem of radical protest
0:16:19 > 0:16:22against the corruption of industry and commerce,
0:16:22 > 0:16:30a manifesto for the Romantic poet horrified by the darkness descending upon England.
0:16:35 > 0:16:39'And did the countenance divine
0:16:39 > 0:16:45'Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
0:16:49 > 0:16:56'And was Jerusalem builded here
0:16:56 > 0:17:02'among these dark, satanic mills?'
0:17:32 > 0:17:38One evening in March 1791, Albion Mill caught fire.
0:17:38 > 0:17:43Blake would have seen the flames rising above the city,
0:17:43 > 0:17:46and he might have rejoiced with the millers
0:17:46 > 0:17:49who celebrated on Blackfriars Bridge.
0:17:49 > 0:17:52The factory was destroyed
0:17:52 > 0:17:54and remained a blackened and empty shell
0:17:54 > 0:17:57until its demolition in 1809.
0:17:57 > 0:18:01Blake passed it every time he walked into the city,
0:18:01 > 0:18:06a symbol of hope in an increasingly mechanised world.
0:18:15 > 0:18:20Anyone who has ever yearned for a simple life,
0:18:20 > 0:18:24free from the constraints of modern society,
0:18:24 > 0:18:26owes a debt to William Blake.
0:18:47 > 0:18:51The work of William Blake was not well known
0:18:51 > 0:18:53to the other Romantic poets,
0:18:53 > 0:18:58but one of them reacted to the Industrial Revolution in the same way.
0:18:58 > 0:19:03He escaped the city, in order to preserve the innocence of his child.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11One day, in the autumn of 1796,
0:19:11 > 0:19:16a young poet called Samuel Taylor Coleridge was rushing home
0:19:16 > 0:19:18from Birmingham to Bristol.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22He had received unexpected news of the premature birth of his son
0:19:22 > 0:19:26and he wrote a poem about his feelings of anticipation.
0:19:26 > 0:19:32His instinctive emotions could be those of any modern father.
0:19:34 > 0:19:38'Ah me! before the Eternal Sire I brought
0:19:38 > 0:19:42'Th' unquiet silence of confused thought
0:19:42 > 0:19:45'And shapeless feelings. My o'erwhelmed heart
0:19:45 > 0:19:50'Trembled, and vacant tears stream'd down my face.'
0:19:54 > 0:20:00This emotional response of a father to the birth of his child
0:20:00 > 0:20:03might seem unexceptional today,
0:20:03 > 0:20:07but, for the time, these were radical sentiments.
0:20:32 > 0:20:36On becoming a parent, Coleridge's life completely changed.
0:20:36 > 0:20:41He gave up his job as a travelling preacher and moved away from the city
0:20:41 > 0:20:47to begin a rustic scheme of life here in the Quantock Hills.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51In doing so, he was to redefine the notion of parenthood,
0:20:51 > 0:20:53and return the child to nature.
0:20:55 > 0:21:00'I am anxious that my children should be bred up from the earliest infancy
0:21:00 > 0:21:02'in the simplicity of peasants.
0:21:02 > 0:21:04'Their food, drink and habits
0:21:04 > 0:21:06'completely rustic.'
0:21:07 > 0:21:11The time Coleridge spent here in Somerset
0:21:11 > 0:21:14was the happiest in his life.
0:21:14 > 0:21:18As a child, he was sent away to school in London
0:21:18 > 0:21:21and detested the experience.
0:21:21 > 0:21:26He wanted his son to be schooled by nature.
0:21:37 > 0:21:42One frosty night in 1798, he wrote to his son
0:21:42 > 0:21:47in celebration of the new, Romantic vision of childhood.
0:21:51 > 0:21:52'I was reared
0:21:52 > 0:21:56'in the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim.
0:21:57 > 0:21:59'But thou, my babe!
0:21:59 > 0:22:01'shalt wander like a breeze
0:22:01 > 0:22:04'By lakes and sandy shores,
0:22:04 > 0:22:08'Beneath the crags of ancient mountains.
0:22:08 > 0:22:09'So shall thou see and hear
0:22:09 > 0:22:15'the lovely shapes and sounds intelligible of that eternal language.'
0:22:24 > 0:22:30For the Romantic poets, childhood was inseparable from nature.
0:22:30 > 0:22:31They believed
0:22:31 > 0:22:35that our earliest lives are the source of our humanity.
0:22:50 > 0:22:52One friend of Coleridge had experienced nature
0:22:52 > 0:22:55from his earliest years.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58He grew up in the Lake District,
0:22:58 > 0:23:03and was profoundly influenced by the power of its landscape.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08On a clear night in the early 1780s,
0:23:08 > 0:23:11a young boy was returning home from school
0:23:11 > 0:23:14along the shores of Ullswater.
0:23:14 > 0:23:22A moment of madness or inspiration prompted him to steal a boat and row out onto the lake.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26This experience would define the course of his life.
0:23:26 > 0:23:30The young boy was called William Wordsworth.
0:23:36 > 0:23:40Years later, the memory of this childhood experience
0:23:40 > 0:23:45was an inspiration for one of his greatest poems.
0:23:47 > 0:23:50'I dipped my oar into the silent lake,
0:23:50 > 0:23:53'and as I rose upon the stroke,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56'my boat went heaving through the water
0:23:56 > 0:23:58'like a swan.
0:24:03 > 0:24:07'When, from behind that craggy steep,
0:24:07 > 0:24:11'a huge cliff
0:24:11 > 0:24:15'as if with voluntary power instinct
0:24:15 > 0:24:17'upreared its head.'
0:24:23 > 0:24:25RED-THROATED DIVERS CALL
0:24:27 > 0:24:32The Lake District was the place where Wordsworth always felt most at home.
0:24:34 > 0:24:41But it was also the place where his childhood happiness had been shattered.
0:24:44 > 0:24:48His mother died when he was only seven,
0:24:48 > 0:24:53and his beloved sister Dorothy had been sent away
0:24:53 > 0:24:55to live with relatives.
0:25:08 > 0:25:11And then, when Wordsworth was 13,
0:25:11 > 0:25:14his father lost his way on the Lakeland Fells
0:25:14 > 0:25:19and was forced to spend the night there, exposed to the elements.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28When he came home, he fell ill, and died a few days later.
0:25:33 > 0:25:38As the young Wordsworth sat alone in the boat on Ullswater,
0:25:38 > 0:25:42he too was at the mercy of nature.
0:25:49 > 0:25:51'I struck and struck again...
0:25:54 > 0:25:56'..Growing still in stature
0:25:56 > 0:25:57'the huge cliff rose up
0:25:57 > 0:25:59'Between me and the stars,
0:25:59 > 0:26:04'And still, with measured motion, Like a living thing, strode after me.
0:26:08 > 0:26:11'With trembling hands, I turned...
0:26:13 > 0:26:18'..And through the silent water Stole my way back
0:26:18 > 0:26:20'To the cavern of the willow tree.'
0:26:28 > 0:26:33Wordsworth's terror had a profound impact on his imagination.
0:26:36 > 0:26:42For him, this strange experience literally brought nature to life.
0:26:46 > 0:26:51'Huge and mighty forms That do not live like living men,
0:26:51 > 0:26:57'Moved slowly through my mind by day,
0:26:57 > 0:27:00'And were the trouble of my dreams.'
0:27:19 > 0:27:22In the absence of parents,
0:27:22 > 0:27:27Wordsworth was being educated by the natural forces all around him.
0:27:27 > 0:27:31At the age of 20, he travelled to the Alps.
0:28:15 > 0:28:19This was not a journey to a specific place.
0:28:19 > 0:28:22This expedition had quite a different goal.
0:28:22 > 0:28:27Instead, Wordsworth was searching for an emotion.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31His youthful imagination craved solitude, danger,
0:28:31 > 0:28:33an overwhelming experience.
0:28:33 > 0:28:36By the standards of his time,
0:28:36 > 0:28:40his was a strange and even incomprehensible journey.
0:28:48 > 0:28:53Wordsworth travelled across some of the most perilous terrain in the world.
0:28:54 > 0:28:57One slip might have brought destruction.
0:28:59 > 0:29:02But he felt alive.
0:29:30 > 0:29:32One night, he found himself
0:29:32 > 0:29:37in exactly the same conditions that had killed his father.
0:29:37 > 0:29:43But, for Wordsworth, the experience of being trapped in the mountains in the dark
0:29:43 > 0:29:48was also one of awe - and pleasure.
0:29:51 > 0:29:53'The cry of unknown birds,
0:29:53 > 0:29:57'The mountains more by darkness visible
0:29:57 > 0:30:00'And their own size, than any outward light.'
0:30:00 > 0:30:02RED-THROATED DIVER CALLS
0:30:02 > 0:30:06'The breathless wilderness of clouds, the clock'
0:30:06 > 0:30:08'That told, with unintelligible voice,
0:30:08 > 0:30:12'The widely parted hours, the noise of streams
0:30:12 > 0:30:17'And sometimes rustling motions nigh at hand
0:30:17 > 0:30:21'Which did not leave us free from personal fear.'
0:30:21 > 0:30:23CREATURE HOWLS
0:30:44 > 0:30:48The further he travelled through the Alps,
0:30:48 > 0:30:52the closer he came to the source of his inspiration.
0:30:55 > 0:30:59Throughout the journey, he wrote letters to his sister.
0:31:04 > 0:31:06'Dear Dorothy,
0:31:07 > 0:31:10'my spirits have been kept
0:31:10 > 0:31:13'in a perpetual hurry of delight
0:31:13 > 0:31:16'by the almost uninterrupted
0:31:16 > 0:31:21'succession of beautiful objects which have passed before my eyes.
0:31:24 > 0:31:29'The immeasurable height of woods decaying,
0:31:29 > 0:31:31'never to be decayed.
0:31:33 > 0:31:37'The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
0:31:37 > 0:31:41'and everywhere along the hollow rent,
0:31:41 > 0:31:44'winds, thwarting winds
0:31:44 > 0:31:47'bewildered and forlorn.
0:31:48 > 0:31:54'The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky.'
0:32:07 > 0:32:11Wordsworth was beginning to recognise
0:32:11 > 0:32:15that the natural world was something more than a retreat
0:32:15 > 0:32:18from private pain and disappointment.
0:32:18 > 0:32:22It was the power at the heart of his imagination,
0:32:22 > 0:32:25the Romantic imagination.
0:32:28 > 0:32:32It could render him small and insignificant,
0:32:32 > 0:32:36yet it could also connect him with eternity.
0:32:40 > 0:32:46'I held unconscious intercourse with beauty old as creation.'
0:33:16 > 0:33:19When Wordsworth returned to England,
0:33:19 > 0:33:22he was reunited with his sister Dorothy.
0:33:24 > 0:33:27They were rarely ever separated again.
0:33:40 > 0:33:45In 1798, they went on a walking tour of the Wye Valley.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54There, they visited Tintern Abbey.
0:33:58 > 0:34:03For Wordsworth, the abbey was a reminder of a more harmonious,
0:34:03 > 0:34:05pre-industrial past.
0:34:15 > 0:34:18It was a place of spirits,
0:34:18 > 0:34:21of exultant experience
0:34:21 > 0:34:23and of inspiration.
0:34:25 > 0:34:27DOVES COO
0:34:29 > 0:34:35The abbey, consumed by nature, was a powerful Romantic metaphor.
0:34:35 > 0:34:39Nature was ultimately greater than man.
0:34:39 > 0:34:43The ruined building in its beautiful setting
0:34:43 > 0:34:47was an image both of serenity and of desolation.
0:34:52 > 0:34:56The Romantics were half in love with ruins.
0:34:56 > 0:35:01They were the symbols of ancient time - forgotten and decayed -
0:35:01 > 0:35:06that cast their shadows over the new, mechanical world
0:35:06 > 0:35:09of the Industrial Revolution.
0:35:09 > 0:35:13For Wordsworth, this was a moment out of time.
0:35:15 > 0:35:19It allowed him to look back upon the course of his life
0:35:19 > 0:35:26and grasp the evolution of his relationship with nature.
0:35:26 > 0:35:32'The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion,
0:35:32 > 0:35:37' The tall rock, the mountain and the deep, gloomy wood,
0:35:37 > 0:35:41'Their colours and their forms
0:35:41 > 0:35:49'To me were then an appetite - a feeling and a love.'
0:36:00 > 0:36:06His response was central to the Romantic view of the world
0:36:06 > 0:36:08that endures to this day.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24'I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour
0:36:24 > 0:36:26'Of thoughtless youth,
0:36:26 > 0:36:29'but hearing oftentimes
0:36:29 > 0:36:33'The still, sad music of humanity...'
0:36:39 > 0:36:42Wordsworth experienced something
0:36:42 > 0:36:45with which many of us can now identify
0:36:45 > 0:36:49in our modern pilgrimages to nature.
0:37:04 > 0:37:06'I have felt
0:37:06 > 0:37:08'A presence that disturbs me with the joy
0:37:08 > 0:37:13'Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
0:37:13 > 0:37:17'Of something far more deeply interfused,
0:37:17 > 0:37:21'Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns...'
0:37:30 > 0:37:34The Romantics were the first to express
0:37:34 > 0:37:38a yearning for the sublime in nature.
0:37:38 > 0:37:43We have been searching for the same sublime ever since.
0:37:43 > 0:37:48The way we relish a sunset is a LEARNED experience,
0:37:48 > 0:37:52one we learned from the Romantics.
0:38:01 > 0:38:03The feeling that Wordsworth expresses
0:38:03 > 0:38:06is beyond rational understanding.
0:38:06 > 0:38:08It is a feeling of the sublime,
0:38:08 > 0:38:12of all the grandeur and divinity in the natural world.
0:38:12 > 0:38:18It is a state of being that transcends the mundane and mechanical world in which we live.
0:38:18 > 0:38:23For the Romantics, it represented the longing to be free.
0:38:44 > 0:38:48But the sublime was more than just the beauty of a sunset,
0:38:48 > 0:38:51it was about awe and terror.
0:38:53 > 0:38:57The natural world was a dangerous place -
0:38:57 > 0:39:02without convention, society or God.
0:39:02 > 0:39:07The sublime is man lost in the immensity of nature.
0:39:31 > 0:39:35The key to the sublime was the ability to lose yourself,
0:39:35 > 0:39:41the experience of having no horizons, no sense of confinement.
0:39:45 > 0:39:49On a summer's day at the turn of the 19th century,
0:39:49 > 0:39:55a young boy named John Clare set out from the Northamptonshire village of Helpstone
0:39:55 > 0:39:57to walk to the end of the world.
0:40:06 > 0:40:09Clare was the son of an agricultural labourer.
0:40:09 > 0:40:14He was in love with the freedom that the natural world afforded him,
0:40:14 > 0:40:19so he set off, determined to experience everything the world had to offer.
0:40:19 > 0:40:23'To the world's end I thought I'd go,
0:40:23 > 0:40:26'And o'er the brink just peep a-down
0:40:26 > 0:40:29'To see the mighty depths below...'
0:40:32 > 0:40:34He was missing
0:40:34 > 0:40:35for a day and an evening.
0:40:35 > 0:40:39His parents were afraid that he had been killed.
0:40:39 > 0:40:42The whole village began the search for him.
0:40:42 > 0:40:45But the boy was oblivious,
0:40:45 > 0:40:49as if entranced by his own dreams of freedom.
0:40:54 > 0:40:57'I paused to wonder where I'd got,
0:40:58 > 0:41:01'Thought I'd got beyond the sand.
0:41:03 > 0:41:05'Seemed to rise another way,
0:41:07 > 0:41:10'The very world's end seemed near.
0:41:12 > 0:41:17'So, back I turn for very fear,
0:41:19 > 0:41:23'With eager haste, and wonderstruck,
0:41:23 > 0:41:26'pursued as by a dreaded spell...
0:41:30 > 0:41:32'..'til home.'
0:41:42 > 0:41:44Clare grew up to be a poet.
0:41:44 > 0:41:49This village and the countryside around it were his inspiration.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55He lived here and, from the age of 13,
0:41:55 > 0:41:59worked in the Bluebell Inn next door.
0:42:11 > 0:42:14'It was a good place.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16'They treated me more like a son than a servant.
0:42:18 > 0:42:22'I believe I may say that this place
0:42:22 > 0:42:25'was the nursery for my rhymes.'
0:42:28 > 0:42:33You can imagine what it was like in John Clare's days, though, can't you?
0:42:33 > 0:42:38Clare wrote poems here about the things he knew best -
0:42:38 > 0:42:39his childhood
0:42:39 > 0:42:43and the beauty of the open countryside.
0:42:47 > 0:42:49'The landscape stretching view
0:42:49 > 0:42:53'That opens wide with dribbling brooks
0:42:53 > 0:42:55'and rivers wide aflood.
0:42:56 > 0:42:59'And hills and vales and darksome lou'ring woods,
0:42:59 > 0:43:04'With grains of varied hues and grasses pied.
0:43:04 > 0:43:10'All these with hundreds more far off and near approach my sight,
0:43:10 > 0:43:13'And please to such excess
0:43:13 > 0:43:18'That language fails the pleasure to express.'
0:43:31 > 0:43:36But the countryside he knew and loved was about to be transformed.
0:43:40 > 0:43:45In the latter half of the 18th and in the early 19th century,
0:43:45 > 0:43:49a series of Enclosure Acts was passed by Parliament
0:43:49 > 0:43:53in order to maximise the profit derived from the earth.
0:43:57 > 0:44:02The common land was fenced off for agricultural use.
0:44:09 > 0:44:13The English countryside was being exploited
0:44:13 > 0:44:17for the sake of ever-expanding commerce.
0:44:17 > 0:44:20In 1809, a Parliamentary Act was passed
0:44:20 > 0:44:26enclosing all the lands of John Clare's immediate neighbourhood.
0:44:29 > 0:44:31As the fields were enclosed,
0:44:31 > 0:44:36William Blake's prophetic vision of the industrial revolution
0:44:36 > 0:44:39had reached the natural world itself,
0:44:39 > 0:44:43creating barriers to freedom that still exist.
0:44:47 > 0:44:52John Clare could no longer wander to the ends of the earth.
0:44:52 > 0:44:54He found himself confined
0:44:54 > 0:44:59in the very place that he had once felt most free...
0:45:00 > 0:45:04..and it sent him spiralling into madness.
0:45:07 > 0:45:11'Cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane,
0:45:11 > 0:45:14'With its hollow trees like pulpits
0:45:14 > 0:45:16'I shall never see again.
0:45:16 > 0:45:20'Inclosure, like a Bounaparte let not a thing remain
0:45:20 > 0:45:24'It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill,
0:45:24 > 0:45:28'And hung the moles for traitors - Though the brook is running still,
0:45:28 > 0:45:30'It runs a naked brook
0:45:30 > 0:45:33'cold and chill...'
0:45:38 > 0:45:41John Clare spent the last 24 years of his life
0:45:41 > 0:45:46enclosed within the walls of a lunatic asylum.
0:45:46 > 0:45:54His doctor noted that his insanity was preceded by "years addicted to poetical prosing".
0:45:54 > 0:45:58He was a true, if neglected, Romantic.
0:45:58 > 0:46:00His poetry describes an England
0:46:00 > 0:46:03where the freedom of nature had been curtailed
0:46:03 > 0:46:06by the forces of profit and progress.
0:46:16 > 0:46:19With the Enclosure Acts,
0:46:19 > 0:46:25freedom, and the ability to experience the true power of nature
0:46:25 > 0:46:27seemed to have been all but eliminated.
0:46:37 > 0:46:41Then, on the 12th of April 1815,
0:46:41 > 0:46:47Mount Tambora in Indonesia blew apart.
0:46:55 > 0:47:02This was the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history.
0:47:03 > 0:47:06Beauty and wrath combined.
0:47:17 > 0:47:22With the eruption, a million and a half tons of dust were ejected
0:47:22 > 0:47:25into the upper atmosphere.
0:47:27 > 0:47:31The vegetation on nearby islands perished
0:47:31 > 0:47:37and 92,000 people would die as a direct consequence.
0:47:39 > 0:47:44Tambora's volcanic cloud lowered global temperatures
0:47:44 > 0:47:47by as much as three degrees centigrade.
0:47:47 > 0:47:50A year after the eruption,
0:47:50 > 0:47:55the temperature in the Northern hHemisphere plummeted during the summer months.
0:47:57 > 0:48:001816 was known as "the year without a summer."
0:48:01 > 0:48:08One young poet saw the darkness as the bringer of apocalypse.
0:48:10 > 0:48:16'I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
0:48:16 > 0:48:21'The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
0:48:21 > 0:48:25'Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
0:48:25 > 0:48:29'Rayless, and pathless,
0:48:29 > 0:48:32'and the icy earth
0:48:32 > 0:48:37'Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air,
0:48:38 > 0:48:46'Morn came and went - and came, and brought no day,
0:48:46 > 0:48:49'And men forgot their passions in the dread
0:48:49 > 0:48:53'Of this their desolation...
0:48:56 > 0:49:02'..The world was void, The populous and the powerful -
0:49:02 > 0:49:04'was a lump,
0:49:04 > 0:49:10'Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless -
0:49:10 > 0:49:16'A lump of death - a chaos of hard clay.'
0:49:16 > 0:49:18THUNDER RUMBLES
0:49:18 > 0:49:23'The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
0:49:23 > 0:49:29'And nothing stirred within their silent depths...'
0:49:35 > 0:49:40With the explosion of Tambora, it was as if nature had retaliated
0:49:40 > 0:49:47against all those who had tried to tame, predict or influence it.
0:49:47 > 0:49:49The Industrial Revolution,
0:49:49 > 0:49:55and the remorseless advance of science and technology that accompanied it,
0:49:55 > 0:49:58were brought into question.
0:49:58 > 0:50:03The "year without a summer" was to change the course of art
0:50:03 > 0:50:04and of science.
0:50:04 > 0:50:09The fear of darkness, the fear of nature going awry,
0:50:09 > 0:50:13aroused a new generation of young Romantic poets.
0:50:13 > 0:50:17Their work presented awful visions of the natural world
0:50:17 > 0:50:22and would condemn those who believed that they could control nature.
0:50:26 > 0:50:30This new generation of Romantics would meet
0:50:30 > 0:50:33at the home of Lord Byron, the Villa Diodati
0:50:33 > 0:50:37on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45These poets were rebelling against the earlier generation of Romantics,
0:50:45 > 0:50:50who seemed to have become conservative and reactionary.
0:50:50 > 0:50:54Byron even referred to Wordsworth as "Turdsworth",
0:50:54 > 0:50:59and called his poetry "puerile and namby-pamby".
0:51:01 > 0:51:04'I must think less wildly.
0:51:04 > 0:51:05'I have thought Too long
0:51:05 > 0:51:10'and darkly till my brain became
0:51:10 > 0:51:15'A whirling gulf of fantasy and flame...'
0:51:18 > 0:51:22During that dark summer at the Villa Diodati,
0:51:22 > 0:51:27the thunderstorms were the only source of natural light.
0:51:27 > 0:51:30The guests rarely left the house.
0:51:30 > 0:51:38This would be the setting for the creation of one of the most original novels in the English language.
0:51:38 > 0:51:44Among Byron's guests was a young woman named Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,
0:51:44 > 0:51:49lover of his friend, the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
0:51:49 > 0:51:54This 18-year-old was the daughter of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
0:51:54 > 0:51:58and the philosopher William Godwin.
0:52:02 > 0:52:07Throughout her life, she had been surrounded by intellectuals
0:52:07 > 0:52:09and radical ideas.
0:52:13 > 0:52:18'Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley
0:52:18 > 0:52:22'to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener.
0:52:24 > 0:52:27'They talked of the principles of life,
0:52:27 > 0:52:32'and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered.
0:52:35 > 0:52:37'Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated.
0:52:39 > 0:52:44'Perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured...
0:52:46 > 0:52:47'..brought together,
0:52:49 > 0:52:52'and endured with vital warmth.'
0:52:56 > 0:53:00When Mary went to bed that night, she could not sleep.
0:53:00 > 0:53:06As a young girl, she had heard tales of experiments with electricity.
0:53:06 > 0:53:11It was a force that had always enchanted her.
0:53:11 > 0:53:15She had a nightmarish vision.
0:53:15 > 0:53:19'I saw - with shut eyes
0:53:19 > 0:53:22'but acute mental vision -
0:53:22 > 0:53:25'I saw the pale student
0:53:25 > 0:53:29'of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.
0:53:31 > 0:53:38'I saw the hideous phantasm of a man...stretched out
0:53:38 > 0:53:42'and then - on the working of some powerful engine -
0:53:42 > 0:53:44'show signs of life.'
0:53:48 > 0:53:53The result of Mary's dream was the greatest of all horror stories
0:53:53 > 0:53:56written in English, Frankenstein.
0:53:56 > 0:54:03This fable of a young Genovese student
0:54:03 > 0:54:09obsessed with the principles of occult science and the making of new life
0:54:09 > 0:54:12is a great hymn to the Romantic ideal.
0:54:14 > 0:54:18'With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony,
0:54:18 > 0:54:24'I collected the instruments of life around me,
0:54:24 > 0:54:29'that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.
0:54:29 > 0:54:32'By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light,
0:54:32 > 0:54:36'I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.
0:54:36 > 0:54:38'It breathed hard...
0:54:41 > 0:54:45'..and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.'
0:54:47 > 0:54:53The creature, spurned by the world, roams the vast Mer De Glace
0:54:53 > 0:54:55in the Vale of Chamonix -
0:54:55 > 0:54:58just like his Romantic forebearers.
0:55:01 > 0:55:04There he confronts his maker.
0:55:07 > 0:55:11'Hateful day when I received life.
0:55:11 > 0:55:14'The cursed creator!
0:55:14 > 0:55:17'Why did you form a monster
0:55:17 > 0:55:21'so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?
0:55:21 > 0:55:27'God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring after His own image,
0:55:27 > 0:55:30'but my form is a filthy type of yours,
0:55:30 > 0:55:35'more horrid even from the very resemblance.
0:55:35 > 0:55:40'Satan had his companions, fellow devils to admire and encourage him,
0:55:40 > 0:55:43'but I am solitary and abhorred.'
0:55:53 > 0:55:57Frankenstein is a prophecy that science might be misused
0:55:57 > 0:56:02by those who wish to alter or tamper with nature.
0:56:03 > 0:56:05The novel's frightful horror
0:56:05 > 0:56:10is the dark reflection of the Romantic sublime.
0:56:14 > 0:56:20Its message was simple yet powerful -
0:56:20 > 0:56:26respect and revere nature, for it has the power to destroy you. Science alone is not enough.
0:56:26 > 0:56:31It is a warning many people are repeating to this day.
0:56:42 > 0:56:45Everyone who seeks peace by a river,
0:56:45 > 0:56:52upon a mountain or upon a beach is heir to the Romantics,
0:56:52 > 0:56:56a beneficiary of their visionary imagination.
0:56:56 > 0:57:01Anyone who looks upon nature and thinks about man's place within it
0:57:01 > 0:57:05owes a profound debt to the Romantics.
0:57:05 > 0:57:10For when they looked at nature, they were also looking into their souls.
0:57:10 > 0:57:16Man himself contained all the terrors and secrets of the sublime.
0:57:51 > 0:57:54Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:57:54 > 0:57:57E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk