A Sonnet-to-Science by Edgar Allan Poe - Essay Example

Romanticism believed in sustaining the environment and each flora and fauna in it as it is. For, its members were lovers of nature. They always yelled to return to a purer and innocent state of nature as they believed the modern society would corrupt the intrinsic integrity in the minds of human beings. Edgar Allan Poe lived when industrial revolution had its culmination in Britain and it was about to spread over to the eastern parts of the United States. In this piece of work he depicts the background of the artistic problems of emerging America.

Here he has endeavored to enlist the contradiction between his imagination and the reality of science as it was emerging into a full-fledged stream. The poet calls science as the daughter of time, for, man had started his discoveries and inventions ever since time immemorial. He is worried that science has the magical power to change everything. The world we see today will have changed its face tomorrow on the onslaught of science and science will have its logical explanation for it. But, science just doesn’t have an explanation for changing a poet’s mind.. Good piece of romantic writing and poems are not born on a single day.

They are inseminated in the hearts of the writer on not just an impulse. They are the result of hard work and tremendous thoughts. The pain that he suffered in delivering them is unimaginable that only poets and people with high aesthetic sense can understand it. As for the poets the hard reality of science is indigestible, for, their minds are inclined to the beauty of the nature and everything they want is a free mind that can float over the magnificent creatures in nature (“Review on Sonnet”).

So, they never wish anything to change the ravishing beauty of nature. He criticizes science for dominating the minds of people and not allowing them to give room for creativity and imagination. It is correct that the advent of science and technology has changed the very shape of the world. Industrial revolution might have made man more selfish and led him to consumerism- a state of mind. But, still I can’t find answer to the poet’s concerns. I have never heard that science challenged literature somewhere.

The over excitement of the world for highly advanced machineries and equipments has brought many annoyance to the environment. However, how they affect the imagination and creativity of the poet is a question that may not have a precise answer (“Sonnet-to-Science analyses”). Everything I want to say is that myths and science are entirely different. While one does with imagination, the other is after reality. So, treat them as they are. A good combination of these two can produce a better imagination and creativity than Poe envisaged.

Moreover, he might have had a belief that science would not give birth to skillful writers as people are not prone to think