romanticism amys in red tread lightly 160830 ... tender square slowly, i’ve been chipping away at my 1986 copy of the norton anthology of poetry. i’m nearly half-way finished; 600 pages in, 600 to go. recently, i stumbled my way into something i never thought i’d receive; i found kindred souls in those pages: the men of the romantic period—william blake, william wordsworth, samuel taylor coleridge and john keats—created poems that stir something so infinite inside me i can’t adequately express it through writing or speech. i read their words aloud and my soul is imbued with a sacred longing for light. i didn’t realize these poets were connected as i read them; the anthology does not group poets by artistic movement, but rather by century. i didn’t realize i was drawn to something so particular until i looked up coleridge’s bio and found the thread to romanticism and a rabbit hole to all the other poet’s whose work i had dogeared. from wikipedia: “romanticism (also known as the romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. it was partly a reaction to the industrial revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the age of enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity.” what are the qualities that comprise romanticism? again, from wikipedia: “the nature of romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. the importance the romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the german painter caspar david friedrich, ‘the artist’s feeling is his law.’ for william wordsworth, poetry should begin as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,’ which the poet then ‘recollect[s] in tranquility,’ evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can then mold into art. “to express these feelings, it was considered that content of art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from ‘artificial’ rules dictating what a work should consist of. samuel taylor coleridge and others believed there were natural laws the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone… “not essential to romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature. this particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. in contrast to the usually very social art of the enlightenment, romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to believe a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy. romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. so, in literature, ‘much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves.’ “according to isaiah berlin, romanticism embodied ‘a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals.’” i recognize so much of myself and my writing style, or what i am attempting to reach for in all this seeking, that i am stunned to know that it has a name, a direction that i can keep striving toward. 211010 ... unhinged still my favorite era of so much art, especially classical music dvorak after my grandma died i played the first violin part of the second movement of his american quartet with my favorite youtube video (how i play quartets now since i no longer have any friends that play the cello here) tears rolling down my face like the first time i heard the movement live in milwaukee all those years ago at the chamber music festival dvorak my historical brother in musical longing 211010 ... tender_square in reading the essay “on sentimentality” by mary ruefle, she writes that wordsworth’s famous quote is often written out of context, and it appears in the wikipedia entry this way, as only half of what he expressed. the full quote is: “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and though this be true, poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.” ruefle offers this distinction to show that the romantics were not simply about feeling, but thinking as well, and that both these intertwined strands from writing during this period are what bring readers a deep pleasure. sentimentality has become a dirty word leveled at writing that’s emotional, but it wasn’t always this way. ruefle posits that this change occurred at the end of the romantic period; it used to be considered a compliment and is now it’s an insult for one’s work to have sentiment. ruefle doesn’t see this as being a problem though, and encourages poets to push further: “if your teacher’s suggest that your poems are too sentimental, that is only half of it. your poems probably need to be even *more* sentimental. don’t be less of a flower, but could you be more of a stone at the same time? could you have sympathetic feelings in more than one direction? and can you think at the same time? from childhood, each of us operates under dual impulses—one toward safety and one toward danger. though the fear of freedom is an entanglement in increasingly unimportant decisions…fear of security also retards.” (p. 45) 211011 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I love this quote: "Don't be less of a flower, but could you be more of a stone at the same time?" I was more into the early 20th-century modernists than the romanticists when I read less-new poetry, but Wordsworth's "Daffodils" is the one I memorized. ("Prufrock" I remember partly, but then it's longer.) And what a name for a poet: Wordsworth. Sometime I want to read Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journals. I have a book with them in it. 211014 ... tender_square daffodils is AMAZING! i read that one aloud to michael a week ago and his reaction was, "i wish i could be that inspired by flowers" and it just made me so very sad. thank you for the tip about the grasmere journals, i found a free link: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42856/42856-h/42856-h.htm 211015 what's it to you? who go blather from