Within.

Childhood and Romanticism alike put the mind's own life at the heart of experience.  Wordsworth writes of his childhood ways of thinking as "the hiding places of my power" and says that the paths to them seem "open" until he approaches, at which point they close, tantalizingly, so "I see glimpses now."  As ifonly in those brief moments when the guards are off duty can he nip back to the light.  But Romanticism finds too often that this way (of thinking) has been barred and padlocked, no way through, and those who try to cross over are mocked and attacked like Wordsworth and Coleridge, despised and ignored like Blake, or Keats or Ibsen.  John Clare found the TRESPASSERS WILL sign nailed up in his own mind, as so completely does he identify with his land that the paths on the ground are fused with the pathways of his mind, the tracks of his memory.

On paths to freedom and to childhood dear

A board sticks up to notice "no road here."

Novalis thought of fairy tales as "that homeland which is everywhere and nowhere."  Where is that?  Right inside the mind, in the cosmic trespass of imagination.  This is the heart of it: this is why Romanticism comprehends what is perennially important, beautiful, valuable and good in the human condition, and finds those treasures within us all. 

Jay Griffiths, from A Country Called Childhood: Children and the Exuberant World

Happy Birthday, Shelley

Severn, Posthumous Portrait of Shelley Writing Prometheus Unbound, 1845

HYMN of PAN

From the forests and highlands

         We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

         Where loud waves are dumb

                Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

         The bees on the bells of thyme,

The birds on the myrtle bushes,

         The cicale above in the lime,

And the lizards below in the grass,

Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,

                Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,

         And all dark Tempe lay

In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

         The light of the dying day,

                Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

         And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,

To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

         And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow,

Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,

                With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

         I sang of the daedal Earth,

And of Heaven, and the giant wars,

         And Love, and Death, and Birth—

                And then I chang'd my pipings,

Singing how down the vale of Maenalus

         I pursu'd a maiden and clasp'd a reed.

Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

         It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed.

All wept, as I think both ye now would,

If envy or age had not frozen your blood,

                At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, born on this day in

Don't miss Peter Ackroyd's masterpiece, The Romantics, featuring, in this the last of its three episodes, Keats, Byron, and Shelley ...

Before.

Children are Romantics before they are Utilitarians; visionaries before they are Gradgrinds.  They think in the right hemisphere before the left.  We humans sang before we spoke.  Poetry came before prose.  The depth was there before the shallowness, the extraordinary before the ordinary, metaphysics before physics.  Metaphor before all.

Jay Griffiths, from A Country Called Childhood

Madness.

There is no greatness without a continual solicitation to madness which, while it must be overcome, must never be completely lacking. One might profit by classifying men in this respect. The one kind are those in whom there is no madness at all and are so-called men of intellect whose works and deeds are nothing but cold works and deeds of the intellect.  But where there is no madness, there is, to be sure, also no real, active, living intellect. For wherein is intellect to prove itself but in the conquest, mastery, and ordering of madness?

Friedrich Schelling

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Grave.

Neumann, The Republic of Free Spirits, Jena, 1800 

THREE WORDS of STRENGTH

There are three lessons I would write-

Three words, as with a burning pen,

In tracings of eternal light,

Upon the heart of men.

Have hope! though clouds environ round,

And gladness hides her face in scorn,

Put thou the shadow from thy brow,

No night but hath its morn.

Have faith! where're thy bark is driven-

The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth-

Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven,

The inhabitants of earth.

Have love! not love alone for one,

But man as man thy brother call,

And scatter like the circling sun,

Thy charities on all.

Thus grave these lessons on thy soul,

Hope, faith, and love; and thou shalt find

Strength when life's surges rudest roll,

Light when thou else wert blind.

Friedrich von Schiller

Happy Birthday, Pater

The charm ... of what is classical, in art or literature, is that of the well-known tale, to which we can nevertheless listen over and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolute beauty of its artistic form is added the accidental, tranquil charm of familiarity. There are times, indeed, at which these charms fail to work on our spirits at all, because they fail to excite us. “Romanticism,” says Stendhal, “is the art of presenting to people the literary works which, in the actual state of their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure; classicism, on the contrary, of presenting them with that which gave the greatest possible pleasure to their grandfathers.” But then, beneath all changes of habits and beliefs, our love of that mere abstract proportion—of music—which what is classical in literature possesses, still maintains itself in the best of us, and what pleased our grandparents may at least tranquilize us. The “classic” comes to us out of the cool and quiet of other times, as the measure of what a long experience has shown will at least never displease us. And in the classical literature of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last century, the essentially classical element is that quality of order in beauty, which they possess indeed in a pre-eminent degree, and which impresses some minds to the exclusion of everything else in them.

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty, that constitutes the romantic character in art; and the desire of beauty being a fixed element in every artistic organization, it is the addition of curiosity to this desire of beauty, that constitutes the romantic temper. Curiosity, and the desire of beauty, have each their place in art, as in all true criticism. When one’s curiosity is deficient, when one is not eager enough for new impressions and new pleasures, one is liable to value mere academical properties too highly, to be satisfied with worn-out or conventional types, with the insipid ornament of Racine, or the prettiness of that later Greek sculpture which passed so long for true Hellenic work; to miss those places where the handiwork of nature, or of the artist, has been most cunning; to find the most stimulating products of art a mere irritation. 

Walter Pater, from "The Classic and Romantic in Literature", born on this day in 1839

Romantics.

Peter Ackroyd narrates the BBC masterpiece, The Romantics ...

"Liberty" ...

"Nature" ...

"Eternity" ...

Reaching.

Peter Ackroyd presents The Romantics ...

LIBERTY
Ackroyd reveals how the radical ideas of liberty that inspired the French Revolution opened up a world of possibility for great British writers such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, inspiring some of the greatest works of literature in the English language. 



NATURE
Ackroyd summons the ghosts of the Romantics to tell the story of man's escape from the shackles of industry and commerce to the freedom of nature.

As the Industrial Revolution took hold of Britain during the late 18th Century, the Romantics embraced nature in search of sublime experience. But this was much more than just a walk in the country; it was a groundbreaking endeavour to understand what it means to be human. They forged poetry of radical protest against a dark world that was descending upon Britain.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a prophecy that science might be used to corrupt nature, a warning people are still preaching to this day. 



ETERNITY
Byron, Keats and Shelley lived short lives, but the radical way they lived them would change the world. At 19, Shelley wrote The Necessity of Atheism - it was banned and burned, but it freed the Romantics from religion. Through their search for meaning in a world without God, they pioneered the notions of free love, celebrity and secular idolatry that are at the centre of modern Western culture.

For them poetry became the new religion, a way of reaching eternity.

Alive.

Search.

A romantic is basically a person who feels that the world is full of hidden meanings -- that discovery and adventure lie around every corner. This seems to me a broader, and therefore truer, attitude than that of the pessimist who feels that human life is short, brutal and pointless. The romantic recognizes that the problem lies in our own limitations, in the narrowness of our senses. So when a romantic also happens to be a realist, he is likely to devote a great deal of his life to a search for meaning -- which is synonymous with self-transformation.

Carl Jung