Heart-Change

So, as you know I came to this class not really interested in Romantic BRITISH literature, not at all. I always touted that the Brits were some-what pretentious, ego/and anthropocentric, and like a male cat marking his territory, sprayed everything with their "sophistication" hauteur. I'm not completely wrong with some of these claims, but I have also been softened.

Still, I came to the class thinking "Oh God, who cares what a bunch of near-to-do, fairly wealthy English white folks think, tripping on opium, and frockling in nature...really! Give me Toni Morrison, give me W.E.B. Dubois, and Angela Davis, hell even Frank McCourt, because THEY write about struggle and triumph, THEY write about over coming adversity, and the grit of life, THEY have some soul."

My tune has changed since then.

I think the best part of this class for me, besides the camaraderie, has been accepting my folly,and being surprised. I wasn't completely correct in my assumptions, and I'm tickled by the turn of heart. That speaks directly to the quality of instruction and my colleagues, and I realize I was wrong about the Romantics on two fronts. They are not JUST dribbling on and on and on about nature, and flowers and all that who-ha, but really struggling with who they are in it, and what it means to be, as Emerson said, "Man Thinking," in the world. (Even though he came later.) I was also wrong to assume that these folks had nothing to struggle with because they were not formally "oppressed," least not all of them. They had their own oppressions, their own addictions, and crises of identity that everyone has. What does it mean to be lonely, and stuck in your poetic mind? Its thrilling, and unnerving to see how much people struggling with themselves.

What I appreciated most about Dr. Schwartz's last post is that, despite the fact that its been difficult to pinpoint a definition for "Romanticism," I whole heartedly agree with it being an exercise in thought, and a very interesting one.

I often recall the stages in psychological development when reading poetry/prose or looking at art. Because we tend to categorize "movements" after the fact, the works speak so much more to where the artist/writer/musician is at a particular point in time--and how they are processing, dealing and healing with that moment--than the time itself, or the "genre" he/she has been ascribed to.

"Romantics confronted their world as if an experiment," and their writing as a mirror and a lamp, it reflects and enlightens. And I would add that it heals, it comforts, it confounds, and it brings together the fragments. The experiment? Infusing and using voice to understand, breakdown, and gather together the fragments that define identity. This is like a highly artistic, therapeutic catharsis, and even though I still believe that Lord Byron in Manfred is egotistical and narcissistic, I can appreciate him more now as a mirror, reflecting my own narcissism and ego centrism.

It's all a stage in psychological, spiritual, emotional development, and what a gift to make this growth as clever, and beautiful and cruel as the Romantics do.
Cheers.