In Which I Attempt To Convert The World To Romanticism (and SNOW!)

It snowed outside my house over the weeken. As a Southern Californian this is a big deal. You should have seen us all crowded around the door like characters in a Christmas special, grinning like idiots as the strange white powder landed on our lawn. When it snows up in Julian we sometimes make a day trip to get out and throw snow balls at each other for an hour or so but the last time it snowed right outside my door I couldn't have been more than ten. It was a bit like watching fragments of my childhood drift out of the sky. I feel slightly guilty that the storm that has been wreaking havoc on the rest of the country only gave us light sprinklings of feary dust that melted before noon but mostly I just enjoyed the feary dust.

But on to book related things.

Last week my friend L.T. Host blogged about Post Modernism. Partially inspired by her nod to a literary movement, and partially inspired by the mounds of romantic poetry I've been savoring in British Lit this semester, I would like to say a few words about Romanticism.

No one ever reads the romantics without looking at least a little into the lives of the poets themselves. This is perhaps partially true of all historical literature, especially poets, but even more so of the romantics because their lives were such an exiting and tragic expression of the ideas in their poetry. Incest, opium trips, political movements, free love, exile and, above all, early deaths.

Die young; never die. Its such an awful lot like rock and roll.

The rebellion of the younger generations is a theme that shows up a lot in the books I love most. There is something about the combination of naivety and defiance that fascinates me, the courage or desperation of clinging to an ideal long after it has been tattered to shreds, throwing wisdom to the wind in order to chase after futile sensations. Perhaps that is why I've always been so fascinated by the French Revolution, a time when great ideals and heroic intentions turned into abuse and blood-lust. Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, a book that seriously altered the way I see the world when I was younger, is, looking back, romanticism incarnate. I think I've always had a hard time believing in Reason. As if that were the only reality that existed. As if a long life were the only testament of a happy one.

I sometimes have to remind myself that I am still young. The voices of experience in my head urge me to make safe, easy choices and I have to remind myself that I have years ahead of me to be wise and predictable. Right now I want to take risks and make ridiculous mistakes. I want to experience the sensations of life, the miserable ones along with the happy ones. Of all the things I fear about mortality I fear loosing the desire to live the most. I fear complacency and routine. I fear security. I fear pain and ecstasy making way for a dull, lifeless middle ground.

My Lit Professor tells the class that he plans to convert back to romanticism after he retires. I suppose he has a point. Taking long nature walks and waxing about the human condition doesn't really get one far in life. There are, after all, practical organic considerations like food and shelter that need taking care of. Still, I think Reason and Logic are overly emphasized by the world in general. They are tools for life not Life itself and I am glad that there were --and still are-- poets like the romantics to throw us off balance and direct our attention away from practicality for a little while.

Eyes Bigger Than . . . Well My Eyes

I hate skimming books for research instead of emerceing myself in every detail and digesting them slowly.

I hate passing books that look interesting in the bookstore without even reading the back.

I hate returning books to the library unopened to avoid late fees.

I hate turning in work I know could be better if I'd had another day to edit.

I hate only reading two or three blogs before I realize I have to be somewhere.

I hate sitting down in front of the computer and, instead of getting lost in the words wiggling out of my fingers, keeping my eyes on the clock and panicing when I see how low my word count is.

I hate only giving a sentence or two of commentary instead of anylizing line by line.

It may be time for me to do less in order for me to do more.

Beowulf

I always thought that the plot of Beowulf went on too long. Monster attacks stronghold. Hero kills monster. Monster's mother takes her revenge. Hero kills her too. That should be it right? The stronghold is safe. Conflict resolved. A little about the victory feast makes sense but why follow Beawulf all the way home if nothing is going to happen for another thirty years? And why, oh why add another episode with a dragon when no victory could ever compare to his victory over Grendal? A bit anticlimatic isn't it.

If Beowulf were only an adventure story that would be true but I reread the peom this week and on closer examination I don't think its about a single exploit of bravery. Its about mortality and how the Anglo Saxons thought that a life could be worth living in spite of inevitable doom. Cheery I know.

Grendal himself is an example of doom lurking outside even the strongest most prosperous stronghold. Beowulf conquers him but there is yet another monster, his mother, his source. Even after Grendal's mother is destroyed Hrothgar warns Beowulf that strength and victory are not long lasting acheivments. That they will fade with age and if a hero is not courteous as well as brave so will his aclaim.

Beowulf's acheivements after Grendal are only told in flash backs just before the final show down with the dragon but it is clear that he took Hrothgar's advice and lived as a just and courteous king. But why do we need this final battle? Can't we just enjoy imagining the hero living a long and happy life without fast forwarding to the end of it?

Many old poems show us a character's life from beginning to end. Morte D'Arthur begins with the circumstances of Arthur's conception and ends with his burial but while Arthur's story is a tradgedy of how a great kingdom went wrong and fell prematurely the death of Beawulf is not a tradgedy at all.

Beawulf's death shows that even the strongest, most vireous and most honored man dies but he also shows that if one must die one might as well die . . . with his honor on. He died the best posible death for a Geat and a reader fully emersed in the culture of the tale can not be satisfied with his long and happy life until they know how he ended it. In the beginning of the story he conquers doom, holds it at bay so that the Danes can enjoy Heorot again but at the end the inevitability of doom catches up to him. He dies but conquers doom once and for all by behaving heroically up to the very last second of his life.

So its not anticlimatic after all.

An age old question

I came across this passage of an argument between a writer and a painter in Sir Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor:


"Your characters," he said, "my dear Pattieson, make too much use of the gob box; they patter too much . . . . there is nothing for pages but mere chat and dialog."

"The ancient philosopher," said I in reply, "was wont to say, 'Speak, that I may know thee;" and how is it possible for an author to introduce the persona dramtis to his readers in a more interesting and effectual manner than by the dialog in which each is represented as supporting his own appropriate character?"

"It is a false conclusion," said Tinto; "I hate it, Peter as I hate an unfilled can. I will grant you, indeed, that speech is a faculty of some value in the intercourse of human affairs, and I will not even insist on the doctrine of that Pythagorean toper, who was of opinion, that over a bottle speaking spoiled conversation. But I will not allow that a professor of the fine arts has occasion to embody the idea of his scene in language in order to impress upon the reader its reality and its effect. On the contrary, I will be judged by most of your readers, Peter, should these tales ever become public whether you have not given us a page of talk for every single idea which two words might have communicated, while the posture, and manner, and incident, accurately drawn, and brought out by appropriate colouring, would have preserved all that was worthy of preservation, and saved these everlasting said he's and said she's, with which it has been your pleasure to encumber your pages."

I replied, "that he confounded the operations of the pencil and the pen; that the serene and silent art, as painting has been called by one of our first living poets, necessarily appealed to the eye, because it had not the organs for addressing the ear; whereas poetry, or that species of composition which approached to it, lay under the necessity of doing absolutely the reverse, and addressed itself to the ear, for the purpose of exiting that interest which it could not attain through the medium of the eye."

Dick was not a whit staggered by my argument, which he contended was founded on misrepresentation. "Description," he said, "was to the author of a romance exactly what drawing and tinting were to a painter; words were his colours, and, if properly employed, they could not fail to place the scene, which he wished to conjure up, as effectually before the mind's eye, as the tablet or canvas presents it to the bodily organ. The same rules," he contended, "applied to both, and an exuberance of dialog in the former case, was a verbose and laborious mode of composition which went to confound the proper art of fictitious narrative with that of the drama, a widely different species of composition of which dialog was the very essence, because all, excepting the language to be made use of, was presented to the eye by the dresses, and persons, and action of the the performers upon the stage. But as nothing," said Dick, "can be more dull that a long narrative written upon the plan of a drama, so where you have approached most near to that species of composition, by indulging in the prolonged scenes of mere conversation, the course of your story has become chill and constrained, and you have lost the power of arresting the attention and exciting the imagination, in which upon other occasions, you may be considered as having succeeded tolerably well.



There is a lot that could be discussed in this passage but I find it interesting to see artists --even fictional ones-- argue the same points a hundred years ago as we do now. And still we have no definite answers. Dialog or description? Show or tell? How much like drama should a narrative be? It is equally interesting that the popular answer to the question seems to have changed over the years. This was written by Sir Walter Scott who, to judge from his own work, strongly favored the painter's argument for description and he was possibly the most popular romance writer of his time, whereas now we would have more readers, as well as writers, favoring the author's argument for more dialog.