Scholarly Romanticism

[osprey_archer]

Song: To Celia

by Ben Jonson

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
and I will pledge with mine;
or leave a kiss but in the cup,
and I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
doth ask a drink divine;
but might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent the late a rosy wreath,
not so much honoring thee
as giving it a hope that there
it could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe
and sent'st it back to me;
since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
not of itself, but thee.

***

I've been keeping a poetry book by my bed this last month, and reading it in bits each night, in the hopes that the poems will sink into my soul. I have a reason for this, beyond mere flighty romanticism. (Not that flighty romanticism is an insufficient reason for action, mind.)

When brought to the edge of comprehension - when they stand peering into a numinous fog, trying to discern Truth in the mist, or else hang above an abyss of emotional turmoil - nineteenth and early twentieth century writers almost inevitably start quoting Wordsworth. Or Shakespeare, or Milton, or sometimes Keats. Faced with an excess of emotion or thought, they fall back on poetry to give it form and shape. It limns the boundaries of their mental worlds. Wanting, as I do, to enter into those worlds, it would behoove me to traverse the frontiers, don't you think?

This is scholarly romanticism, I suppose.

***

I think this ties into poetry's fall from popular grace. We no longer need it to give form and expression to our feelings - psychology and movie quotes have usurped that place - so it lacks the vitality and urgency that it once had.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

psychology and movie quotes have usurped that place

I think I may have talked about this on your journal before, but this was why I was so delighted to make friends with Europeans, after graduating from college, and to hear them **dignify** romantic love by not talking about it purely in the psychobabble terms I was used to from college. God it felt good to get away from words like codependency and commitment issues and infatuation and instead hear words like lover and passion--without irony.

I *love* that you're a romantic scholar. You're the method actor of scholars.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think it's come up before, though I can't for the life of me remember where... but I totally agree. C. S. Lewis, I think, commented once that in defining how one talks about things, one also defines what it's possible to say, and badly deployed psychobabble tends to make us all sound like bundles of neuroses rather than human beings with legitimate feelings.

The word lover seems to have fallen entirely out of fashion. It seems a sad loss to me.