Romantic

I wonder how many of you looked at the title of this week’s post and got ready to read something warm and exciting. I am not saying that you will be disappointed, but I’m not promising anything amorous and tender either.

I got onto this topic because of an online exchange I read recently that had to do with a discussion of James Russell Lowell’s poignant poem “The First Snowfall.” The poem is a touching memorial of the death of Lowell’s young daughter the year before. It impresses the reader with it’s remarkable emotional strength and vivid description of nature. In one of the stanzas, the author captures the scene before him:

  I stood and watched by the window

   The noiseless work of the sky,

And the sudden flurries of snow birds,

Like brown leaves whirling by.

One reader, deeply impressed by the mood and the word picture the author created,  commented on the  “romantic” quality of the poem. Responding to that comment, another reader wrote, “It doesn’t sound romantic to me.” I smiled at the two different reactions.

The first comment about the poem being romantic is right on target, because it shows an understanding of the 19th Century Romantic Movement in literature (also in art and music).  The second response focuses on what we usually think of as romantic–the boy-meets-girl kind of love, a male-female relationship. Romanticism in literature has the identifiable  characteristics of love of nature, an expression of strong emotions or feelings, an emphasis on individual freedom, death, and, yes, love. Lowell’s poem is definitely in the Romantic mode.

The Romantics were a coterie of like-minded writers, among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth in England, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the United States. I must confess that the Romantic period is my favorite in literature, and Wordsworth and Thoreau are my favorite writers. Some of you may be familiar with the American poet William Cullen Bryant. He, too, was a Romantic writer who emphasized nature in his works. Many college  English teachers like to assign his poem “A Forest Hymn” with its memorable opening line: “The groves were  God’s first temple.” That idea might seem strangely exaggerated today when the woods have been sacrificed to make way for highways and high-rises and sprawling shopping malls, rather than a place for enjoying God’s presence. But some people still think highly of the beauty and grandeur of the natural world. They make trips to Yosemite National Park and the Grand Canyon,  and to thousands of other parks and green spaces nationally.  My church has an annual Outdoor Church, when the congregation takes to the groves for a day to worship the Creator and to have family fun and fellowship.

As an admirer  of Romanticism, I have an affinity for writing about the luxuriant landscape of my native Jamaica. Both Myra’s Calling and Breaking Away have scenes set in the island’s vibrant countryside. And here’s another nod to my admiration for the Romantics. In Breaking Away, Lola’s cat is named Tintern Abbey. Readers of English literature will recognize that name as the title of one of Wordsworth’s  grandest poems.

None of what I have said so far means that I eschew romance of the sort that is amorous and warms the heart. Romance is one of the main elements in my novels. So Myra has her encounter with Stanley, and Lola finds sweet compatibility with Jerome. It’s the kind of romance that is pure and satisfying. And I’ll give you a hint of what to expect in my next book. In the manuscript I have just completed, there is what I call “insipient romance.” I like to make people fall in love. It’s romantic.

Blessings,

Judith