Romanticism and Revolution

            I didn’t get much sleep from midnight when I went to bed and 5:00 when I got up on Monday because I had a lot of thoughts in my head after an argument that I’ve had over the last couple of days with my daughter on the topic of cultural appropriation. I had posted about the proliferation of the expression “my bad” and she had commented that its use by non-Blacks is cultural appropriation. I say that would only be true if the meaning of the expression applies only to African Americans, such as maybe in the expression “woke”. If an expression that rises out of a given culture has a universal human meaning then it’s not cultural appropriation to use it. I argued that culture is an organic thing and it is not academics that create it but people on the street who care a lot less about cultural appropriation than scholars do. People from different cultures, especially when they are young, influence one another. If cultures are physically integrated there will be blending and no amount of education will stop people from absorbing one another’s cultures. It's probably the truest form of communication.

            A culture is simply a group personality. If I meet the eyes of another person for an instant, that moment is a culture. If I see that person once a day and our eyes meet every time, a culture of glancing forms. That other person’s manner of glancing comes from other cultures of eye contact that she brings in to our shared glance. This may change the way I glance at someone else and so in a sense it is cultural appropriation. Larger societal cultures are just a more complex form of that same thing. People that communicate form cultures. Cultures have naturally blended throughout history and there is no culture in existence that does not have aspects that were appropriated from other cultures.

            The difference between my argument and Astrid’s argument is that I am interested in her point of view because I do not believe that I know the truth about anything. I cannot absolutely be sure that anyone else’s opinion is wrong. I can only argue on the topic with as much logic as I have. I think that my daughter has firm beliefs about what is true and not true on certain topics such as cultural appropriation and that she was trying to instruct rather than communicate.

            At 10:00 I left for English class and when I got there the same two people were in the room that had been there when I came on Wednesday. Someone had brought a desk for Professor Weisman but I took the lectern from the corner of the room and put it to the right of the desk. I also rolled up the projector screen so she’d have access to the blackboard if she needed it.

            When I sat down in my desk I saw a dime on the floor and showed it to Gabriel, saying, “I’m already making money from this class! It was worth coming in!"

            I read some of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. I liked "Thorn" and how it alludes to the grave of a child before later on talking about the death of the baby. So far every poem in which he mentions children also talks about death and children’s graves.

            Professor Weisman arrived and wanted to know if she had any of us to thank for the desk. I told her that the desk had been there when I arrived. She asked, “What about the lectern?" I didn't say anything but when she asked me directly if it had been me I nodded. I mentioned that I noticed they hadn’t cleaned the room and she said, "Don't get me started on that!"

            We started from where we left off talking about Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud" and how it is a handy example of the Reflexiveness of Romantic poetry.

            It is not fully agreed upon exactly when the Romantic Period began but some say that it corresponds exactly with the French Revolution, which began on July 14, 1789 with the storming of the Bastille. The whole sociological fabric of Europe was changing, partly because of the ideological spirit of the revolution. The slogan of that wave of change and of the resulting Republic of France was “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. The promise of a new free world ignited hopes all over Europe, including England. Many of the English Romantics were in France at the time and were witness to the fervour and infected by the hope of a dawning consciousness of universal human rights and democracy.

            In the wake of the French Revolution, England was also undergoing sociological and cultural changes as it moved away from being an agricultural society. Up until then, wealth and power had been concentrated in land-holding aristocracy.

            The context for Romanticism’s celebration of the aesthetic beauty of the natural world was England’s transformation from being an agricultural to a modern industrial society and the rise of the middle class. The resulting population explosion caused cities to expand and encroach upon and usurp farmland. The big problem in paradoxes was that Romanticism was nostalgic for nature that was being obliterated. There was tremendous nostalgia for the ever-diminishing rustic life. How could they sustain nostalgia and have democracy at the same time?

            Transformation to the modern means economic expansion. Romanticism began with the beginnings of industry. The population was seeking a foundation of security and time to pursue self-understanding. What were their values supposed to be in the face of change.

            Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads was both shocking and controversial. The poems did not celebrate the aristocracy but rather individuals of rustic society, some of which were not even literate. The critics said, "Don't take up our time with your experiments!" They thought he was arrogant and assuming himself to be an authority.

            The poems were written in a hybrid of lyric and ballad, representing a democratization of culture, as lyric and ballad were separately recognized genres, with Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson being their most prominent craftsmen. There were others that did this but Wordsworth and Coleridge were the strongest examples.

            A lyric is a private and passionate poetic meditation. John Stuart Mill said that a lyric is an overheard voice. It tends to evolve towards interiority and is a forum for decorum.

            A ballad is sung or spoken verse with a self-editing function because of the way it is passed down. Ballads tended to get shorter over time. A literary ballad is not necessarily oral but publicly accessible, tells a story and is plot driven. It’s written in quatrains, which are four-line stanzas with short lines and usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme.

            Lyric and ballad together make a contradiction. Elitism was joined to public accessibility and propriety to openness. Poetry readers were angry over this lack of decorum and propriety. It presumed upon the public taste.

            Wordsworth thought the book was misunderstood. He wanted to educate the public on what poetry they should be reading. He was thinking hard about his poetry’s relationship with the time.

            Wordsworth addresses his preface to the assumption that those reading have already read the first edition.

            He said that the real language of human beings is not aristocratic and not drawn from upper class experience. Romantic poetry is drawn from real human language and fit into a metrical arrangement. It is the democratization of culture. It is not the poetry of decorum and not for individuals commissioning poems. It is not found poetry.

            He is establishing a cultural forum for the spark of his imagination that traces the primary laws of our nature through exploration of the rustic and the low. In such a condition the passions have better soil. Alexander Pope’s essay on man also seeks to establish an understanding of the primary laws.

            Professor Weinstein asked us, “Why does engaging with low and rustic life provide better for accessing the primary laws of nature?”

            I said that the farmers and the hunters live in nature and thereby have a deeper contact with it than those that live in the city. By writing about these people and getting readers to identify with them Wordsworth is connecting the reader to nature.

            Romantic poetry moves from generalization and abstraction to the particular.

            Rustic life is not idyllic. There is struggle and real hunger, but reading poetry about it is a release from the city. The idea of taking root in the soil and to grow without being bent out of shape by the trivialities of urban life in which we distort what is permanent about human nature. It divorces the reader from urban embellishments that distort authenticity. Rustic language provided an opportunity to understand the permanent over the fickle.

            Writing about the rustic does not mean that anything goes. A spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings binds a forum for contemplation but not any effusion of emotion is poetry.  “Wow!” is not communication. It’s noise. It needs coherent form. One must think long and deeply to communicate one’s vision. A definite form is needed to bring chaos into order. They play best who know the dimensions of the sandbox.

            She asked us to answer the question, “What is a poet?” according to Wordsworth.

            I wrote that Wordsworth sees      the poet as an interpreter of experience who shows the monumental in the ordinary. He is a conduit from nature to humanity, with the purpose of inspiring, uplifting and making life less boring. He can show the connection between human nature and greater nature. He helps people feel.

            Wordsworth claims a language of expertise. Keep in mind that he was in his 20s when he wrote this.

            Rustic life releases us from trivialities and shows us the uncorrupted.

            There is a divide between Wordsworth, the educated poet and the rustic life. He’s presuming to establish a connection of respect and to derive an understanding of those not enmeshed in urban trivialities.

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought some newly picked McIntosh apples, grapes, nectarines and a tube of lip balm.

            That night I watched an episode of The Naked City. In this story a fallen football star named Jess Burton who’s become an alcoholic has taken up with a group of small time gangsters. Their scam is to lure members of conventions up to their hotel room and to win all their money in crooked poker games. One man gets angry about his losses and throws a punch at Jess, who hits him back. The man falls, hits his head on a piece of furniture and dies. The body is found in the room but the police can’t track down those who’d rented it. They find out that a bellhop named Larry delivered ice to the room at 4:00. He is questioned but tells nothing, though he is a friend of Jess. Larry tries to get Jess to leave town with him but he refuses. Jess’s partners want to make sure Larry doesn’t talk to the cops. Jess tries to stop them from killing him and gets killed. The cops arrive to save Larry.