Romanticism in America

Rip Van Winkle is a charming story by Washington Irving that tells a fabulous tale and swears its true. It takes place before and after the Revolutionary War in a lazy town about a lazy man. Idle, not lazy. Though his wife scolds him for his idle behavior, I don't see anything wrong with it. He is very happy with his friends who just sit around and read and talk and watch the sun move across the sky. I especially liked the comment on how the townspeople could know the time of day by looking at the placement of one old man on the porch of the town inn: "he took his seat from morning till night just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial." But his idle behavior, his lackadaisical moods, and his friendly demeanor take him into the myths of the Catskill mountains and through time in one night. That dreaded flagon!
The story is very romantic, in the way that 'romantic' means 'like a novel'; the story is well plotted, the characters nicely developed. Everything ends happily, no one is severely in the dumps with the effects, and the causes weren't serious anyway. No one would ever react to anything that way now. (I only wish they did). The lazy town, the present that doesn't worry about the future, or mingle with the past (excepting the ghosts) -- these aspects of life are so absent in today's world. Perhaps they were only fiction in Winkle's day too and Irving was the Hollywood man to get people's hearts dreaming. I wish Hollywood got my spirits up and my mind amused in the same way now that Irving did in his words. He had a sense of humour, a lack of seriousness about his work, his writing, and his life yet these senses made his stories all the more interesting, and all the more truthful.


Thanatopis is about a commune with nature, in life and in death. We read here of nature's good tidings, its comforting arms, its gentle loving embrace when we walk through its pastures, but also as we lie down for ever in our graves. Somewhat of a consolation for death -- do not dread dying, he says, for everyone will die with you, someday.

In the Ropewalk, the poet is trying to convey the perfumy air of his time period with the ongoing, amazingly long room where rope is wound. The images of the circus tightrope walker, the woman fetching water from a well, the ship's anchor being dropped -- all of these uses for the rope! Though it be a monotonously dreary job, the poet daydream's about his product's future. A thing that we barely notice but who's presence is everywhere, in everything we do; pointed out to us -- quite a beautiful thing. I also see a sense of the rope worker, at work, thinking of all these scenes as the future of his products and thus making them worth making.


The Painting (on Siegmund's blog) represents the beauty of nature, and it sort of overcomes the viewer. Though perhaps enlightenment does not spring from viewing the painting itself, the realization of what it would be like to actually see that scene, is staggering. the Romantics thought that this natural beauty was a goodness unlike any other and very powerful by itself.
There are many such paintings by Romantic painters from all over the western world. Most all of them focus on a surreal event or scene that tries to tear from our hearts a sort of longing, magic, beauty that will make us too see truth.
I thought likely of this here painting by Vibert.
There is some element in it that really emanates a sense of wonder and beauty. A goodness that has left the religious man in death and hearkened the body of an angel over a desolate world.