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May. 15th, 2010 04:01 amReading the Romantics again after howevermany years. Coleridge, now Wordsworth and Keats (there will be Shelley, Shelley will be there last). They make me so happy.
Finished the first Lyrical Ballads today--all wonderful, but Tintern, Tintern!!! It benefits from the running start, or anyway your ability to contextualize it does, you're driving along through Wordsworth country already. I always thought that about Shelley's West Wind ode, that if you just come upon it it'll be like one of those gag cans snakes pop out of or the first time you fire a gun. It's part of the book of his poetry and life; you don't need to see it that way for it to be intense, but you might for the intensity to seem appropriate. Tintern has less of a problem that way--I can't see it startling or annoying anyone--but it...What the hell am I trying to say. It looms out from behind Lyrical Ballads like the dark forms behind the mountains do in the lake episode, maybe. The Ballads are the exact right mountains for it to loom behind.
Finished the first Lyrical Ballads today--all wonderful, but Tintern, Tintern!!! It benefits from the running start, or anyway your ability to contextualize it does, you're driving along through Wordsworth country already. I always thought that about Shelley's West Wind ode, that if you just come upon it it'll be like one of those gag cans snakes pop out of or the first time you fire a gun. It's part of the book of his poetry and life; you don't need to see it that way for it to be intense, but you might for the intensity to seem appropriate. Tintern has less of a problem that way--I can't see it startling or annoying anyone--but it...What the hell am I trying to say. It looms out from behind Lyrical Ballads like the dark forms behind the mountains do in the lake episode, maybe. The Ballads are the exact right mountains for it to loom behind.
