Dear Mike,
  It seems to me the sound-bite (surely a grasping after the lyric) is a
demonstration that political speeches have moved from classical rhetoric to
a more romantic base.
 Is Blair Classical or Romantic? - either/or as his focus groups or
expedience demand, I'd say.
But I am a devout cynic.
Kind regards,
 grasshopper

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Horwood" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [THE-WORKS] : Romanticism - Grasshopper


Ah yes, Grasshopper, that good old famous subject/object controversy. And it
has political relevance today, too. As in: If I drop this object - a bomb-
on that person - an alien subject- it won´t hurt me - the subject. But does
this make the Bush-Blair a romantic or a classicist? A romantic, I suppose,
because of all the clichés, but it does seem a rather contradictory label.
Rigorous thinking isn´t easy, is it?



Best wishes,   Mike




--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Dear Mike,
My feeling is that if our souls yearn for a series of cliches, we can easily
satisfy our craving by listening to politicians.
 Personally I feel I have written enough essays about Romanticism v
Classicism, and whether this writer fell into this pigeonhole or that. that
I'm not particularly tempted to go there again. But one of the most useful
Rom/Class splits to bear in mind, I found, was the difference between the
value placed on the subjective and the objective, internal and external
truth and truths.
Kind regards,
 grasshopper
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Horwood" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 9:25 AM
Subject: Re: [THE-WORKS] : Romanticism - Christina


Hi Christina,
             Thanks for your comments. Well, it certainly wasn´t my
intention to send you to St. Paul or the Corinthians. I suppose that in so
far as I had an intention it was to list many of the totally contradictory
images associated with romanticism. Why anyone would want to do such a thing
is a question worth asking. My answer is that I was just so tickled with the
play on `clash of cymals/symbols´ in the last couplet and I wanted to see
how many clichés I could get into one poem. I have this compulsion to do
things that most people generally agree should not be done. It drives my
girlfriend nuts. One day I´m going to grow up.


Best wishes,   Mike



--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---

It's terribly early here, Mike and I'm semi-conscious and unable to give
this
the attention it needs to make proper comments because I've just scanned
through but oh, it's already giving me problems because of all the lines you
use that have been taken from other sources (like untutored youth, seizing
the present hour, the clashing cymbals etc).  I just don't think we can get
away with this sort of thing in contemporary poetry unless it's done in a
really fresh way.  The problem (for me) is that I switch off and start
thinking about the original texts/ideas.  So at the moment I'm thinking
about
Paul's letter to the Corinthians.  I don't know whether this is just a
personal flaw - an inability to focus on something that uses images or words
that echo other writing that I love - or whether it happens to other
readers,
or whether it matters or even if that's your intention.  It's simply what
happens to me and a problem I've had with quite a few poems.
bw
christina


> Romanticism
>
> But if a writer should be quite consistent,
> How could he possibly show things existent?
>                                  Byron
>
> Romanticism is idealism,
> what´s true of one may be said of the other.
> Romanticism´s change and revolution,
> opposed to aristocracy,
> the force of a new-born generation.
> It is medieval dreaming spires,
> the peace and harmony of natural order
> and the music of the spheres.
> It is love, and not the will to power,
> the natural love of natural man,
> living for the moment, seizing the present hour.
> It´s the driving energy of brutal optimism,
> a therapy, the cure for our disease.
> It is self-assertion and primitivism
> and unity at the cost of individuality.
> Romaniticism´s moonlit ruins,
> the transcendent desire for infinity.
> It is spirit combined with chivalry,
> our escape from an industrial age
> to the ancient and historic, misty antiquity.
> It is reverie and homesickness,
> exile and nostalgia.
> It is darkness and the powers of darkness, a pervasive sense of irrational
> terror.
> It´s a beautiful past remembered by the monotonous present,
> a pastoral idyll of timelessness and innocence.
> It´s the new, the novel, the fleeting moment,
> a muliplicity, chaos and violence.
> Romanticism means the sane and simple pleasures
> of contented country folk.
> It is Celtic and Germanic,
> melancholy madness, decadence and death.
> Romanticism is untutored youth
> and teeming fecundity, the richness of life.
> It´s a soul playing with itself in secret delight.
> Yes, romanticism´s idealism, and it´s drama,
> the clarion call to a great uprising
> of bourgeois values against bourgeois values
> when what might seem to be the clash of cymbals
> turns out to be a clash of symbols.
>
>
>
>
> Mike