The World Through The Eyes of a Romantic

The common view of the contemporary layman , reduces Romanticism to acts of courtship between two people that have sensual intentions towards each other given a pale image of one of the most fascinating cultural movements of the modernity that shaped the way we now see each other and interact with the world.
The Romantics gave us individuality and a value of our emotions as the real source of an aesthetic experience .
The movement was born in the end of the 18th century rooted in the Sturm und Drang ( Storm and Drive ) movement in Germany but rapidly spread to other European countries particularly in England, France and Italy .
This post does not pretend to tell the History of Romanticism which is vast and rich , but its important to know some of its characteristics and why i believe that i look at the world through the eyes of a Romantic .
As i have stated previously, the romantics placed a great value to the individual emotion , especially in the aesthetic experience and more specific in the free expression of the emotion by the artist .
as the great German painter Casper David Friedrich pointed " The artist`s feeling is the law ".
For the English poet William Wordsworth poetry should begin " as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings which the poet then recollects in Tranquility " evoking a new but corresponding emotion that the poet can mold into Art .
Art had to sprung from the imagination of the artist and not submitted to artificial rules . Hence the supreme value of the Genius for the Romantics .
Not essencial in the Romantics but so widespread as to be normative was the profound belief and interest in the importance of Nature . It was seen as quite beneficial to the artist in his creative process to be left alone in communion with Nature.
Opposite to the social art of the Enlightenment , Romantics were distrustful of the Human World and tended to believe that a closer connection with Nature would be morally and mentally healthier . A derivative concert of the " good savage " idealism of Rousseau .

Having said this , if a skepticism towards human societies and its innumerable laws that constrict us and individuality driven mostly by emotions and not reason are the landmarks of a Romantic , then i must proudly say that i am a romantic and see the world through the emotional and somehow gullible eyes of an 18th century individual and not the analytical and practical eyes of a man of my Time.
Gullible as  might be i despise this age of usefulness and effectiveness that hunted down without mercy all the useless things that constitute the embodiment of artistic and creative expression .
We live in an Age that values objective , useful things , things with a purpose , a society of Tools. Not realizing that what truly define us as humans are those things that have no other purpose but to awaken in us feelings being of beauty , horror , of pure awe in its various forms .
I raise my chalice of happiness to the ornate of life ! To the Empire of the Useless because beauty flourishes within its borders.

Casper David Freidrich - Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog 1818

Child of the Nephilin

In Norse cosmology Niflheim is literally the  "World of Mist " . 

According the first part of the Poetic Edda also known as  Gylfanning , Niflheim is described as a primordial realm of ice and cold with the frozen rivers of Elivagar and the Fountain of Hvergelmir from which the mentioned rivers come from .

Niflheim is one of the two primordial reals to emanate from the primordial void the Norse called Ginnungagap . The other one being Muspelheim the real of fire .

This world of Mist later would be that abode of Hel , Goddess of the Underworld who received in her house of mist the unfortunate ones that did not die in battle .

Mist has always exercised in me a profound influence in my spirit not one of fear , sadness and even bad omen, but rather one of magic and wonder .

Nature has a way of drawing our attention to its intrinsic beauty . Who has never felt bewildered by the beauty of a landscape covered with the pure white blanket of snow ? Who had never felt the serenity of that vast sea of whiteness that releases you from the chains of your Ego just to make you awe with that nature`s marvel ? 

Mist its nature´s element of mystery , of dream . Mist is the way nature has to tell you that life is nothing but a dream , a chimera , a "...walking shadow " like the bard of Strafford Upon Avon brilliant observed . 

Poe says that " life is a dream within a dream " ; Calderon de La Barca " La vida es un Sueño " and mother nature show us in a beautiful misty , foggy winter day that indeed life is a dream .

When i walk through wet , ancient cobbled streets in a misty day i feel like a character in a Gothic tale for the enjoyment of a benevolent creature spending a cosmic winter , windy , cold day while drinking a nice cup of tea . 

I feel mysteries and nameless creatures lurking in that vaporous scenario . Silhouettes of unfinished works of a creative Deity .

What i wouldn´t give to be a character in the brilliant film of Alejandro Amenabar , The Others , just to live in that dreamy world of Mist !?

I am a child of Niflheim and there like any child my eyes sparkle with the sheer magic of life .

Mild the mist upon the hill
Telling not of storms tomorrow;
No, the day has wept its fill,
Spent its store of silent sorrow.

O, I'm gone back to the days of youth,
I am a child once more,
And 'neath my father's sheltering roof
And near the old hall door

I watch this cloudy evening fall
After a day of rain;
Blue mists, sweet mists of summer pall
The horizon's mountain chain.

The damp stands on the long green grass
As thick as morning's tears,
And dreamy scents of fragrance pass
That breathe of other years. 

                                    Emily Brönte

Eros & Psyche

written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius  Apuleius Madaurencis in his book "Metamorphosis" also known as " The Golden Ass", the story tells the obstacles that Eros ( Love ) and Psyche ( soul ) have to face till their sacred union is completed .

Many interpretations and readings can be made of this beautiful tale , but the one that interests me the most is the paradox of this union .

Can Eros and Psyche not live without each other as the myth says or one needs more the existence of the other to sustain its own existence ? 

Can we love without a soul ? can the soul exist without love ? 

To answer that we have to first be aware of who Eros really is .

in Greek Mythology Eros is the son of Aphrodite , Goddess of Love with Ares God of War. 

however Hesiod in his "Theogony " considers him son of Chaos, a primordial God .

There he describes him as being very beautiful and  irresistible which leads him to abandon his good judgement . Hesiod gives him a unifying role , contributing to the passage of Chaos to Cosmos ( Order ).

Plato however in his book Symposium , describes Eros in a very negative manner .

To him Eros depicted as being poor, homeless , always barefoot and sleeping on the floor. Plato describes him also has seeking constantly for beautiful bodies , hunting them with mischiefs, intrigues and lies . He is a philosopher , a sophist , making potent potions . Its nature is neither mortal or immortal and in one day when everything turns right to him , on the next day he will die just to return again on the next day . But everything he gets he loses quickly .

This very negative view that Plato has of Eros will set the way thinkers and mystics will look upon sensual love for centuries to come .

There will be a suspicion concerning the poisonous nature of Love and an attempt to protect the purity of the Soul from it .

Not only these thinkers and mystics thought that the Soul could live without Love , but it was preferably to do so. 

Sensual love with its obvious sexual connotations was seen as something disruptive and corruptive to the Soul. It drowned the soul into stormy waters , clogging one`s judgement .

Eros became forever seen as a reminder to man that he was an angel with clay feet unable to higher realms unless only his idealism and mysticism .

Strange creatures we are that so fiercely try to conceal our animalhood aspiring to a divinity that we never possessed .

Why this need to reject nature ? Reject the living breathing biology in us? Religion and Morality makes us sick and feeble like Nietzsche said. Shame is nothing but a moral category , artificial and abstract like all morality is. Embrace the Eros in us and let us invite us Psyche to celebrate this great, magical feast called LIFE .

Being Peter Pan

In 1902 , the Scottish Novelist and Playwriter , J.M.Barrie , in a novel called " The Little White Beard", introduces a character called Peter Pan who is a 7 days years old baby who has flown from his nursery to Kesington Gardens in London where the fairies and bird taught him to fly . He is described as a creature between a boy and a bird .
The character Peter Pan would later develop in to the archetype of the boy who would never grow up into manhood and also of a certain carelessness and selfishness towards life.
The expression " Being a Peter Pan " immediately adopted a negative connotation , implying the incapacity vs refusal , in accepting the painful contradictions that reality imposes onto every human being . Modern Psychoanalysis even adopted the name Peter Pan in reference to the inability that certain individuals have ( usually men but also some women ) to believe that they are of an older age and/or to engage in behavior usually associated with adulthood , by calling The Peter Pan Syndrome .
The concept became popular when in 1983 the American Psychoanalyst Dr Dan Kiley in his book " The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up"mentions the fact that while doing therapy with teenage boys he detected an incapacity from them to grow up and accept adult responsibilities like the character of J.M.Barrie. And this problem continue into adulthood.

Without wanting to dispute the truth of a science i know very little if not nothing, i would like to put aside the pejorative association of  the name Peter Pan , so negative that even the British author Aldous Huxley associate it with the sinister figure of Adolf Hitler, and restaure the name into a more favorable manner .
Recognizing myself as one of those Peter Pans that roam the world like plagues of locusts in the fields of adulthood conformity , i see being Peter Pan as not a denial and refuse of dealing with reality but rather an harmless drug against its most poisonous effects .
Reality for an highly conscious being with all its contradictions , incoherences, is sometimes an unbearable and often traumatic experience. If we can alleviate the weight of that reality by creating our own personal Neverland even if briefly , i take that as an healthy mechanism of self defence , a balsam for one`s soul .
When in his extraordinary novel" Le Petit Prince" , Antoine St Exupéry makes the little Prince tell us that we should never lose the child inside of us with the risk that by doing so we will lose also the capability of seeing life with awe, wonder , magic; What is he telling us if not that Peter Pan must live with us!? Within certain boundaries of course. Because in the bottomless pit of the human mind the line between sanity and insanity is rather slim.

Literature for Free Thinkers

one wonders if mankind moves forward or backwards.

we live in an age filled with paradoxes and one of those paradoxes is that we live in an age that glorifies Democracy and free speech and at the same time it enslaves us in the iron chains of political correctness. suddenly you cant say a million of things because it might upset the feelings of different groups of people . 

Although from one side this means a civilizational leap in terms of conscience for the dignity of the individual or a group of individuals,  from the other it limits our capacity of criticism and of self expression turning us all into herds of well behaved sheep grazing in the fields of conformity and often hypocrisy .

History offers us countless examples of individuals that had the courage to breach the mediocre wall of conformity and speak their minds but i leave here two of the most brilliant of those courageous individuals . Two brilliant minds who had no fear in exposing human nature , looking at humans without the mask , as the portuguese poet Teixeira Pascoaes brilliant pointed out .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_de_La_Rochefoucauld_(writer)

Love in the Digital Age

In 2003, the Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman in his book "Liquid Love "speaks, even before the advent of the internet social networks of the way that our human relations became somehow more "flexible" developing increasing levels of insecurity.
the liquid modernity "a world filled with confusing signs with a tendency to change in a quick and unpredictable way" in which we live in brings with it a mysterious frailty in human bondage , what he calls a "liquid love ".
Basically Bauman points out to the fact that given the wide variety of choices at our dispose in the "love market " we not only trivialize human relations but we dehumanize the other reducing a human being to something that like any other item can be discarded and replaced by something better .
The wide variety of choices that the Web offers in terms of relationships, endangers the possibility of solid and fruitful relationships.
The internet brought with it an enhancement of one`s individuality that carries the idea that i, as having the divine given right to happiness, should seek it in the most brutally selfish manner looking to a partner now as long time investment but as a temporarily one .
Tragically in this scenario not only love relationships and family bonds are endangered but also our capacity of treating the other with humanity is as well put to danger .
Internet speeds up  the ephemeral nature of Life .

SOLITUDE

What is solitude ? Why many of us fear it ? and why others seek it so fervently ?

We often confuse solitude with loneliness , when in reality they are very different .

Loneliness is never a state in which is voluntarily immersed into it . Its a state imposed by the circumstances of one`s life that lead to that condition . And loneliness has such an insidious character that even surrounded by lots of people and apparently having a successful and joyful personal life , you can feel yourself stranded in the grim dark forest of Loneliness .

Solitude is something , however , of a completely different manner .

Mystics throughout History sought it to understand the mystery of existence and the role they played in it .

in Ancient Greece , the Oracle of Delphi had , inscribed in its portico ,  the maxim KNOW THYSELF  ( Gnothi Seauton ) .

Only through solitude we will have the enough distance from the rattle of the world to know ourselves . And why do we need to know ourselves ? Because only by knowing ourselves intimately 

we can move through life in a disciplined and wise manner. 

We can ask ourselves what we can and what we cannot do . What is good and what is not good for us.

In his book  " Silence in the Age of Noise ", the Norwegian Explorer Erling Kagge , speaks of the gift that the solitude of crossing Antarctica alone gave him . The gift of talking to that friend that he always had but was always silenced by the noise of everyday life ; HIM.

The vast and desolate ice deserts of Antarctica made him lose his fear  of confronting him with his inner self . Which is a fear common to most of us . How many of us really know ourselves ?

the Danish philosopher Kierkgaard  said that we seek the company of people because we dread to be alone in our company . Why is that ?

What do we fear ? Perhaps do we fear that our soul is grotesque as the portrait of Dorian Gray and we want to shun from it ? Or we fear that we are so dull that left to ourselves to entertain us we would end up die from an horrible tedium ?

From my part i always enjoyed my solitude and very seldom in it i have felt alone .

Embrace your solitude and in it you might surprise yourself and find the best friend you ever had : YOU .

                                      LOVE 
what is love ? why do we seek its so desperately
we know that with it comes the bitter taste of loss?
loss of the first virginal innocent moment of that love
that will come no more ; loss of the red flame of
passion that is extinguished by the corrosive grip of time;
and loss of the affection of the object of your desire .
in his book Symposium , Plato describes sensual Love
as a youth of great beauty dressed in rags .
Epicurus considered love the greatest of follies .
it disturbed the tranquility of your soul sending you
in a whirlpool of emotions that lead to your spiritual
demise .
yet we seek it like vampires seeking for blood
not realizing that the drug that makes you feel
alive will also kill you .
there is no bigger tragedy that those beautiful eyes
that once looked at you with the brilliance of passion
and devotion are forever closed to you .



                                                               

  Franz Lizst - Liebestraum

Autumn Rain

Although im starting this blog in late spring , each and everyone of us carry within one´s soul a season .
Mine is Autumn . And to pay tribute to the faded golden season i would like share with whoever reads these words , the lovely poem 
Autumn Rain writen by the Polish Poet Leopold Staff 


                   Autumn Rain      

On windows the raindrops, the raindrops are knocking

Rhythmically, constantly, not ever stopping,

The autumn rain falling and tapping on pane…

Glass weeping… glass crying… the signs of the rain

And light, oh so gray, the colours is blocking…

On windows the raindrops, the raindrops are knocking…

The dreams, ghosts of evening ethereal and floating

The sun which could save them in vain they’ve been wanting…

Ahead they are marching through gray, foggy desert,

Ahead only unknown, ahead is their present…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Staff