Over at Byzantium’s Shores, Jaquandor has a long post about the passions in one’s life, how some endure and evolve with you through the years while others burn out and fall away. I must admit, the specifics of the post elude me — I know little about classical music, and I’ve never read the author he references, nor does he sound like my cup of joe — but I get his overall point, and it’s a phenomenon I’ve observed in my own experience.
There was one paragraph, however, that really had little to do with the overall post but resonated deeply within me like a massive church bell gonging from ten feet away:
The Romantic in me is drawn to large gestures, bold statements, feelings so strong it seems that the force of my heart might well shift the world on its axis. Love is to be shouted from the rooftops; anger is to be no small irritation but a smoldering rage. Sadness is to be felt keenly and deeply, like the cut of a freshly sharpened knife, and beneath everything, every feeling, even happiness and joy, can be found a long streak of melancholy. That’s the Romantic in me, and he still lives within, sometimes under careful guard but at other times nearly allowed complete control.
Oh, yeah, I relate to all of that… especially the melancholy streak. Just another would-be Byron, that’s me.
Beautifully written, but the Cynic in me says, Isn’t that how everybody would like to perceive themselves?
Wordsworth knew what you’re talking about, too:
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
(from “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”)
Ah, Ilya, you cynics have to drain all the fun out of everything, don’t you? 😉
Robert: nice verse. I envy your ability to recall those things at just the right times… I can do the same thing, of course, with movie dialogue, but that doesn’t carry quite the same dignified cachet, now, does it?