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A Journal of Romance The Oxford dictionary defines romance as an atmosphere or tendency characterized by a sense of remoteness from or idealization of everyday life. The same book goes on to say that it also a prevailing sense of wonder or mystery surrounding the mutual attraction in a love affair. Every romance follows its own road. Some will end quickly, others last longer but ultimately fizzle or explode at the end, and a favoured few last a life time and beyond.
So how do poets give us this sense of wonder and mystery? Often by extremes of language, by allegory and symbolism. These symbols are not just seen as representing the thing or person portrayed, but for the poet they really do seem to become the thing described. An example of this is found in Erica Jong's Bloody Men when she describes suitable men as being like buses waiting for ages and then being spoilt for choice. She goes on with the analogy describing them as flashing indicators and having direction signs that she tries to read. In her mind she really does seem to see them as vehicles offering her a ride, which is perhaps what they are in the short term.
Sir Walter Raleigh on the other hand described love as an enduring fire an image I find easier to cope with. A fire flares up and then gradually dies down. It requires fuel and work if it is to be maintained. It requires our attention. And finally of course every fire dies. It may deliberately put out because it is no longer wanted, perhaps because there is no more fuel or it dies because it is neglected and gets clogged up until finally it is extinguished.
This image of romance is perhaps the one that more of us can relate to. The loved one is often pictured as being perfect and capable of causing phenomena that would be otherwise impossible. John Clare for instance describes the effect of first love as my heart has left its dwelling place and can return no more. In the same poem he describes other physical effects his face becomes pale and his legs refuse to work. Though we may not use the same language isnt it true that when we first fall in love it seems to cause physical as well as mental and emotional changes.
Robert Graves saw it in the same physical way when he described love in Symptoms of Love as being like migraine as it affected his vision. In other words he now saw the world differently because of the fact of his love. Love causes us to do things we wouldnt normally do as when Wendy Cope in Going Too Far describes herself hugging the telephone directory just because her loved ones name is inscribed in it. Not all romances last, and then too imagery plays its part as when Ezra Pound described a cooling love affair as like a bath of water gradually going cold and becoming more useless and unpleasant.
When the hot water goes out or goes tepid So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, Some poets seem to depart from the unreality of romance into very objective views, but these do not stop them being in love. An excellent example is William Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 describes his lady as having hair like wire and reeking breath, yet he still describes her as his love. His love is firmly grounded in normal life, and reminds me of Herricks description in No Loathsomeness in love of a very ugly lady indeed, but such objectiveness is unusual in poets, and even in Shakespeare's work for sonnet 137 he admits to the familiar symptoms of being blinded by love, giving him a false image of what is there plainly in front of him. The sense of remoteness from everyday life is exemplified by Eeva Kilpi who tells how a few words shatter her entire existence Tell me right away if Im disturbing you he said. To the rest of us these words would have been almost disregarded as just polite conversation. But for her the effect is life changing because of the person who says them and the way that she perceives him.
Havent we all said I dont know what she (or he) sees in him (or her). The lover sees the object of their affections in a way differently to how the rest of us see them. Romance isnt all positive and the poets describe all aspects of the subject from joy to despair. W. H. Auden's Stop the Clocks describes how he felt when his lover died.
He wanted everything else to stop, the clocks, the phones, the dog and could see no way forward. When someone dies we know that life has to go on, yet dont see the point, at least in the immediate period of shock and I think this is exemplified in this poem. So we see that the poets have described every aspect of romance the suddenness and violence almost of its onset as in Clares poem of first love, the life changing effects as we see the world through a glass clouded by thoughts of the loved one. The despair when it ends, whether suddenly or as a gradual decline. They describe both the negative and the positive aspects of the subject. And always they have something new to say about a subject that is essentially the same as it always was.
So if the subject is always the same what is the attraction, both for writers and readers? Its universality of course. We all either fall in love, are in love, have been in love or wish we had been. The human being who falls outside these feelings is a very unusual one. We all feel that we have something to say on the subject, but for many of us the poets say it better than we ever can. It is something we all think we will, are or have experienced and so romantic poetry is an ever popular subject.
Sources Books Auden, W. H. , Stop All the Clocks, Collected Poems of W. H. Auden Vintage 1991 Cope, Wendy, Bloody Men from Serious Concerns Faber and Faber, 1992 Cope, Wendy, 'Going too far' from 'Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Faber and Faber 1986 Graves, Robert Symptoms of Love from Complete poems by Robert Graves, Carcenet Press Ltd, 1985 Hanks, Patrick, chief editor, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary Oxford University Press 1996 Kilpi, Eeva, 'Tell me right away... , from ' 101 poems to help you understand men (and women) ' ed. Daisy Goodwin, Harper Collins, 2002 Pound, Ezra, The Bath Tub included by editor Armitage, Simon in Short and Sweet, 101 Very Short Poems Faber and Faber 1999 Shakespeare, William, Sonnet 130 The Complete Works of Shakespeare Spring Books, Middlesex 1958 Electronic Sources Herrick, Robert No loathsomeness in love web retrieved 9 th March 2007 Clare, John, First Love web retrieved 8 th March 2007 Raleigh, Sir Walter But true love is. web retrieved 8 th March 2007
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