The modern romantic fails to respect the undercurrent of comedic cynicism in Austen’s works. He fails to see the dark nature of Radcliffe, Wolstonecraft, Scott, and Shelley. Frankenstein is profoundly romantic yet twisted and aberrant. It is romance at its best. Byron may be the epitome of the modern romantic’s projections and his Don Juan is a noble work. But Byron, while on the one hand a man who died for the romantic ideals of Ancient Greece was on the other a sex offender and a pederast and may have asked too much of romance. The romance of his legend is almost larger than his romantic work.
The semi-modern and modern scions of the West’s romantics were James, Wharton, Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Nabokov. Steinbeck’s The Red Pony is a mere ninety pages but possibly the most heart-rending piece of writing I’ve had the privilege to read. One critic called Nabokov’s Lolita the only convincing love story of the twentieth century, and I am inclined to believe this because the past century’s romantics sing the songs of love with forked tongues.
Romance is not extinct. There are those who bear its torch through suffocating breezes. There is Willa Cather and Ingmar Bergman and some of the more impassioned jazz musicians of our times. They are not swindlers. Their stories are the truth.
They tell me what I know, what I want romance to be. I want it to be about power and pity. About untold of desire. About the nuances and subtleties of a conversation or everyday discourse. About the passion of movement and vision. About skin and what lies beneath it. I want them to give me what I cannot have.
The modern romantic may say that through song and dance, smoke and mirrors, he works his way toward possessing the “desired’s will.” To capture the fragrance of the flower’s petal certain sacrifices must be made, and in seeking nectar the modern romantic employs the correct methods and abides by the acknowledged rules of engagement. He claims that romance is rote, its very nature is tried, and the guidelines that Homer, Shakespeare, Byron, and others set down have not changed. His claim is precisely his problem. He plays by the rules. Rules, there are none. The rules change every day, for every generation. If the modern romantic reads from a script he is just reading and not practicing the art of romance. There is no art in the modern romantic’s dance. It is rigid and sexless; it is powerless and stale. The modern romantic is an obscurant. He has no gift for the art of seduction, no sense for the original. He must do one of two things to elevate his craft: he must either return to the masters for study or reconstruct the arena of his sport. It is my assumption that he is not humble enough to seek out the former and not adroit enough to undertake the latter. If he were truly wise he would incorporate the former to broaden and to sharpen the latter. But the modern romantic has not the energy or the commitment to his trade that he grandly professes. Romance is a means to an end and not the end and the beginning in itself that it should be.
So what is the state of romance as we pass into the next century?
Deplorable, I rejoin but not irreparable. There is work to be done, structures of stone to be torn down. I have grave doubts about the likeliness of any improvements occurring. Romance today is a commodity and not the ineffable, implacable entity that it should be. The fluctuation in commercial markets moves between buyer and seller, and the trouble with romance’s stock is that neither party is able to control fully or to understand completely that their product is –by their own twisted hands- presently the currency of bargain hunters.
The problem for true romantics is that they are optimists. Under assault and bombardment, they look for a bright spot in the pall that shrouds them. I look, too. I squint; my range of sight feels myopic. Is there light, something on the horizon that will focus and overwhelm my gaze? A romantic always hopes. A human always hopes. Romance is the greatest weapon we employ to combat death. Let darkness not defeat us.
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The Elixir Of Life