What is romantic? It isn't walking on the beach

(This was not a writing exercise. Rather, it was written on the plane going from Ireland to the U.S. But I thought it fit with the spirit of this blog.)
Romance, the idea of what is romantic, is much on my mind these days.

I speak of romance removed from the sentimental. It can stand on its own, an idea crafted of moonlight, shadow, mystery, and dappled darkness.

A friend, a man, when asked what is romantic, mentions candlelight. That seems trite, but he is close; candlelight figures into the equation, but not as you'd expect. What is romantic is what the candlelight is not -- the chiaroscuro, the shadows that approach and flee, the always shifting perception of what is in the light, what is illuminated and what is not. That is the nature of romance -- things viewed dimly, not completely understood, glimpses of the numinous, gasps but not grasps of meaning.

What is romantic? Certain shapes come to mind. Ovals, ellipses, toruses -- things that have no beginning or end but are continual, seamless, infinite. You may view such shapes as female. Such shapes may move in like form from one world to the next. What if romance is a pillar that holds up the edge of the veil between worlds? The dispassionate, scientific mind can’t fathom that concept, will deny it, as it denies the unmeasurable essence of the spiritual, the supernatural, things that shift shape or meaning without apparent cause or necessity -- such as the quality of sunlight on a wall or any human emotion. Thinkers look for pattern, and when they can’t find it, they posit chaos. Magic or its milder cousins -- mystery, inscrutability, hiddenness -- fill no role in their universe.

For the romantic, magic is everything. It allows the possible to slip the bounds of the present. Time can move back and forth from the conceptual to the real like the candle flame that flickers at the slightest disturbance in the air around it.

A step away from reality, romance is less a state of being and more a way of seeing.

In teaching my children how to see, I introduced them to some part of the romantic vision. I encouraged them to look, really look, at a scene or a picture, to see what was really there, to discern patterns that are not immediately evident but which become obvious once they are noted. Only when you have thus taken it apart can you put the scene back together, reconstruct it in your eye, your mind, the way that you desire. The romance of your own vision then overlays what the eye brings to you.

Seeing is the eye in a state of flux. Parallax is one manifestation of this. It absolutely makes a difference which angle you view things from -- yet the scene is the same. The stones haven’t moved. Only the eye and the human mind behind it have changed.

In that same way, transformation and motion dance around a brick-and-mortar present, the vortices of thought and knowledge whirling and dissipating in the flow -- but is that flow the dance of experience, or of reality or of vast, unexplored, unknowable human consciousness?

Some books lately have tried to put some of these numinous, romantic, inexpressible feelings into scientific context, to explain them as glimpses, perhaps, of other dimensions. The exercise is rather like trying to pet a lion. In our Western way of thought, the lion of romance, with its uncombed mane, is too wild, too unpredictable; we want to tame it, to comb out all the burrs.

Even in human relations, friends and family but especially lovers, this is true. We can’t be content just to let the romance flicker, here and how and then and forever, but we must try to trim the wick, to fiddle with the way the wax falls. Not every step falls on firm ground, but we want the way to be smooth and unambiguous. So we question, we nip and tuck and adjust, we discuss and examine and dissect. Other, messy emotions get in the way. The flame flickers, and the disturbance in the air around it may extinguish it.

Secrets are the essence of romance, things that are hidden or only dimly half-viewed. Held up to the bright, clinical light of day, romance burns off like evanescent fog. That’s why night, moonlight, places where things can be hidden, can appear to be other than they are, can have their other -- maybe not truer, but other -- natures showing forth.

What is romance? The untamed lion, the flickering candle, the entrance to the cave that is the secret, half in and half out of the sunlight? Thoughts and ideas that slip beyond the veil sometimes reappear, often in different raiment. The thoughts and images themselves move from the possible to the real and back again. I feel as if I am writing in a hall of mirrors, each idea itself reflected and refracted, some distorted by flaws in the glass.

Romance. Magic. These are such loaded words. They weep sentimentality, they smell of wishes unfulfilled. Magic is old and hoary, frosted with icings of evil, want and frustration. Romance is sullied, as I have said, with the smudginess of sentimentality. But if we could break through the crust of old associations, these words are lamps that ease the way in a sterile, dispassionate modern age. They are moonbeams on sunlit pavement.


(Originally penned -- or cursored -- 25 September 2001)