BRIGHT STAR
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
A friend sent me this quotation from William Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’ without comment, and it came at a time when I was watching the early episodes of Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ on television. The tone of Wordsworth’s stanza, full of yearning for the innocent vision of youth, was a welcome contrast to the more acrid tenor of the highly praised book about an addictive relationship between two young Irish people. I didn’t dislike its style or content, but ‘Normal People’ failed to engage me, and I had been wondering if this might be because my cultural and social values might now be radically out of step with most mainstream thinking. The Wordsworth poem confirmed that this was probably so. As I thought about it, an observation from an Irish journalist had come to mind; in response to a remark by a male colleague in another context, she said ‘perhaps this is the first Irish generation who have purposely opted out of tormenting themselves by searching for some unattainable greater meaning, and who have chosen instead just to live’.
If Rooney were to dispute the suggestion that the main characters in her book are not concerned with ‘meaning’ in their relationship it would probably be because Marianne and Connell are committed to finding an appropriate place for themselves in society; actions and attitudes are described in terms of consumerism, class difference, and their generation’s sense of helplessness in the face of current problems of social mobility. When ‘The New Yorker’ commented, in its profile of the author, that she is 'writing novels of manners about an era in which the expectations of caring for others no longer obtains, in which it is easier to wreck a home than to own one’, the barb may have been intentional, as the writer also adds that ‘one of the unusual pleasures of Rooney’s novels is watching young women engage in casual intellectual hooliganism, demolishing every mediocrity that crosses their paths, just for the fun of it’. Rooney comes across in the article as clever, quick-witted, impatient, and opinionated, and these qualities pervade ‘Normal People’. Some reviews have mentioned its sense of resignation, emotional wariness, and existential emptiness, and it is true that although Marianne and Connell develop intermittent understanding and dependence on one other, real affection seems out-of-reach, if not absent. The dialogue in the book is sharp, chilly, and reductive, utterly different from the underlying warmth and idealism in J.D.Salinger’s writing, to which it is often compared.
The melancholia in Wordsworth’s verse and the compulsive relationship in ‘Normal People’ brought me, through a process of loose association, to the recollection of Jane Campion’s lovely film ‘Bright Star’, which is about the intense friendship between the poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne. ‘The Guardian’ pointed out in a review that the film is ‘defiantly, unfashionably, about the vocation of romantic love’, and in its unabashed beauty and sadness ‘Bright Star’ is far from typical of Campion’s work, which is usually more severe. The film is undeniably affecting, and although it skirts the boundary of sentimentality, Campion manages to judge its tone with great delicacy and restraint. There is only one scene that involves close physical intimacy between Keats and Fanny Brawne, and even then it is muted and reticent; as in another moment in the picture, when they communicate with each other by knocking on the wall between them, a barrier keeps them apart, but this veil of difference simply serves to emphasise their closeness.
I was reminded, when I watched the film again, of ‘Keats and Embarrassment’, a book I bought in 1974, at a time when I was becoming involved in my first intense and overwrought relationship. Its author, Christopher Ricks, suggests that the poet was especially sensitive to embarrassment, which he defines as ‘a constrained feeling or manner arising from bashfulness and timidity’, and Keats certainly suffered acute awkwardness when it came to his involvement with Fanny. This had its causes in social and cultural inhibitions, and perhaps in anxiety about his own emotional vulnerability, but Keats’ ‘embarrassment’ seems not to have been the source of particular unhappiness. His troubles, about which he rarely complained, were of a different kind.
Some academic critics have proposed that Keats used his poetry as a way of escaping from the demands and banalities of everyday life; others have suggested that his fluid and unbounded sense of self, as well as his commitment to ‘negative capability’, uncertainty, and doubt all indicate a particularly ‘feminine’ sense of male identity. These observations are plausible, but I’m inclined to believe that Keats’ feelings and temperament are far from unusual. On a visit to London some months after first watching ‘Bright Star’, I went to Keats’ house in Hampstead and strolled around the Heath; as I did so I remembered the late photographs of Nick Drake that were taken nearby. Today’s cultural norms would have it that both Keats and Drake (probably the most classically Romantic of singer-songwriters) were too thin-skinned for their own good, and that some hard-headed pragmatism would have helped them to avoid their sadness and - possibly - the tragic endings to their short lives. True as this may be, and although it must be admitted that they paid a high price for their fine feelings, much beauty and loveliness would have been lost.
Some references:
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
A friend sent me this quotation from William Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’ without comment, and it came at a time when I was watching the early episodes of Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ on television. The tone of Wordsworth’s stanza, full of yearning for the innocent vision of youth, was a welcome contrast to the more acrid tenor of the highly praised book about an addictive relationship between two young Irish people. I didn’t dislike its style or content, but ‘Normal People’ failed to engage me, and I had been wondering if this might be because my cultural and social values might now be radically out of step with most mainstream thinking. The Wordsworth poem confirmed that this was probably so. As I thought about it, an observation from an Irish journalist had come to mind; in response to a remark by a male colleague in another context, she said ‘perhaps this is the first Irish generation who have purposely opted out of tormenting themselves by searching for some unattainable greater meaning, and who have chosen instead just to live’.
If Rooney were to dispute the suggestion that the main characters in her book are not concerned with ‘meaning’ in their relationship it would probably be because Marianne and Connell are committed to finding an appropriate place for themselves in society; actions and attitudes are described in terms of consumerism, class difference, and their generation’s sense of helplessness in the face of current problems of social mobility. When ‘The New Yorker’ commented, in its profile of the author, that she is 'writing novels of manners about an era in which the expectations of caring for others no longer obtains, in which it is easier to wreck a home than to own one’, the barb may have been intentional, as the writer also adds that ‘one of the unusual pleasures of Rooney’s novels is watching young women engage in casual intellectual hooliganism, demolishing every mediocrity that crosses their paths, just for the fun of it’. Rooney comes across in the article as clever, quick-witted, impatient, and opinionated, and these qualities pervade ‘Normal People’. Some reviews have mentioned its sense of resignation, emotional wariness, and existential emptiness, and it is true that although Marianne and Connell develop intermittent understanding and dependence on one other, real affection seems out-of-reach, if not absent. The dialogue in the book is sharp, chilly, and reductive, utterly different from the underlying warmth and idealism in J.D.Salinger’s writing, to which it is often compared.
The melancholia in Wordsworth’s verse and the compulsive relationship in ‘Normal People’ brought me, through a process of loose association, to the recollection of Jane Campion’s lovely film ‘Bright Star’, which is about the intense friendship between the poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne. ‘The Guardian’ pointed out in a review that the film is ‘defiantly, unfashionably, about the vocation of romantic love’, and in its unabashed beauty and sadness ‘Bright Star’ is far from typical of Campion’s work, which is usually more severe. The film is undeniably affecting, and although it skirts the boundary of sentimentality, Campion manages to judge its tone with great delicacy and restraint. There is only one scene that involves close physical intimacy between Keats and Fanny Brawne, and even then it is muted and reticent; as in another moment in the picture, when they communicate with each other by knocking on the wall between them, a barrier keeps them apart, but this veil of difference simply serves to emphasise their closeness.
I was reminded, when I watched the film again, of ‘Keats and Embarrassment’, a book I bought in 1974, at a time when I was becoming involved in my first intense and overwrought relationship. Its author, Christopher Ricks, suggests that the poet was especially sensitive to embarrassment, which he defines as ‘a constrained feeling or manner arising from bashfulness and timidity’, and Keats certainly suffered acute awkwardness when it came to his involvement with Fanny. This had its causes in social and cultural inhibitions, and perhaps in anxiety about his own emotional vulnerability, but Keats’ ‘embarrassment’ seems not to have been the source of particular unhappiness. His troubles, about which he rarely complained, were of a different kind.
Some academic critics have proposed that Keats used his poetry as a way of escaping from the demands and banalities of everyday life; others have suggested that his fluid and unbounded sense of self, as well as his commitment to ‘negative capability’, uncertainty, and doubt all indicate a particularly ‘feminine’ sense of male identity. These observations are plausible, but I’m inclined to believe that Keats’ feelings and temperament are far from unusual. On a visit to London some months after first watching ‘Bright Star’, I went to Keats’ house in Hampstead and strolled around the Heath; as I did so I remembered the late photographs of Nick Drake that were taken nearby. Today’s cultural norms would have it that both Keats and Drake (probably the most classically Romantic of singer-songwriters) were too thin-skinned for their own good, and that some hard-headed pragmatism would have helped them to avoid their sadness and - possibly - the tragic endings to their short lives. True as this may be, and although it must be admitted that they paid a high price for their fine feelings, much beauty and loveliness would have been lost.
Some references: