#romantics tag

[greenfinches]

iasip except it takes place in 1800s england and focuses on the lives of four friends, failing poets, and morally ambiguous chaotic gays: john keats, george byron, mary shelley, and percy shelley,

[greenfinches]

small brain: percy shelley

galaxy brain: mary shelley

[greenfinches]

hi everyone. please bear with me while i explain today’s hot take

• john faustus, a character from kit marlowe’s #classic piece of jacobean theatre dr faustus, canonically went to college in wittenberg

• hamlet, a character from billy shakes’ #classic piece of elizabethan theatre hamlet, also canonically went to college in wittenberg

• faustus and hamlet went to the same university. gays instinctively flock together and since faustus and hamlet are both undeniably too dramatic to be straight, it can be safely assumed that they’d meet

• just to recap: john faustus, the guy who LITERALLY, honest to christ, summoned a 100% organic fresh from hell demon due to a killer combo of loneliness and horniness and somehow thought this was a good idea, went to college with hamlet, the tragic twink with daddy issues and a ghosthunting hobby

• so we got two gays. two gays flocking together in wittenberg. presumably spending their days acting out the medieval equivalent of buzzfeed unsolved

• where am i going with this, u ask

• honestly?? nowhere. i just want everyone 2 know that it is my belief that john faustus was hamlet’s college bf

• hamlet? gay. faustus? gay. ghost adventures au? essential to my survival

• thanks for coming to my ted talk

[hunterofthedusk]

i just remembered the "poets are always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions" quote and now i am thinking about byron, high off his ass, sticking his "emotions" into inanimate objects. shelley and keats are yelling at him to stop. but byron doesn't listen to them, he just feels.

[greenfinches]

some fun facts about percy bysshe shelley, romantic poet and absolute cock

part of the Sexually Ambiguous Romantic Poets Clique who all lived close to each other in italy during 1822. caused and took part in a lot of drama. probably kissed byron while drunk at least once

attended the infamous geneva sleepover of 1816

he once sealed a copy of a political flyer he wrote in a bottle and jsut. threw it in a river (???) and then he put another copy in a hot air balloon and let it fly away (???????) 

Activism™

consistently dealt with his problems by eloping to foreign countries and hoping no-one would notice 

eg. in 1814 percy decided to drop everything and Start A New Life in switzerland with mary shelley and her sister claire. they sailed to mainland europe and walked from france to switzerland. on foot. and then six weeks later they came back to england bc they were nearly broke and percy had sprained his ankle.

take comfort from the fact that you will never be as extra as percy shelley was in 1814

while at eton he became interested in science, acquired an electrostatic generator and used it to charge the door handle of his dorm room to impress his friends. at one point he accidentally electrocuted a teacher. his clothing is described as “constantly stained and corroded with acids”. I’m 90% sure mary shelley got the inspiration for victor edgelord frankenstein from her husband. what the fuck, percy

legend has it that he only attended one (1) lecture at oxford. a single lecture. that’s it. there isn’t strictly a source for this but I like to believe it’s at least partially true bc it’s so fucking funny to me

[percy voice] ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

in conclusion: if you ever feel like your life is a wreck remember percy shelley and feel Consoled

[bctrogues]

I was reading your tags about 'The Funeral of Shelley' and you mentioned that was not how that happened; that painting is idealistic. And, well isn't that all that Romanticism is about? Idealization? Of women, of love, of the past, of the society... Well you may know a lot more about romanticism than me, but I'm just curious. Why does it annoys you if that's the main idea of Romanticism?

That’s a common misconception, actually. Romanticism as a movement is not the same thing we think of when we talk of romanticising something; as a movement, the main idea was to place strong emphasis on intense emotion and translate it into an aesthetic experience, whereas romanticising something is trying to make it ideal and perfect to the point where it stops being what it really is and becomes a figment of the imagination. I suppose it can be said the common denominator between the two is elevating its subject to something other than it might have been at first, but Romanticism held no illusions about its subject, recognising that nothing is black and white and often operating in the grey area in between. 

See, at its core Romanticism wasn’t about trying to make things perfect and pretty; it was about creating a deeply emotional reaction by stimulating the audience with shocking and new subjects that weren’t viewed as proper by its contemporary society, opposing itself to the rigid rules of classicism, the movement that preceded it. The idea of love was a lot more abstract in that time than what we expect today, especially in poetry, and a lot of influence also came from the medieval period’s idea of courtly love.

The way I see it, especially when it comes to British Romanticism and the younger three of the great poets (Byron, Shelley, Keats), I wouldn’t say they romanticised much in their creation. Byron’s archetype of a hero was flawed and comfortably so, the idealization he often exhibits came from the placing of such a hero as the epitome of a human being. Shelley liked to perfect the women he had a crush on in his poems reflecting on personal matters, but was not invulnerable to noticing their faults, especially when they affected him directly. Keats didn’t deal much in interpersonal relationships in his works; most of his romantically inclined quotes are from private letters to Fanny Brawne. 

They were hardly romantics, but they were, in the end, Romantics. So yes, they all valued intensity and deep, great emotions, and they were all idealistic at one point in their lives, but if any of them was inclined towards romanticising experiences, it was Byron and Byron alone. 

And he’s an interesting figure in himself: although he was a Romantic writer, he often agonized about his works not adhering to Augustan principles, which he considered the best ever, basically. He is also interesting on a personal level, because he’s widely considered the first modern superstar: he had a whole public persona created to scandalize society, and sometimes it was the same as who he really was, but sometimes the mask and the man differed greatly. He was also terribly insecure and often tried to compensate for that by being as vile as he could possibly be. And I love that duality about him; it’s what makes him interesting and that’s why we still know who he is, because that kind of mysterious personality and scandalizing action made him popular in his day and makes him interesting still.

Anyway, speaking of that specific painting, “The Funeral of Shelley” by Fournier, I love the painting itself because it is a beautiful depiction of an event. What I hate about it is it’s not even close to the truth. I had a similar venting session in the tags of this post, a photo of the Shelley Memorial at Oxford. The point is, the painting is from the Victorian era. It’s romantic, but it’s not Romantic. Fournier focused much more on his idea of what would make the painting aesthetically pleasing rather than the truth of the event it depicts. We don’t even really have much reliable information about the event itself: the main source is Trelawny’s memoir, and he was very much an unreliable narrator on his best days. What we do know is:

Shelley’s body was in the water for ten days and was unrecognisable because it was badly mangled; they figured out it was him was because of a book of Keats’s poems in his pocket.

Mary Shelley, who can be observed in the background of the painting, kneeling in prayer, did not attend the funeral at all: it was not customary for English women to attend funerals before the Victorian era.

Byron did not go anywhere near the funeral pyre, retreating to the beach and famously going swimming in the middle of the service.

Leigh Hunt did not attend either; he remained in his carriage.

There was a fight over who got to keep Shelley’s heart, which had miraculously not burned in the pyre. Trelawny snatched it up and gave it to Mary Shelley, who kept it on her desk till her dying day. These days, a common theory is that it wasn’t the heart at all but rather the liver or some other organ that Trelawny picked up from the ashes.

So basically what I’m trying to say is I personally have an issue with the painting because it is untruthful and inaccurate, giving gravitas to an event that was almost a farce. It adheres to Victorian principles, not Romantic ones, and sure, it makes a pretty picture but beauty is truth and truth beauty, and all that.

 But in the end it is a very subjective matter, and I probably have a more intense reaction than most about this, so I am never going to be the most rational person to ask for opinions when it comes to depicting the deaths of Byron, Shelley, and Keats. 

xx

[bctrogues]

hi Charlie, i wanted to ask you what your interpretation of "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," was. i'm studying Keats in class and i remembered you liked his poetry, so i thought it'd be interesting to hear your opinion.

Well, he’s not my number one, per se, but yeah, I like Keats well enough. 

Let’s look at that line in context. It’s from the final stanza of Ode to a Grecian Urn and it’s one of the most enigmatic things Keats has written, in my opinion. 

When old age shall this generation waste,                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woeThan ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

One of the big arguments is who is it addressed to? Is it the poet speaking to the urn or the urn speaking to the poet? Personally speaking, I’ve always interpreted it as the poet speaking to the urn, but there are quite a few others who see it the other way round. 

And if it’s the poet speaking to the urn, the meaning is simple: the urn is truthful in its imagery and thus beautiful, and the other way round. Its beauty comes from its truth; the truth it speaks of a time gone by, the truth it speaks of whoever made it the way it is. Its beauty and truth are simple, though, unbound by the complications of the human condition: it doesn’t need to know of anything other than what it contains in itself.

If it’s the urn speaking to the poet, however, things get a bit trickier. The phrase loses its simplicity: suddenly, it’s an utterance from beyond the boundaries of humanity, hinting that truth and beauty are the same thing. There’s truth to be found in beauty and vice versa, and that’s knowledge that will endure for as long as humanity does and as long as we create things like the urn to carry that message on. It’s saying we don’t need to know anything else besides that as long as we’re here and we’re alive. 

I can’t put it any better than this because I have a lot of jumbled thoughts about this but... I hope I helped a bit?

xx

[bctrogues]

not rly a ~fandom pr say but the romantics lol

my beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world fave: 

fck i don’t even know? mary shelley? probably? they were all kinda dicks sometimes though so

my trash-shit fave: 

hello BYRON

my I love to hate them fave: 

i wanna say leigh hunt but tbh hating him would be like hating a puppy so i’ll say wordsworth for reasons i don’t even know

my I hate to love them fave:

eh byron again probably he was a right honourable tit imho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

my I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire non-fave:

edward john trelawny like xcuse me but ugh

my I didn’t care about them either way at first but the fandom makes such a big deal about them now I can’t stand them non-fave:

idk i don’t think i have one of those?

my I could take them or leave them kinda (non-)fave:

i’m so gonna get hate for this but i’ll say keats? like i like him and all but if i had to choose two of my BSK squad i’d leave keats out 

my I will go down with this ship and I won’t put my hands up and surrender, there will be no white flag above my door. I’m in love and always will be fave ship:

hold me the fuck down if you’re talking about mary and percy shelley because i will attack you if you even try to insinuate it wasn’t true love irl because it was it absolutely was i’m going to cry

my dirtybadwrong fave ship:

mm kiiiiinda byron and augusta leigh i guess? like the whole incest angle is a bit icky but like they were p much soulm8s so

my they’re cute together and I dig them but I’m not all that terribly invested kinda fave ship:

i can’t think of one??? 

my I didn’t care about this ship either way at first but the fandom makes such a big deal about it now I can’t stand it non-fave ship:

again i can’t think of one?

my MAKE IT STOP non-fave ship:

clap ur hands if u can’t think of one bc i’m clapping right now

xx