After all, the conversations we have every day, from Sunday brunch gossip to water cooler talk and barista banter, represent some of the most potent social glues holding communities together in America. Of course, we do not only find escape in following the lives of fictional others. Whether it’s Ross Geller or Superman, these are figures whose desires and destinies are more limited by the screenwriter’s pen than traffic or bounced checks. For instance, we watch movies and television sitcoms, melding ourselves into the characters onscreen who seemingly never have to pay rent or file a W-4. Lucia?Īs escaping to the Caribbean is rarely a viable course of action - at least for those of us who wish to maintain our obligations, livelihoods, and grade point averages - we naturally drift to less ambitious ways to abscond from the diktats of reality. To put it another way: How many of you have ever had the desire, however fleeting, to drop everything and take a two-week sojourn to St. Even so, there certainly lies in all of us to some degree, a tiny Mephistophelian voice that, rather than tempt with material pleasures, goads us to gleefully abandon the present. It comes to no surprise then that we often use our brief moments of respite to mentally teleport to a fantastical world, where all is forgiven and life is a lot more simple and serene.įor those more burdened than others by the drudgery of daily life, this escapist itch is predictably stronger. Defined by motion and unforgiving of sloth, the demands of modernity offer but few opportunities to stop and catch one’s breath. So waxed Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold” about what surely has been the unspoken sentiment of many. I love not man the less, but Nature more…” The first four lines of Byron's verse are beautiful because they are so evocative the last five lines are beautiful because they are so full of wisdom and insight.“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, It is beautifully evocative and romantic, but it is also somewhat untruthful for it is impossible for us to be rolled sound in Earth's diurnal course in the same way that, for instance, a wild animal is. Wordsworth, in a short poem which begins "A slumber did my spirit seal" wrote about his soul being "rolled sound in Earth's diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees". Yet this striving to conceal has presumably led to the disjunct with Nature, which means we can only hold "interviews" with our true selves, that we must attempt to "steal" wisdom and insight which ought to be ours by right, and that we cannot express what we truly are. He states that modern humans have tried (with only partial success) to "conceal" their essence and origins. But he is also unsure of the how and the wherefore of his Nature being, using the words "may be". Byron is asserting the belief that our origins and essence lie in Nature, that we are from Nature, that perhaps we ought to be one with Nature, and that therefore this mingling with the Universe is a pleasurable, wonderful thing. What Byron is saying is that although there is a pleasure in the pathless woods etc., although we are drawn to Nature because Nature is "all I may be, or have been before", there is also a clear disjunct between modern humans and Nature. Yet we wouldn't be surprised if John Donne came up with such a remark, so it certainly isn't because it is "too modern". I think people are only complaining that it doesn't sound right or sounds too modern because it de-romanticises the opening lines. I think use of the word interview is brilliant and demonstrates the greatness of the poet.
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