Recent Developments in European Thought by Various
page 110 of 310 (35%)
page 110 of 310 (35%)
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transferred from the old king--left with not an inch of king in him--to
a glorious young Artemis-Goneril? But among our English Georgians this tense iconoclastic note is rare. Their detachment from what they repudiate is not fanatical or ascetic; it is conveyed less in invective than in paradox and irony; their temper is not that which flies to the wilderness and dresses in camel hair, but of mariners putting out to the unknown and bidding a not unfriendly good-bye at the shore. The temper of adventure is deeply ingrained in the new romance as in the old; the very word adventure is saturated with a sentiment very congenial to us both for better and worse; it quickens the hero in us and flatters the devil-may-care. In its simplest form the temper of adventure has given us the profusion of pleasant verses which we know as the poetry of 'vagabondage' and 'the open road'. The point is too familiar to be dwelt on, and has been admirably illustrated and discussed by Mr. McDowall. George Borrow, prince of vagabonds, Stevenson, the 'Ariel', with his 'Vagabond-song'-- 'All I seek the heaven above, And the road below me', and a few less vocal swallows, anticipated the more sustained flights and melodies of to-day, while Borrow's wonderful company of vagabond heroes and heroines is similarly premonitory of the alluring gipsies and circus-clowns of our Georgian poetry. Sometimes a traditional motive is creatively transformed; as when Father Time, the solemn shadow with admonitory hour-glass, appears in Mr. Hodgson's poem as an old gipsy pitching his caravan 'only a moment and off once again'. |
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