Childhood - The Beginning and End of Romanticism

When I was a child I was very imaginative and creative. I used to always read adventure books or watch movies and make believe myself into these stories. Something that contributed to my imaginative streak was the setting of my childhood home. My house backed up into pretty substantial wooded area with a creek running through the very middle of it. We had probably about 50 acres of land that I could explore. I remember these woods fondly. There was something magical about them. The way the light shot through the trees made everything seem so full of wonder. I remember hearing the sound of the leaves crunching under my feet and the way it felt to climb all those trees. I felt as though I was on top of the world.

My mom always told me I could go explore as long as I stayed within a certain radius around our house. Once, after reading Bridge to Terabithia, which was one of my favorite books as a kid, I spent hours down by the creek trying to make a bridge across it to get over to the marshy land on the other side that I called Terabithia. I also remember having an imaginary friend who was a fairy that lived in the woods. In the winters the creek would freeze over and become an ice skating rink for my family and me. As we skated I would be reminded of the way the changing seasons could completely shift the woods from one form to another. As I grew older our woods turned from a place of wonder, imagination, and excitement, to a serine beautiful place. It became a place to get away from the world and escape for a little while. I would take walks in the woods to reflect on my life or just climb to the top of a tree to admire the beauty. It was so quite except for the sounds of the birds singing and the trees swaying in the wind.

Even though it was still a beautiful place, the woods lost much of their magic when I entered high school. I was now old enough to have a lot of homework and less time to spend outside in the woods. I was also old enough to know that the stories I entertained as a child were just stories and the woods was just a small parcel of land caught in between two neighborhoods. The childlike ability to imagine new worlds in a world I saw every day almost completely vanished. I started to realize that in the summer the woods was a bug ridden place and in the winter it was cold. The comforts I found in the freedom of the woods were replaced by comfy chairs and sleep. Some days I would stand at the edge of the woods and long for the time that I could appreciate their luster, the time where the world seemed a little more innocent and fun.

I didn’t realize until now that this experience could be considered romantic in nature. Just as the romantic period was a reaction to the normal world of soot filled cities, my adventures in the woods were a reaction to my normal life. I went there to escape, to fill my life with stories of different places, and to explore. The closer I got to nature, the more alive I felt. Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that this is the state of nature. The connection I felt with the natural world as a child almost echoes his philosophy. William Wordsworth’s poem, Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood sums up what happens with this connection disappears.

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.

 

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

 

In a world where youth only lasts for most until adulthood, much of the wonder of life with nature is gone after that transition. Wordsworth says “The things which I have seen I now can see no more.” This relates to the fact that even though I found the woods as a beautiful place, when I got older the magic of this was gone. As I went into high school and learned how the “civilized” world works, I became less satisfied with the simplistic nature of the woods. My imagination gave in to knowledge and my innocence drifted away. The world became a different, less satisfying place than it was when I was younger. This was mostly because of the very Hobbesian education I was given. The state of nature in our society’s eyes is cruel and it is up to higher education to change that. The consequence of that however is that it strips away our romanticism. It takes away our ability to be curious, creative, and imaginative. The solid structure teaches us that there is a right or wrong answer to most everything and if there isn’t one known to us it is our job to find out what it is. This logical approach to teaching places less importance on feelings and intuition and more on what’s right and what’s wrong. Our society has become far detached with the state of nature and it is important for us as well rounded individuals to maintain that connection with our romantic roots.