Poetry

Epic and Autobiographical (A Versified Finale) An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s 3

by Carl Halling
08/25/14
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A Perfectly Foolish Young Man I Wanted Part One Book Five Epic and Autobiographical (A Versified Finale) An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s 3

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

Verses for Tragic Lovers

Adolphe and Ellenore

Is based on an essay I wrote

Around 1983

For a former mentor at university,

Who sadly died in 2008,

And who features

As Dr Elizabeth Lang

In various autobiographical

Writings of mine.

It concerns the protagonist

Of French writer Benjamin Constant's

1816 novel Adolphe,

(Which its author emphatically insisted

Was not autobiographical;

Nor a roman a clef),

Who is a prototypal victim

Of what has been termed

Mal du siecle,

Or the sickness of the century...

Which, born in the wake of the Revolution,

And arising from a variety of causes,

Political, social, and spiritual,

Depending on the sufferer in question,

Produced such qualities as

Melancholy and acedia,

And a perpetual sense of exile,

Of alienation,

That found special favour within

The great Romantic movement in the arts.

Although as a phenomenon,

Weltschmerz was hardly a novel one,

For after all, does the Word of God not say

That there is nothing new

Under the sun?

But it was possibly unprecedented

In terms of pervasiveness and intensity

At the height of Romanticism

And I'd have no hesitation

In labelling it tragic as a result.

In terms of my own pre-Christian self,

It was almost overwhelmingly powerful,

And so believer that I am, I feel compelled

To expose it as potentially ruinous,

For after all, is it not still with us

In one way or another,

Having been passed on by the Romantics

To kindred movements coming in their wake,

From the Spirit of Decadence

To the Rock Revolution?

And could it not also be said

That the peculiar notion

Fostered by Romanticism

Of the artist as a spirit

Set apart for some special purpose,

Of which pain is so often an essential part

Is also still among us?

Of course it could,

And I'd have no hesitation

In labelling it tragic as a result.

This Mal du siecle

Is surely especially melancholy

In the case of tragic lovers,

Adolphe and Ellenore,

For it results in Adolphe effectively

Drifting into a romance

With another man's mistress,

A young mother, Ellenore,

Who sacrifices everything for him

Only to discover he no longer loves her.

For Adolphe is in some respects

A work within the tradition

Of the libertine novel

Of the Age of Enlightenment,

And yet at the same time,

By no means an endorsement of libertinage.

Is rather perhaps, in many respects,

A powerful indictment of this tendency,

And thence as much a reproach

To the tradition; as a late addition to it.

And the forlorn figure of Adolphe

Was ultimately to prove influential,

Notably in Mother Russia,

Where he allegedly served in part

As model to Pushkin's fatal dandy,

The Byronic Eugene Onegin,

And if Tolstoy's Count Vronsky

Was also partially based on Adolphe,

Then there is of course a marked kinship

Between Ellenore and Anna Karenina.

In the end, though, one can only weep,

At the tragedy these eminently romantic

And sympathetic figures

Made of their lives. And I speak as one

Who was once in thrall to the tragic worldview,

But who came to view life

As something infinitely valuable,

To be lived fully under the guidance of God,

And not sacrificed like some beautiful bauble

For the bitter-sweet pleasures of the world.

Verses for Tragic Lovers Adolphe and Ellenore

Ellenore initially resists Adolphe's advances

But after a great deal of persuasion,

Agrees to see him on a regular basis,

And soon falls in love.

We know little of the physical appearance

Of Adolphe, but in all probability

He possesses the youthfully seductive charm

Of Romantic heroes,

Werther, Rene and Julien Sorel.

Ellenore initially resists Adolphe's advances

But after a great deal of persuasion,

Agrees to see him on a regular basis,

And soon falls in love.

Adolphe is preoccupied with himself

In the classic manner

Of the contemplative, melancholy,

Faintly yearning, hypersensitive,

Isolated, perceptive Romantic hero.

Ellenore initially resists Adolphe's advances

But after a great deal of persuasion,

Agrees to see him on a regular basis,

And soon falls in love.

Perhaps he is somebody who believes

That self-interest is the foundation

Of all morality, but then, he announces:

"While I was only interested in myself,

I was but feebly interested for all that."

Ellenore initially resists Adolphe's advances

But after a great deal of persuasion,

Agrees to see him on a regular basis,

And soon falls in love.

There is much genuine goodness

In Adolphe,

But much of it is subconscious,

Surfacing only

At the sight of obvious grief.

Ellenore initially resists Adolphe's advances

But after a great deal of persuasion,

Agrees to see him on a regular basis,

And soon falls in love.

The cause of this inability to feel

Spontaneously, is very probably the result

Of the complex interaction

Between a hypersensitive nature

And a brilliant if indecisive mind.

Ellenore initially resists Adolphe's advances

But after a great deal of persuasion,

Agrees to see him on a regular basis,

And soon falls in love.

By reflecting on his surroundings

To an exaggerated degree,

Adolphe feels a sort of numbness,

A premature world-weariness

Lucid thoughts and intense emotions confused.

Ellenore initially resists Adolphe's advances

But after a great deal of persuasion,

Agrees to see him on a regular basis,

And soon falls in love.