Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hi, 安澜.
Hi lulu, hi everyone.
So 安澜, you know that we have been developing this new course, this new 四合一literature classics course.
Yeah, that's when we've been going through pretty much the whole of English literature very very carefully.
Yeah, and when we say English literature, we don't just mean England, we mean like English speaking.
English speaking literature.
Yeah, so I thought let's do a literature episode.
Sounds great. But like English literature is huge, which area do you want to focus on?
I would like to do the romantic poets.
Woo, yes.
就是浪漫主义诗人.
When you hear this title, you probably think "oh, it's just going to be very romantic and sentimental lyrics or like verses.
No.
No, we're gonna talk about their 狗血 life.
Yes, the romantic poets were pretty scandalous. And in some cases, pretty horrible as well.
Yeah. Well, unlike the name suggests.
Yes.
But first of all, let's clear this up.
Okay.
Romanticism as a style, as a literary style, as a period.
Yeah.
It's not as modern day would think, oh you know they're in a romantic relationship or this is so romantic. 不是我们说那种很浪漫的那种浪漫.
No. This comes from the 18 century. So this was the time of the enlightenment. And this is when people would looking at reason as being the foundation of the world.
Enlightenment是启蒙运动.
Yeah, but the romantic poets basically said no
we don't want to be enlightened.
We don't want to be enlightened. We want to focus on nature.
Want to focus on nature.
Emotion.
Mysticism, even.
Mysticism, and also the individual as well.
The individual, there's a lot of sentimentality.
There is, there is. And there's one thing you can say about the romantic poets. They were very very very individual.
You mean individualistic.
In all senses of the word individual.
A lot of them had some pretty scandalous lives like what you said就很多丑闻. Essentially they were like these sort of celebrities.
The romantic poets were among the first celebrities in history. Before then you've always had famous people like kings and warriors. But a celebrity is when people started to have fans, it was the growth of fan culture.
最早的饭圈文化。
It was.
And then people were following their scandals. Either they sort of, I guess they, either 吐槽，the other talk smack about them.
Yeah.
Or probably like young girls especially would really like follow them around.
Exactly.
So first of all, let's start with probably one of the lesser known romantic poets William Blake.
William Blake. If you're not into literature, you probably don't know, but he is very famous 威廉布莱克.
Now he was born in London in November, 1757. He was a poet, but also a painter and a printmaker. So his prints and artwork are just as known as his poems. Now he focus a lot on spirituality, he focused a lot on god, and the reason for that is he had "visions as a child".
Visions like seeing some supernatural things.
Apparently he saw angels in a tree and god looking at him through a window.
That sounds very like romantic poet.
It is. And he was also known for being a pioneer in the free love movement.
So what is free love? Is it as the name suggests that you're free to love whoever?
You are free to love whoever and...
Bed whoever.
Yes.
I see, if you didn't understand that, don't worry.
If you didn't understand that, look in the dictionary.
In poems like “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”, he focuses a lot on good and evil, innocence and experience, it's everything is a duel, everything there is two sides to everything.
Emm. It’s like the duality of things.
Exactly.
I think romantic poets, especially some of these famous or infamous ones, they seem to have this duality in them.
Yeah.
On one side, they really focus on nature, sentimentality, spirituality. It seems like they are above everyone else. They explored that part of themselves, but at the same time, they also chase like carnal things, that free love, bedding whoever.
Yes. Now William Blake, his most famous poem, is a poem called Jerusalem, and that is now considered to be the unofficial anthem of England.
哦，对. 这个我确实听到过，就是好像是一个非官方的英国国歌.
Yeah. This is a song that we sing quite a lot at sporting events and at national events and that comes from William Blake.
Pretty much every Brit knows how to sing that.
Well, I wouldn't say every, but most people.
Especially older...
Yeah.
Older, probably older generation.
Yeah, I know how to sing it, but I won't sing it.
Okay. Yeah. Please don't.
Okay.
Yeah, but William Blake it perhaps sounds like the boring one in today's bunch.
He is.
Because the next one, I'm sure you've heard of that is Lord Byron.
Now Lord Byron was definitely not boring.
拜伦. Even if you, the thing is, I think for Chinese audience, even if you have never really read Byron's poetry or you're not really into literature, but you've heard of Byron.
Yes. Now he was born, George Gordon Byron, in January 1788 and he was a poet and a nobleman.
Aristocrat.
Yeah. He wasn't very rich, but you know he was still an aristocrat. Now his life was marked by scandal and adventure. So the famous description of him, mad, bad and dangerous to know.
That is so...就是现在那种霸总们mad, bad...
They just to know
Yeah, it's basically he was of this noble beginning, right?
But he's got temper and he was also always like fighting people.
Yeah. He was disabled, he was also bulimic and he had huge body image issues.
He was disabled?
He had a club foot.
Not like hugely disabled.
No.
He's got a problem and he's bulimic. Bulimic就是贪食症。 So he had eating disorder.
He had an eating disorder. That's because he was quite tubby when he was younger and he always spent a lot of time trying to keep his weight down.
Now Byron used to do some very strange things, he used to drink out of a skull that he found.
A skull like human head.
A human skull, and he found some more skulls and turn those into flowerpots. He also had...
Pretty dark.
He also had lots lots of fans, with whom he had lots of affairs with, both men and women.
Think about a modern day celebrity who is this bad boy, 这种什么暗夜贵公子的那种形象. He might not be like the most handsome guy, but he was definitely attracting a certain crowd.
Exactly. And for Byron, it was both men and women, and his own half sister.
Oh, yeah, that one I've heard.
Yeah. Now Byron's most famous works were Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan.
Yeah, Don Juan.
So in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Byron introduced the idea of the Byronic hero, someone who is brooding, rebellious, charismatic.
Let's break that down.
Yeah.
I love this, Byronic hero, 拜伦式英雄. Brooding means they're always like not... they're always in a bad mood. 又很忧郁, 很悲观, 很怎么样. And then what was the next one?
Rebellious.
Rebellious.而且是这种要对现实不满, 要奋起抗争, 很叛逆的这种性格and characteristic. They are charming. 所以就是那种高傲、倔强、不满现实要奋起反抗那种叛逆性格, 但是又同时兼具忧郁, 孤独、悲观的这种感觉.
So, 安澜 this is like, lately, this is sort of like in my fantasy.
OK.
This kind of really sort of rebellious, arrogant man that they look like that they're gonna fight everyone. They look quite dangerous, but at the same time, they also have this sense of sentimentality. There's melancholy about them.
Load of rubbish.
其实大家现在如果看一些爽文剧什么, 这就是一个人设, 当时拜伦式英雄就是这样。
Well, to be honest, if you think about the stereotypical rock star.
Oh, yeah.
Stereotypical pop star that comes from the idea of Byron.
I wouldn't even say pop star, I would say rock star.
Yeah.
It's with this hint of sadness, but with rebellion as well.
Now it's hard to imagine, but his works were incredibly famous like people would queue up outside of bookshops, so that they can read his poems.
That is like a rock star.
He was like a rock star, and he was also one of the first writers whose works were pirated.
当时就已经有盗版了,是吧?
Yeah. But Byron fought for Greek independence, he had to leave the UK, mostly because of all the scandals. He died in Greece fighting.
That's why one of Byron's most famous portraits was like him wearing this really exotic Greek headdress.
Yeah.
All right, another person who is basically a friend of Byron's, younger friend.
Yeah.
Also I don't know if he was Byron's admirer or it's just one of his posse?
Probably one of his posse. Yeah.
This is Percy Shelley.
Percy Shelley.
雪莱. 这个名字相信很多人也都听过.
Now Shelley was a bit younger than Byron. He was born in 1792 in England. Quite wealthy. He had some quite revolutionary ideas for the time. So for example, he was expelled from Oxford for writing an essay, promoting atheism.
Atheism 就是无神论. So, This is so different from William Blake, who is completely devoted to spirituality. And then came Shelly, who is completely turned his back on...
Yeah. He was also one of the first vegetarians.
That I did not know, that I did not.
Yeah, yeah, he was one of the first vegetarians.
Leading the trend.
Yeah, but there's a bit of scandal with him as well.
A bit? he was a... not a very nice guy.
He was not a nice guy and the reason for this is his love life. Now he married a 16-year-old girl, Harriet Westbrook.
Now his father was really angry and he was cut off.
The purse string, right?
So cut off by his father that meant he didn't get any of his father's money and he lost a huge fortune.
But most people probably know his wife or his partner as Mary Shelley,就是写弗兰克斯坦的那一个. But that's later when he married Shelley, he just immediately elope with her and he abandoned his original wife and she eventually drowned herself. She killed herself.
She drowned herself when Shelley abandoned her. And Percy Shelley married Shelley only 3 weeks later.
I think she was already pregnant.
She was already pregnant, and Percy Shelley was also having a relationship with Mary's step sister as well.
Ah. These romantic poets.
Exactly.
But Shelley's poetry is known for being very beautiful. It's a lot of philosophy. And he was a passionate advocate for political and social reform.
Yeah, albeit some of these romantic poets were a bit idealistic.
Pretty well.
But what we were talking about today is not to say that they're not, they were not great poets and literary figures.
No.
It's just that their personal life, the private life is a bit messed up.
It's really messed up. And to be honest, if I met Byron or Shelley, I probably wouldn't like them as people very much.
No, Byron would probably challenge you to some sort of duel.
Exactly. Now Shelley only lived until he was 29. He was drowned in a boat accident.
Which is really, if you think about it, it's quite ironic. He abandoned his first wife and she drowned herself, and he eventually drowned. And have you heard of that story, that rumor or lore, that Shelley actually told his then wife Mary Shelley, few weeks leading up to him drowning saying that he saw another version of himself which is like a doppelganger就是那种二重身.
And in European law or in western law does seeing doppelganger, another version of yourself. It seems to be as an omen that you're going to die.
It's a sign that you are going to die soon. If you see your doppelganger.
Yeah. This one was actually quite famous. This rumor or lore was actually quite famous. So, and then a few weeks later he drowned.
Exactly.
Alright.
So that's it for the romantic poets.
The three major romantic poets. Actually we were not sure whether we should do literature related episodes, because it's not the age for literature, is it now?
No, but I think it's the age for gossip though.
Yeah.
And let's face it. Any star nowadays, whatever they do is not to be half as interesting as Lord Byron did.
And this was way before social media.
Exactly. So you think about all of these celebrities nowadays with their really tiny little scandals. No one can compare to Lord Byron.
Alright. So leave us comment in the comment section if you like sort of literary gossip and we can explore more.
Absolutely, I'd love to do that.
Yeah. On that note, thank you, 安澜for coming to the show.
Thanks, 璐璐. Thanks, everyone.
We'll see you next time.
Bye.
Bye.
