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<label for="mn-demo" class="margin-toggle"></label>
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<span class="marginnote">
<img src="images/WutheringKunstlerBanner4.png" alt="WutheringKunstlerBanner4.png">
<br>
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</p>
<section id="outline-container-org8b8830a" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org8b8830a">About the Dark Muse; Inaugural Essay</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-org8b8830a">
<img src="./images/inlandseagmharbour20220414_2.png" width="730" alt="Harbour view out to sea">
<span class="cap">The Great Inland Sea: most conductive of the Dark Muse</span>
<p>
January through September, 2024
</p>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org530237a" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org530237a">To begin</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org530237a">
<p>
(<i>Note: I began writing this in the Winter of 2024 and it is now the
Michaelmas weekend; and so my external references might shift as we
go…</i>)
</p>
<p>
Light snow drifts gently down from the low clouds draped over a misty
boreal forest. Deer in their grey winter coats process along invisible
boulevards through the fir and spruce. Ravens and crows dolefully
croak and caw back and forth. And I burn a daytime candle. Such an
ambience to convey my thoughts, my impressions and <i>feelings</i> about my
dark proclivities, my <i>Dark Muse</i>.<label id='fnr.1' for='fnr-in.1.8791831' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>1</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.1.8791831' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>1</sup>
<i>muse</i>: Originally any of the nine sister goddesses in Greek
mythology presiding over music, literature, and arts; <i>or</i> a state of
deep thought or abstraction, e.g., to enter a <i>muse</i> over a poem; <i>or</i>
a source of inspiration, e.g., <i>Jane Austen is my muse</i>.
</span>
</p>
<p>
Do you have an inexplicable fascination with things on the gloomy
side? You often find <i>dreamy</i> what others find <i>dreary</i> … as when an
overcast day brings on a strangely sanguine melancholy … or a stormy
night is magnificent in a frightening and thrilling sort of
way. Twilight is a welcome reprieve from the hectic, incessant day,
freeing your senses, calming, deepening your thoughts. You’ve paused
to gaze transfixed upon a lonely, nondescript landscape, a wild,
deserted shore, an old, abandoned cemetery. Just like a decaying,
overgrown, other-century structure makes you envious of the bats
living there. Unnatural is having to get out of heat into air
conditioning and suffer through smalltalk while drinking iced
beverages; truer it seems to come inside out of the cold and sit by a
fire in a deep, shared silence drinking hot tea. Time and again what
they find “uplifting” is piteously trite out to ruefully disappointing
for you. Panic and nausea well up when somebody is flogging
sunny-cheery; then being alone is a relief, not at all lonely. They
seem to bounce from spectacular to spectacular, while things subtle,
veiled, shadowy tenuous, understated are your druthers. Their heroes
grasp desperately at happy endings. Yours learn and grow by facing the
grim and harsh—and if it means succumbing to the thrashing, amen,
requiescat in pace, RIP, c’est la vie, time for mourning black.<label id='fnr.2' for='fnr-in.2.6439167' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>2</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.2.6439167' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>2</sup>
…e.g., Lady Dedlock’s death at the graveyard of her secret
lover in Dickens’ <i>Bleak House</i>. <br>
<img src="images/BleakHouseCemetery.png" alt="BleakHouseCemetery.png"> <br>
<br>
</span>
And so candlelight over artificial light, linen over nylon, old
architecture over new, the genial disorder of wild nature over the
forced containment of gardens. If in a city, you can’t stand anywhere
but the oldest quarter, oldest park, oldest cemetery. And yes, it
might seem a bit to ask, but wouldn’t it be grand if every month we
celebrated Halloween?… If yes to any or all of this, you might
understand what I’m trying to say here.
</p>
<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/octonimoes/art/Untitled-955543653" target="_blank"><img src="./images/graveyard1.jpg" width="730" alt="Abandoned graveyard"></a>
<span class="cap">Transfixed by an abandoned graveyard: octonimoes@DeviantArt</span>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orgbec9ad4" class="outline-4">
<h4 id="orgbec9ad4">Natural Dark, Brontëan style</h4>
<div class="outline-text-4" id="text-orgbec9ad4">
<p>
I provide here a quote from Charlotte Brontë’s <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre">Jane Eyre: An
Autobiography</a></i>. Main protagonist Jane describes the house, called
simply Moor House, and the environs of her adoptive family, the
Rivers, on the edge of the wild, presumably Yorkshire moors back
during the reign of George III<label id='fnr.3' for='fnr-in.3.7474389' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>3</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.3.7474389' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>3</sup>
The word <i>moor</i> appears forty-three times in <i>Jane Eyre</i>. After
the second or third use, I was just putty in Charlotte’s hands…
</span>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
They loved their sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique
structure, with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering
walls, its avenue of aged firs—all grown aslant under the stress of
mountain winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly—and where no
flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom—found a charm both
potent and permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind and around
their dwelling—to the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle-path
leading from their gate descended, and which wound between fern-banks
first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields
that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave sustenance to a
flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-faced
lambs—they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm of
attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its
strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the
consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell
and sweep—on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by
moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken,
and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were
to them—so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast
and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of
sunrise and sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for
me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them—wound round my
faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
… <i>the consecration of its loneliness</i> indeed. I often read
this passage just to muse upon the wistful, moody, delicately
melancholic, intentionally anti-spectacular subtleties she
describes—and how this and other choice moments set the whole tone
and mood of the book. Charlotte Brontë establishes light and dark as
equals, then works expertly with the gradient there between. The
dim, the shadows, the dark, the harsh, even at times merciless
inclemencies are features not bugs. She does not suppress dark,
perhaps knowing that if it were seen an equal to light it would
eventually prove itself the older, wiser sibling, capable of rich,
complimentary contributions.
</p>
<p>
One notable gradient boon is how she has the Moor House environs so
very abandoned, lonely, thus ultra-wild exactly because they are so
unpresuming and overlooked, so bereft of anything nature-spectacular
… as opposed to some breathtaking primordial wilderness millions of
miles away visited only by intrepid explorers.<label id='fnr.4' for='fnr-in.4.8006679' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>4</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.4.8006679' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>4</sup>
…or by modern, well-off tourists.
</span> Indeed, subtle
and unassuming become the older, wiser siblings of grand and
spectacular. Notable too how Jane arrived at Moor House—on her hands
and knees half dead from hunger and exposure, thus, adding complete
vulnerability to this sublime mix. And once recovered, she is still
every bit the underdog—relative to us today in our modern
nature-dominating high-tech, hyper-materialist world. This point is
key to what I’ll say later…
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orga4ab287" class="outline-4">
<h4 id="orga4ab287">Nature staged…</h4>
<div class="outline-text-4" id="text-orga4ab287">
<p>
The second half of my childhood was spent in Tennessee, and my
favourite place was the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smoky_Mountains_National_Park">Great Smoky Mountains National Park</a></i> high on
the ancient Appalachian Mountains border of Tennessee and North
Carolina. The <i>Smokies</i> are a federally protected, quasi-pristine
wilderness of 522,419 acres, surrounded by lesser-protected though
still completely wilderness USDA National Forest lands adding another
million or so acres. Statistics say the national park itself is the
most-visited of all U.S. national parks with nearly fourteen million
tourists per year,<label id='fnr.5' for='fnr-in.5.4693493' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>5</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.5.4693493' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>5</sup>
…more than double the next most popular, the Grand Canyon…
</span> with additional tourist attractions and
accommodations all around the park boundaries. And what are these
visitors doing? Nothing like early-nineteenth-century Jane on her
moor. Only a tiny fraction are actually out on the park’s extensive
wilderness trails hiking and camping. Most are either driving up and
down the main dissecting highway connecting Tennessee to North
Carolina or simply crowding into the visitor centres, again, per
automobile. I once visited on the Fourth of July, stopping in the main
tourist town bordering the park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where the
sidewalks were standing-room-only. But later that same day I hiked for
hours deep in the park on the main Appalachian Trail and saw not
another human… Strange as this may seem, I say Jane’s Yorkshire
moorlands are <i>real</i> nature, while the Smokies are something else,
simply because of the sheer abstraction, the artificiality of their
purpose, not to mention their being so recognised, their
well-known-ness throughout the entire world.
</p>
<p>
To be sure, the Smokies are fussed and ruled over by legion of
scientists and bureaucrats at the behest of the U.S. Department of
Interior’s National Park Service, UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention,
the International Biosphere Programme, etc., like a great research
terrarium under an invisible glass dome. Even in the remotest,
genuinely wild spots many miles from any human disturbance, the weight
of humanity’s lurking dominance, our collective mental presence is
inescapably massive… And so we have the dichotomy of discovered
versus undiscovered, exotic versus vernacular, integrated versus
detached, grounded versus abstract, thousands versus no matches to
googling. As the Rivers’ guest, Jane describes a natural and organic
connection to her moorland. And yet no modern tourist can ever expect
to become truly integrated with the Great Smoky Mountains National
Park complex as Jane was with her moorlands.<label id='fnr.6' for='fnr-in.6.7288065' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>6</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.6.7288065' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>6</sup>
Perhaps give the Smokies a second chance by reading the
pre-park fictional work <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christy_(novel)">Christy</a></i> by Catherine Marshall. She captures
something that might be called <i>Appalachian Gothic</i>.
</span> Lots more on what
nature really means to us later…
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org288531e" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org288531e">My Dark <i>penchant</i></h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org288531e">
<p>
Continuing, I am at a loss to explain my dark <i>penchant</i> to those who
do not, cannot, will not get it. To be darkly inclined as I mean it is
a take-it-or-leave-it proposition; <i>one gets Dark or one does
not</i>.<label id='fnr.7' for='fnr-in.7.600043' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>7</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.7.600043' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>7</sup>
Allow me the poetic emphasis device of capitalising nouns.
</span> Dark as I mean it was best presented and developed by
certain <b>poets</b> of the early-nineteenth century <i>Romantic</i> Era,<label id='fnr.8' for='fnr-in.8.2765996' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>8</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.8.2765996' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>8</sup>
Quick preliminary, much more later: The term Romanticism
followed a twisted path beginning with the Latin <i>romant</i>, or, “in the
Roman manner”, thus, not at all our current use of the word as a
synonym of lovey-dovey stuff. In general, bundling what I’m trying to
get at as <i>Romanticism</i> is fraught to say the least. Academe wants to
grip butterflies, but when they open their hands there is only
goo. Lots more on this problem as we go…
</span>
an <i>emergent</i> property and a very special private corner of this
ultimately maligned and misunderstood time. I also believe <i>the Dark
Muse is best expressed in poetry</i>, but not so well in prose. I, as
well as many others of yore, believe that lyrical poetry captures far
more and drives far deeper than whatever can be lined up in
book-length chains of prose sentences. For example, it is almost as if
the poetess Emily Dickinson used words to mercilessly expose just how
tenuous words really are. She routinely made words give up their
ghosts just to swap in even more mysterious ghosts—again, something
really only doable with poetry. We’ll explore some of her wicked
flights into <i>thoughts behind thoughts</i> put to words as we go.
</p>
<p>
My Dark Muse often comes on as a <i>feeling behind feeling</i>, subtle,
profound, yet fleeting, not hanging around for much logic-bound
analysis or description.<label id='fnr.9' for='fnr-in.9.1803119' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>9</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.9.1803119' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>9</sup>
Yes, ironic that I’m trying to be logical analytical here, no?
</span> One very important principal, the
German poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalis">Novalis</a>, penname for Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg, often
used a unique <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_fragment">fragment</a></i> style to describe his Dark Muse. And so he
abandoned even lyrical poetry to get even more bursty, more
spontaneous to capture the subtleties of his dark impressions. Lots
more about Novalis, the presumed founder of German Romanticism, as we
go along. Dark stirrings arrive mostly unannounced, a veritable
surprise. <b>Dark is a gift</b>. Thus, my exploration of Dark will rely
heavily on the poetry of the preeminent Romantic Era champions of Dark
Muse.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org9c1da07" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org9c1da07">Adding an extra wagon to the modern goth train</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org9c1da07">
<p>
Of course I have an affinity with and feel a kinship to the
multifaceted modern goth subculture.<label id='fnr.10' for='fnr-in.10.7457167' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>10</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.10.7457167' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>10</sup>
…goth described <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goth_subculture">here</a> by Wikipedia as well as anywhere. <br>
<img src="images/RyderBeetlejuice.jpg" alt="RyderBeetlejuice.jpg"> <br>
<br>
</span> And yet goth is one of the
elephants I feel I must shift a few inches from the centre of the
room. In very short, I believe modern goths surely <i>sense</i>
Dark,<label id='fnr.11' for='fnr-in.11.4122366' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>11</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.11.4122366' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>11</sup>
By the way, the Germans capitalise nouns, i.e., built-in
poetic emphasis.
</span> but for whatever reasons, so many of them only want to
express it, explore it very narrowly through goth music and
fashion. My Dark Muse would hopefully include, be akin to what is
today called goth and gothic, <i>but I will try to go deeper and be more
elemental</i>. If you are goth I hope you allow me to speak to your
“inner goth.”
</p>
<p>
I believe there is a <i>natural darkness</i> provided by Nature, a basis
upon which we may create symbols, artefacts, icons, trappings to
emulate, decorate, magnify, socialise, humanise, if nothing else,
<i>bring indoors</i> natural Dark. Yes to aesthetics, as far as they may
resonate, do honour to Dark. But too often our human take on Dark
winds up overstated, overwrought—all the way out to grimy, ignoble,
silly, scummy, stupid.<label id='fnr.12' for='fnr-in.12.6213328' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>12</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.12.6213328' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>12</sup>
…and then the normies haul out their DSM-5s (<i>Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders</i>) and pigeonhole us as
abnormal.
</span> We imbibe then express what we see,
experience, feel; but I say it must be done carefully, if not
respectfully. And so I have to respectfully downgrade, reorder so many
of the <i>gothic</i> horror fright memes, e.g., vampires, witches, demons;
mean nasty menacing this, threatening evil that. Right up front: My
Dark is not meant to shock or frighten, rather, invite, deepen, and
enrich. My Dark Muse contains nothing cruel nor evil nor sinister nor
satanic. As philosopher and psychologist John Vervaeke said in
describing the modern crisis of anxiety and dysphoria, “Horror is the
<i>aesthetic</i> of when you feel like you’re losing your grip on reality.”
Yes, I might dip my toe in the lake of horror, as Alfred Hitchcock
once said, but I needn’t dwell there too long. I do not want terrified
to become a default setting. And so mine is not the <i>Star Wars</i> “dark
side,” not dark barbarism à la <i>Heart of Darkness</i>, and not the
psychic dark described by Freud or Jung. I cringe when someone says,
“…and then things took a <i>dark</i> turn.” Find a different adjective,
please! In general
</p>
\begin{align*}
\large{\text{Dark} \ne \text{negative}}
\end{align*}
<p>
Yes, okay, once in a while campy, over-the-top gothic can be
interesting, fun, but I’d rather not lose sight of the source, however
obscure and rare it may be.<label id='fnr.13' for='fnr-in.13.4030850' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>13</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.13.4030850' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>13</sup>
Yes, MHGA: Make Halloween Great Again <br>
<img src="images/Santos-Halloween-regular-Diamond.jpg" alt="Santos-Halloween-regular-Diamond.jpg"> <br>
<br>
</span> I’m after something more subtle,
discriminating, inward-personal … perhaps like the small natural
sweet of a wild strawberry or raspberry versus the chemical sweet
blast of saccharine … nature rather than industrial. Basically, <b>my
Dark is about the sublime</b>, indeed, <i>sublimity</i>. I will eventually
deal with Edmund Burke’s (as well as Bertrand Russell’s) false, “they
don’t get it at all” tedium on <i>sublimity</i> later. In the meantime,
<i>sublime</i> is really just what we may find beyond mere beauty, touching
what Dostoevsky is saying here
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
There are seconds, they only come five or six at a time, and you
suddenly feel the <b>presence of eternal harmony</b> (POEH) fully
achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it is heavenly, but man
cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or
die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense
the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. This is not
tenderheartedness, but simply joy.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Awe ahead of joy? Again, much more fleshing out as we go along…
</p>
<p>
Allow me to hearken back to a golden era when Dark was the cultural
currency, roughly, the first part of the nineteenth century, a time
when my key poets, my <i>principals</i> (e.g. Poe, Novalis, the Brontës)
showed us how triste and Stygian can be so very subtle and
sublime. And most important to modern goths, I’m after something <i>I
will not outgrow</i>, rather, continue as my raison d’être sustaining me
to my grave. I say there must be no “aging out of the scene” as I fear
often happens with modern goth.<label id='fnr.14' for='fnr-in.14.4007355' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>14</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.14.4007355' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>14</sup>
Why do some age out of goth? A crude answer may be they just
can’t kick the rebel chic can down the beach any longer … there, I
said it…
</span> Rather, the Dark Muse should be
a deepening and widening and transcendence for one’s entire life.
</p>
<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/halloweenjack1960/art/female-Strigoi-971932475" target="_blank"><img src="./images/female_strigoi.jpg" width="730" alt="Female Strigoi"></a>
<span class="cap">Female Strigoi by HalloweenJack1960@DeviantArt</span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orgac43560" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="orgac43560">Dark like me?</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-orgac43560">
<p>
Life would be empty, insipid, weak for me, every moment rudderless,
misspent, crushingly mundane without a strong and constant current of
the Dark Muse. It is as if nothing can be properly understood without
the dark perspective. But then I wonder, <b>is this nature or nurture</b>?
That is to say, am I innately Dark, or is this something to which I’ve
been acculturated?<label id='fnr.15' for='fnr-in.15.6902977' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>15</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.15.6902977' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>15</sup>
… for example, due to the Victorian shadow over my
childhood?
</span> I <i>feel</i> it is the former. One simply has
dark inclinations, one either <i>feels</i> the tug of Dark—regardless of
any sort of prepping or grooming—or one doesn’t.
</p>
<p>
Let’s try a poetry litmus test. I present here a short, simple poem
from my main darkness benefactress, the poetess who stands at the
centre of everything I mean to say about dark, the woman who rules me
from her grave, Emily Jane Brontë<label id='fnr.16' for='fnr-in.16.7972201' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>16</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.16.7972201' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>16</sup>
Look <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Bront%C3%AB">here</a> for a quick biography. <br>
<img src="images/Emily_Brontë_by_Patrick_Branwell_Brontë_restored.jpg" alt="Emily_Brontë_by_Patrick_Branwell_Brontë_restored.jpg"> <br>
<br>
</span>
</p>
<div class='verse'><blockquote>
<p class="verse">
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;<br>
Lengthen night and shorten day;<br>
Every leaf speaks bliss to me<br>
Fluttering from the autumn tree.<br>
I shall smile when wreaths of snow<br>
Blossom where the rose should grow;<br>
I shall sing when night’s decay<br>
Ushers in a drearier day.<br>
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p>
Here Emily of Haworth is direct, blunt even. She either speaks to
something in you, or you are part of the majority who finds
it—weird, abnormal, <i>morbid</i>, overwrought, puerile, even sick or
evil. In my own life my dark <i>penchant</i> has gotten mostly
deer-in-headlights responses, if not outright hostility. The openly
peeved want to see my dark druthers as morose, as wallowing in
self-pity, seeking attention, dwelling on the negative. I beg to
differ. I say I’m not skewed to the negative, the morose, the morbid,
the dark, rather, I’m just not responsive to all your phony positives
<i>du jour</i> tactics. Negative is a part of real life, and this spastic
attempt to restrict life to the sunny-cheery happy-happy is the real
sickness in today’s world. Alas for all the “mental health
professionals” who think they can “train your brain to think positively.”
</p>
<p>
Here is something a bit lighter, but the same basic idea from
<i>Christina Rossetti</i> <label id='fnr.17' for='fnr-in.17.3978722' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>17</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.17.3978722' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>17</sup>
See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Rossetti">here</a> for a bio. She is considered by many Britain’s
most prolific poet. <br>
<img src="images/RossettiAge16.jpg" alt="RossettiAge16.jpg"> <br>
</span>
</p>
<div class='verse'><blockquote>
<p class="verse">
Fade tender lily,<br>
Fade O crimson rose,<br>
Fade every flower<br>
Sweetest flower that blows.<br>
<br>
Go chilly Autumn,<br>
Come O Winter cold;<br>
Let the green things die away<br>
Into common mould.<br>
<br>
Birth follows hard on death,<br>
Life on withering:<br>
Hasten, we shall come the sooner<br>
Back to pleasant Spring.<br>
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p>
Rossetti is darkly fatalistic, though ending with hope bound in humble
expectancy. I like to think these two English poetesses are expressing
an informed, matured melancholy that bespeaks a deeper understanding
of life—all deriving from their grasp of Dark.
</p>
<p>
And another poem, here Longfellow’s <i>Snow-flakes</i> from a
collection published in 1863
</p>
<div class='verse'><blockquote>
<p class="verse">
Out of the bosom of the Air,<br>
      Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,<br>
Over the woodlands brown and bare,<br>
      Over the harvest-fields forsaken,<br>
            Silent, and soft, and slow<br>
            Descends the snow.<br>
<br>
Even as our cloudy fancies take<br>
      Suddenly shape in some divine expression,<br>
Even as the troubled heart doth make<br>
      In the white countenance confession,<br>
            The troubled sky reveals<br>
            The grief it feels.<br>
<br>
This is the poem of the air,<br>
      Slowly in silent syllables recorded;<br>
This is the secret of despair,<br>
      Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,<br>
            Now whispered and revealed<br>
            To wood and field.<br>
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p>
Here I see Longfellow<label id='fnr.18' for='fnr-in.18.5900263' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>18</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.18.5900263' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>18</sup>
Go <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow">here</a> for a quick biography. HWL was not typically Dark,
rather, a popular, “uplifting” poet with a big audience. That’s what
makes this selection so unique for me.
</span> looking to the natural world and
<i>poetising</i>, to be sure, <i>darkly</i>. The idea of poetising, the
<i>poetisation</i> of nature and life was central to the Romantic
Movement.<label id='fnr.19' for='fnr-in.19.4298291' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>19</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.19.4298291' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>19</sup>
Below, we will go over Romanticism poetising’s originator,
Novalis. Much to say about poetising, Novalis, and Romanticism…
</span> This would be the poetry parallel to the
long-standing belief that we humans explain ourselves through, embed
our lives in narratives.<label id='fnr.20' for='fnr-in.20.1722809' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>20</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.20.1722809' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>20</sup>
…more about storytelling below…
</span> And so despair, grief, misery are
transformed into more equanimous states of sadness and melancholy,
hopefully bringing us to a higher emotional maturity. In some
paradoxical way, nature and darkness eventually become healers … as
if the initial agony and sorrow are like a ravaging cancer or virus
that may eventually fade into remission—which we can never entirely
conquer, eliminate whilst on Earth, hence, a strange symbiosis must be
struck… As I will explain, being <i>mortal</i> was wholly different
experience back then, back when very few <i>thrived</i>, rather, mostly
just <i>survived</i>.<label id='fnr.21' for='fnr-in.21.6341975' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>21</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.21.6341975' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>21</sup>
A side question may be, Why in such bounteous, prosperous,
easy times are so many people not thriving, rather, only barely
surviving? More on the false gospel of thrive, thrive, thrive!
later…
</span>
</p>
<p>
This <i>poetising</i> of Nature dark and mystical, this patient, reverent
knocking on Nature’s door closed to us since the Fall from the Garden
of Eden, was the modus operandi of my select nineteenth-century
poets. Rather than avoid, they sought out, <i>embraced</i> their Dark Muse,
something we today in our brightly-lit, cordoned-off world usually
think of as bad, wrong, even dangerous. I contend we have lost this
subtle art of moving hardship, tragedy, emotional crises into a stasis
remission melancholy. Today, we vilify and wage a full-scale war
against any and all recurring melancholia with psychoanalysis and
prescription psychopharmacology drugs. <i>Instead of hysterically
rushing in to counter “negative” thoughts with “positive” thoughts,
better to find a higher perspective on the inevitability of the
negative in life, no?</i> Really though, there is an unnaturalness to
chivvying a person into suppressing sad thoughts, to bombing the brain
with synthetic biochemistry. There is a desperate, embarrassing,
intelligence-insulting triteness to “cheerful at all costs.” And so
all too often we are failures at finding a <i>modus vivendi</i><label id='fnr.22' for='fnr-in.22.768281' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>22</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.22.768281' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>22</sup>
<i>modus vivendi</i>: An arrangement or agreement allowing
conflicting parties to coexist peacefully, either indefinitely or
until a final settlement is reached, <i>or</i> (literally) a way of living.
</span>
vis-à-vis the trials and tribulations of life as our ancestors once
did. <i>Fazit</i><label id='fnr.23' for='fnr-in.23.3259718' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>23</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.23.3259718' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>23</sup>
<i>Fazit</i>: n; in conclusion, in summary, all in all; Germanized
Latin for <i>it follows</i>.
</span>: When the negative is suppressed, we become
exposed to a myriad of psychic maladies. Better I say to find some
dignity through Dark aesthetics. Which, again, is exactly what our
ancestors did. Another Fazit: There is meaning in pain—and even
deeper meaning in <i>more</i> pain. They knew this back in the day. Spoiled
on the illusions and expectations of easy modern life we’ve lost sight
of this fact.
</p>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orgac01944" class="outline-4">
<h4 id="orgac01944">To suffer…</h4>
<div class="outline-text-4" id="text-orgac01944">
<p>
Let’s hear from another of my principals, Emily Elizabeth
Dickinson<label id='fnr.24' for='fnr-in.24.4300700' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>24</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.24.4300700' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>24</sup>
See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson">here</a> for a quick biography. <br>
<img src="images/EmilyDickinson2.jpg" alt="EmilyDickinson2.jpg">
<br>
<br>
</span>
</p>
<div class='verse'><blockquote>
<p class="verse">
After great pain, a formal feeling comes —<br>
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs —<br>
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’<br>
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?<br>
<br>
The Feet, mechanical, go round —<br>
A Wooden way<br>
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought —<br>
Regardless grown,<br>
A Quartz contentment, like a stone —<br>
<br>
This is the Hour of Lead —<br>
Remembered, if outlived,<br>
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow —<br>
First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go —<br>
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p>
In her day, life was a struggle—with entropy, adversity, depression,
with Death ready to lap over the gunwales of a person’s little
lifeboat at any time. Emily Dickinson of mid-1800s Amherst,
Massachusetts, relates human suffering in a severe and fatalistic yet
grounded way by pulling me into a dark place where I am suddenly
thrown into reliance on alternative, finer, higher
sensibilities. Again, all we may ever do in our lives is disperse,
reorder the initially searing, inescapable pain to a dull, hopefully
diluted ache in the ever-growing backdrop of time. We never “win” the
race, but perhaps we do get recognition for participating—first and
foremost from ourselves, then from the network of fellow humans around
us.<label id='fnr.25' for='fnr-in.25.47737' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>25</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.25.47737' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>25</sup>
Where has our human network gone? Something tells me getting
pity responses to a YouTube comment isn’t the same…
</span>
</p>
<p>
As she said in a letter <i>…but to all except anguish the mind soon
adjusts</i>. Though again I would say the subject of pain, suffering, and
loss was better conducted in the past than today. How, why? Because
first and foremost they did not attempt to contain, disguise,
systematise, or <i>process</i> greif; rather, greif was faced directly,
<i>pain was shared</i>, empathy a way of interconnecting in a healthy
communal life. And so emotional space was allotted, support was
natural, organic, openly shared. Strikingly different from today was
their acceptance of <i>doom</i><label id='fnr.26' for='fnr-in.26.7297817' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>26</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.26.7297817' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>26</sup>
Doom as unforeseen consequences of previous actions, which in
turn, entropically snowball into indebtedness, tragedy, and ruin;
typically multi-generational, a punishment that never seems to fit the
original crime—if it was a crime at all. One German word for doom is
<i>Untergang</i>, which also means <i>downfall</i>.
</span> and fate, two concepts antithetical
to our dynamic, positivist, self-determining, fix and
paper-over-everything-quickly modern ways … which for most led to
faith in God and acceptance of His will.
</p>
<p>
Especially death was handled differently. Consider Queen
Victoria<label id='fnr.27' for='fnr-in.27.9966157' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>27</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.27.9966157' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>27</sup>
Queen Victoria in mourning black ca. 1862. <br>
<img src="images/QueenVictoriaInMourningBlack.jpg" alt="QueenVictoriaInMourningBlack.jpg"> <br>
<br>
</span> who wore mourning black from the time of her husband
Prince Albert’s death in 1861 until the end of her life
in 1901. Likewise, Amélie of Leuchtenberg who upon losing her husband
Pedro I of Brazil in 1834, wore mourning black until her death
in 1873. In those days death was properly, officially mourned. No one
hustled mourners along with their grief and sadness. Contrast this
with today’s all-too-prevalent disassociation, the confused emotional
shutdown, the disorganised quasi-denial and suppression we moderns too
often show towards death<label id='fnr.28' for='fnr-in.28.1262755' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>28</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.28.1262755' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>28</sup>
Is there anything worse than the so-called <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_stages_of_grief">five stages of
grief</a></i> or the Kübler-Ross model? Grief as an emotional malfunction
to be systematically reduced, fixed, corrected? Alas.
</span>. For the early nineteenth century,
poetising life’s train of tragedy was <i>depression deconstruction</i> as a
life skill. The slings and arrows of human existence found conjunction
with <i>Nature</i>, <i>Dark</i>, and <i>Faith</i> through poetry, thereby
highlighting, elevating, <i>ennobling</i> our uniquely human experience on
Earth, thereby <b>casting a gossamer of sublimity over our natural
existence like no other generation before or since</b>. Theirs was the
deepest exploration of our true humanness that I know, and, thus,
something I must pursue and showcase here.
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orgf2b533c" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="orgf2b533c">Again, why Dark?</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-orgf2b533c">
<p>
But still, why Dark? Because Dark speaks to me. How, why? Lack of a
clear and simple answer forces me into a regrettably wordier one. I
might say Dark remains mysterious—no matter how many different
angles from which I try to express it. Dark is something instinctual,
cathartic, evocative, centring for me. Dark is more than the lack of
light. Dark can lead the imagination to riot. The moss, lichens, and
mushrooms in the secretive shadows of the forest incite so much more
than the spectacular sunny vista across the forest valley. I’m just
not into spectacular…
</p>
<p>
The fresh-cut rose elicits a simple response, but the faded rose
another—deeper, sobering, but never “depressing”. Here is something
from my novel <i>Emily of Wolkeld</i> <label id='fnr.29' for='fnr-in.29.9128117' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>29</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.29.9128117' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>29</sup>
Not out yet. Coming…
</span>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
The new cut rose: initially beautiful, thereafter dried and
desiccated, lost forever its initial delicate beauty and
fragrance. Once affording a glimpse of perfection, only reminiscent
thereafter. Beauty always some fleeting illusion or madness? Moreover
its eclipse, joining, leading the shadows of our relentless doom, our
march to the grave. And though I live in this momentary brilliance, I
still search my night shore; for until now I have known only of
beauty’s haunting rumour, of love’s promise, those slightest
quickenings of things necessarily rare and formerly peripheral. Yes,
in this moment I may have some of love’s bliss, of roses’ beauty, but
I know I shall cherish with a larger, more settled heart the memories
thereof, echoes sent down life’s long, clouded memory hall as true and
lasting blessings.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Yes, there might have been a nod of approval back in the day…
</p>
<p>
Let’s see another example of Dark get-it-or-don’t, this time another
poem from Emily Dickinson, her <i>There’s a certain slant of
light</i><label id='fnr.30' for='fnr-in.30.1143249' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>30</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.30.1143249' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>30</sup>
In the third line, <i>Heft</i> means weight, heaviness; importance,
influence; <i>or</i> (archaic) the greater part or bulk of something.
</span>
</p>
<div class='verse'><blockquote>
<p class="verse">
There’s a certain Slant of light,<br>
Winter Afternoons —<br>
That oppresses, like the Heft<br>
Of Cathedral Tunes —<br>
<br>
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —<br>
We can find no scar,<br>
But internal difference —<br>
Where the Meanings, are —<br>
<br>
None may teach it – Any —<br>
’Tis the seal Despair —<br>
An imperial affliction<br>
Sent us of the Air —<br>
<br>
When it comes, the Landscape listens —<br>
Shadows – hold their breath —<br>
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance<br>
On the look of Death —<br>
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p>
Let that sink in for a while… The last line includes <i>Death</i>
capitalised.<label id='fnr.31' for='fnr-in.31.8454595' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>31</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.31.8454595' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>31</sup>
Dickinson freely employed the capitalising of nouns for poetic
emphasis.
</span> Again, I must emphasise how these
nineteenth-century artists approached human mortality so differently
than we do today. As I’m saying, this past-century view of Death has
largely gone lost. I hope to rediscover it. I’ll start by positing
their understanding of Death was integral to their understanding of
Nature…
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orgb9d5ff6" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="orgb9d5ff6">Pre-modern Nature and Death</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-orgb9d5ff6">
<p>
<i>The main points being:</i>
</p>
<ul class="org-ul">
<li>True nature is the myriad cycles <i>birth, growth, deterioration, and
death</i> happening constantly everywhere, full
stop, nothing else…</li>
<li>…ergo, <i>nature is not a place</i>, no indoors versus outdoors,
rather, a state of being, existence itself…</li>
<li>…ergo, no <i>degression</i> of nature, rather, nature constant
ubiquitous…</li>
<li>…ergo, death is an integral part of true nature.</li>
<li>The increasingly extra-natural, quasi-immortal modern human flies in
the face of true Nature</li>
<li>Romantic Era poets’ had direct exposure to real Nature versus our
aloofness, estrangement from nature as separate and locational.</li>
</ul>
<p>
I hold that our modern, twenty-first-century understanding of nature
is very different than Nature of early-nineteenth-century poets such
as William and Dorothy Wordsworth, or the Haworth and Amherst
Emilies.<label id='fnr.32' for='fnr-in.32.2682680' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>32</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.32.2682680' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>32</sup>
My shorthand for Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson is based on
their earthly abodes—Haworth, West Yorkshire, for the former and
Amherst, Massachusetts, for the latter.
</span> Alone the fact that our modern indoor living
environments are more like modular, sealed <i>space stations</i> plopped
down on an alien planet compared to the simpler, more primitive
structures of the not-so-distant past… Quite literally, the Brontës’
Haworth parsonage, built in 1778 out of local stone and wood and clay,
had more in common with human shelters from one, <i>two</i> thousand years
previous than with our modern suburban homes only some two hundred
years later.
</p>
<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/celestin0/art/Tadao-Ando-museum-in-Japan-962338432" target="_blank"><img src="./images/tadao_ando_museum_in_japan_by_celestin0.jpg" width="800" alt="Tadao Ando Museum"></a>
<span class="cap">Tadao Ando Museum art by Celestin0@DeviantArt</span>
<p>
Hence, <i>in just the past two to three hundred years a very steep,
vertical gradient or differential has grown between indoors and
outdoors</i>. This, in turn, has brought us to see nature more as a
<i>place</i> separate and outside, cut off, away from our artificial,
high-tech, controlled and regulated modern indoor spaces<label id='fnr.33' for='fnr-in.33.1106891' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>33</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.33.1106891' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>33</sup>
Is it not ironic how nearly all lifeforms that attempt to
share our modern human environments uninvited are considered invasive,
noxious vermin, pests to which we have developed almost hysterical
revulsion?
</span>
… which, in turn, has lead us to rate <i>nature outdoors</i> on continua
of relative wildness and remoteness from our sealed-off,
self-contained, humans-only environments.
</p>
<p>
<label for="mn-demo" class="margin-toggle"></label>
<input type="checkbox" id="mn-demo" class="margin-toggle">
<span class="marginnote">
<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/steve-lease/art/Untitled-1013699667" target="_blank">
<img src="./images/PeasantGirlWithLamb.png" alt="Title"
class=".wtitle"></a>
<span class="cap">Homespun and one of its sources. Original art from Steve-Lease (DeviantArt.com)</span>
</span>
</p>
<p>
Even as late as my own childhood the term <i>homespun</i> was in use to
indicate a poor, unsophisticated person, a country bumkin, a hick from
the sticks. The term referred to the inferiority of a person’s
clothing being homemade from locally-sourced, hand-spun and woven
materials such as linen and wool rather than factory-made retail
clothing. The early-nineteenth century Brontëan West Yorkshire would
have seen the majority of the villagers in homespun, all but a few
garments not hand-tailored bespoke.<label id='fnr.34' for='fnr-in.34.9636768' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>34</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.34.9636768' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>34</sup>
Though <i>cotton</i> was rapidly becoming a global commodity, both
cotton and wool fabrics eventually being produced in steam-powered
factories as the Industrial Age reached its inflexion point of growth.
</span> And of course food was
entirely from local production. Hence, a person’s daily resources were
overwhelmingly local, a small bit perhaps coming from a nearby <i>market
town</i>, while only the most exotic items (e.g., a clock, a fine musical
instrument) would have come from farther away. Today, however, this
supply pyramid is completely flipped, as nearly everything comes from
far (far!) away (e.g. China), while only a few personal items would be
from a local or even regional source.<label id='fnr.35' for='fnr-in.35.704363' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>35</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.35.704363' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>35</sup>
In any modern (non-organic Amazon Whole Foods-style) chain
supermarket I’m sure less that 1% of the food items come from a truly
local source. Nearly everything is shipped in from often far afar.
</span> And so in Brontëan times
(first half of the 1800s) much of the surrounding land was
agriculturally domesticated, a working partner, so to say. Contrast
this with today’s urban-suburban populations hardly ever in contact
with farmers or their farms. Nor do we know anything about where our
clothing comes from. Today, “the land,” as our immediate provider, has
been completely abstracted into concepts such as <i>ecosystems</i> and
<i>biosphere</i>, which imply we are now removed scientific observers
controlling nature as if it were just another of our mechanical
objects.
</p>
<p>
No doubt we have always made a distinction between being <i>inside</i> a
shelter and going <i>outside</i> into the so-called <i>elements</i>. But
starting some six to ten thousand years ago we began to give up
aboriginal nomadic life and its direct daily contact with said
untamed, uncontrolled elements in order to establish permanent
city-states supported by mass monoculture agriculture. And so indoor
environments in ever-expanding urban centres became increasingly
physically removed, walled off from the wild natural world, becoming
evermore self-contained, all-encompassing, self-referencing, thus,
<i>recursively derivative</i>.<label id='fnr.36' for='fnr-in.36.7900760' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>36</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.36.7900760' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>36</sup>
…e.g., what is a flower garden but a derivative, a mock-up
of an original place out in the wilds, albeit with the pretty bits
super-amplified idealised, the not-so-pleasant bits left, weeded out?
</span>
</p>
<p>
Along with this growing separation came mentalities, narratives,
collective social-psychological “mindspaces” increasingly urban-based
thus uniquely <i>extra-natural</i>.<label id='fnr.37' for='fnr-in.37.9614924' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>37</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.37.9614924' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>37</sup>
How often is a Shakespeare character out communing with
nature? Never?…
</span> Being so completely indoors
meant we no longer were in direct contact with the aboriginal animist
nature spirits all around; instead, praying to an extra-natural,
off-world monotheistic God in architecturally showcase
churches.<label id='fnr.38' for='fnr-in.38.7120933' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>38</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.38.7120933' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>38</sup>
Churches were typically built in the centre of a town or city
on the highest ground. I once heard that to this day no building in
Vienna may be built taller than the tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
</span> Western architecture seemed to reach a fantastical
aesthetic crescendo in the Victorian nineteenth century, ironically
with dark, dense, dramatic Neo-Gothic as a leading style. Indeed,
seemingly all nineteenth century styles were some manner of nostalgic
revivalist (Greek, Gothic, Italianate, Elizabethan, Queen Anne, etc.),
perhaps hearkening back to times more integrated with nature, i.e.,
shallower gradients between indoors and outdoors. This coincided with
the exponential growth in urban population having just passed an
inflection point. And so today we see the steepness of our
indoor-outdoor gradient has accelerated even more, resulting in a