Romanticism Quotes

“The whole day, the whole night –nothing but the thought of her.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“A gentle warmth spread through my body and I felt a strange tingling in my veins. Feeling turned to thought, but my character seemed split into a thousand parts; each part was independent and had its own consciousness, and in vain did the head command e limbs, which, like faithless vassals, would not obey its author The thoughts in these separate parts now started to revolve like points of light, faster and faster, forming a fiery circle which became smaller as the speed increased, until it finally appeared like a stationary ball of fire, its burning rays shining from the flickering flames. “Those are my limbs dancing; I am waking up.” Such was my first clear thought, but a sudden pain shot through me at that moment and the chiming of bells sounded in my ears.

“Flee! Flee!” I cried aloud. I could now open my eyes. The bells continued to ring. At first I thought I was still in the forest, and was amazed when I looked at myself and the objects around me. Dressed in the habit of a Capuchin, I was lying stretched out on comfortable mattress in a lofty room; the only other items of furniture were a few cane-chairs, a small table and a simple bed. I realized that my unconsciousness must have lasted some time and that in some way or other I had been brought to a monastery which offered hospitality to the sick; perhaps my clothes were torn and I had been given this habit for the time being.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“The whole day, the whole night – nothing but the thought of her.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“Zapanjen sam kako sam svjesno, korak po korak, ušao u sve to; kako sam uvijek u tako jasnom svjetlu vidio svoj položaj, a ipak sam postupao kao dijete; kako i sada još jasno vidim, a još uvijek nema ni traga nade da stvari pođu nabolje.”
― Johann Wolfgang Goethe

“Yet although I could not resist doing so, my sleep was not interrupted. The door opened and a dark figure entered whom I recognized to my horror as my own self in Capuchin robes, with beard and tonsure. The figure came nearer and nearer my bed: I lay motionless, and every sound I tried to utter was stifled in the trance that gripped me. The figure sat down on my bed and leered mockingly at me.

“You must come with me,” it said. “Let us climb on to the roof beneath the weathercock, which is playing a merry tune for the owl's wedding. Up there we will fight with each other, and the one who pushes the other over will become king and be able to drink blood.”

I felt the figure take hold of me and lift me up. With a strength born of desperation I screamed:
“You are not me, you are the Devil!” - and clawed at the face of the menacing spectre. But my fingers went through his eyes as if they were empty cavities, and the figure burst into strident laughter.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“Where is the man who has not felt in his breast the wonderful mystery of love? Whoever you may be who come to read these pages - call to mind that noontide of supreme happiness, behold once more that image of angelic beauty, the spirit of love itself, as she came to meet you; it was through her, through her alone, that you seemed assured of your own higher existence. Do you recall how the bubbling springs, the rustling bushes, the caressing evening breezes told so clearly of her love? Can you still picture the flowers that turned their gentle, shining eyes upon you, bringing kisses and words of endearment from her? And she came, yielding to you utterly. You embraced her with burning desire, and thought to rise above the pettiness of earth in the flame of your fervent longing. But the miracle did not happen; you were forced back to earth just as you were about to soar with her to the distant promised land. You had lost her even before you had dared to hope; the voices, the beautiful sounds had all died away, and only the despairing lamentation of the lonely soul was heard in the cruel wilderness.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“You will learn of the relationship between the various strange destinies which plunged you at one moment into a higher realm of miraculous visions and at the next into the most commonplace of worlds. It is said that the miraculous has vanished from the earth, but I do not believe it. The miracles are still there, for even if we are no longer willing to call by that name the most wonderful aspects of our daily life, because we have managed to deduce from a succession of events a law of cyclic recurrence, nevertheless there often passes through that cycle a phenomenon which puts all our wisdom to shame, and which, in our stupid obstinacy, we refuse to believe because we are unable to comprehend it.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“From my youth upwards My Spirit walked not with the souls of men, Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes; The thirst of their ambition was not mine, The aim of their existence was not mine; My joy was in the wilderness—to breathe the difficult air of the iced mountain's top, Where the birds dare not build—nor insect's wing. These were my pastimes, and to be alone; For if the beings, of whom I was one—Hating to be so—crossed me in my path, I felt myself degraded back to them, And was all clay again. And then I dived, In my lone wanderings, to the caves of Death, Searching its cause in its effect; and drew from withered bones, and skulls, and heaped up dust conclusions most forbidden.”
― Lord Byron, Manfred

“When it comes to love, narcissists are sprinters and not marathoners. It is often a rather grandiose experience, with numerous references to “falling in love at first sight,” and a “once-ina-lifetime” love story.”
― Ramani Durvasula, Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist

“Now it is all dark. Now Beauty and Passion seem never to have existed. I know. But remember the mountains over Florence and the view...”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“[...] Nhâm nhi vài lát ổi thô
Sắn dây mấy củ, cốm đồ gió hanh.

Thị vàng chín rụng mép tranh
Phong thanh sương khói mong manh tình người.

Thu về
rồi à
Thu ơi...”
― William Lê

“This dance was the dance of death, and they danced it for George Buffins, that they might be as him. They danced it for the wretched of the earth, that they might witness their own wretchedness. They danced the dance of the outcasts for the outcasts who watched them, amid the louring trees, with a blizzard coming on. And, one by one, the outcast outlaws raised their heads to watch and all indeed broke out in laughter but it was a laughter without joy. It was the bitter laugh one gives when one sees there is no triumph over fate. When we saw those cheerless arabesques as of the damned, and heard that laughter of those trapped in the circles of hell, Liz and I held hands, for comfort.
They danced the night into the clearing, and the outlaws welcomed it with cheers. They danced the perturbed spirit of their master, who came with a great wind and blew cold as death into the marrow of the bones. They danced the whirling apart of everything, the end of love, the end of hope; they danced tomorrows into yesterdays; they danced the exhaustion of the implacable present; they danced the deadly dance of the past perfect which fixes everything fast so it can’t move again; they danced the dance of Old Adam who destroys the world because we believe he lives forever.
The outlaws entered into the spirit of the thing with a will. With ‘huzzahs’ and ‘bravos’, all sprang up and flung themselves into the wild gavotte, firing off their guns. The snow hurled wet, white sheets in our faces, and the wind took up the ghastly music of the old clowns and amplified it fit to drive you crazy. Then the snow blinded us and Samson picked us up one by one and slung us back in that shed and leaned up hard against the door, forcing it closed against the tempest with his mighty shoulders.
Though bullets crashed into the walls and the wind came whistling through the knotholes and picked up burning embers from the fire, hurling them about until we thought we might burn to death in the middle of the snow and ice, the shed held firm. It rocked this way and that way and it seemed at any moment the roof might be snatched away, but this little group of us who, however incoherently, placed our faiths in reason, were not exposed to the worst of the storm. The Escapee, however, faced with this insurrection of militant pessimism, turned pale and wan and murmured to himself comforting phrases of Kropotkin, etc., as others might, in such straits, recite the rosary.
When the storm passed, as pass it did, at last, the freshly fallen snow made all as new and put the camp fire out. Here, there was a shred of scarlet satin and, there, Grik’s little violin with the strings broken but, of the tents, shacks, muskets and cuirasses of the outlaws, the clowns and the clowns themselves, not one sight, as if all together had been blown off the face of the earth.”
― Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

“However useful it was to me in my present situation, there was something terrifying in the realisation that I was known to nobody, that no one could have the slightest idea who I was, or what a singular quirk of fate had brought me here, or what secrets I was concealing. I felt like a departed spirit walking on earth in which all the affection he had once enjoyed had long since perished.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“When dawn broke, the city lay far behind me, and the haunting vision of that fearful, menacing figure had vanished. The coachman's question: “Where to?” brought home to me how I had forsaken all friendship in life and was roaming the earth at the mercy of the rolling waves of chance. Yet had not an unchallengeable power wrenched me away from everything to which I had been attached, just so that the spirit within me should unfurl and beat its wings with irresistible force? Like a nomad I roved through the countryside, finding no peace. I was driven on and on, further and further southwards. Without realizing it, I had up to now hardly deviated from the itinerary laid down for me by Leonardus, and as if impelled by his will, I journeyed onwards.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“Was she then to be lost to me? Nay, for as she left this vale of sorrows, she had kindled the eternal love that now glowed within me. I now know that her death was the consummation of that love which, as she had told me, rules above the stars and has nothing in common with the things of earth. Such thoughts as these lifted me above my earthly self, and these days in the convent were truly the most blissful of my whole life.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“Isn't it far better to live a poetic life than to spend one's life writing Poetry?”
― Pietros Maneos, The Italian Pleasures of Gabriele Paterkallos

“The art academies had offered a story of art as the conquest, loss, and finally reconquest of nature through the mastery of illusionistic technology, improved by a grasp of ideal beauty. Romanticism replaced this with the story of art as an acquisition and then loss of wisdom, warning us not to mistake naturalism or technical skill for such wisdom. Historicism proposed that each period expresses its view of the world through its own forms; no art form can be preferred for they are all true registrations of the evolving mind. Materialism, finally, a version of historicism, told the story of art as a series of local responses to conditions, materials, tools, and functions. The immediate purpose of Riegl's teleology was to counter the crass reductionism of the materialist version. He did this by insinuating that there was something animating the history of form, a ghost in the machine, a will to form that overrode pragmatic needs. There is a tension in Riegl's art history between the anthropomorphic concept of Kunstwollen, which locates the motor of history in the individual, and the teleological shape of history, the inexorable dematerialization and intellectualization of art, a schema inherited from Hegel and never justified philosophically by Riegl. For Riegl, all art is naturalistic; it is simply that each epoch sees nature differently. What they see is the true object of art. This transforms art history into a history of seeing, and therefore of thinking.”
― Christopher S. Wood, A History of Art History

“Las conclusiones más significativas se refieren a la necesidad de que cada individuo se forme por sí mismo su propia opinión de la realidad sin aceptar acríticamente la autoridad de los maestros occidentales, el deber moral de usar los propios dones o bienes (inteligencia, poder, dinero) teniendo siempre presente una proyección social, la obligación de respetar la libertad de los demás al tiempo que se defiende la propia o la posibilidad de cohonestar la (prioritaria) autoexigencia personal con otros valores respetables como el servicio a la nación. Al final, el discurso se transforma, a partir de una advertencia a los jóvenes japoneses de 1914, en un alegato a favor de la independencia personal, de la libertad y de la tolerancia, es decir, en una afirmación de valores humanistas de significado universal.”
― Natsume Sōseki, My Individualism & The Philosophical Foundations of Literature

“Giọt nước mắt rơi nào đâu vô ích
Giữa trập trùng vấp ngã và tổn thương
Giữa vũ trụ mông lung không mục đích
\Cứ khóc đi, khóc thỏa hết chán chường.

Giọt nước mắt rơi nào phải tầm thường
Giữa đời người vô cảm và xót cay
Trước đớn đau chúng ta hay trốn chạy
Cứ khóc đi, dòng dũng cảm hoa may.

[...] [...]”
― William Lê

“[...] Sương hoài niệm vương dải nhớ mỏng tanh
Mây u mịch tảng tảng bung mục rách
Đã kinh qua bể dâu hàng tùng bách
Dưới trăng nhạt lập lòe ánh thạch anh.

Lá vàng rơi dội vang lời ám ảnh
Người ra đi giọng còn níu trên vai
Vĩnh cách tràng ly mãi không gặp lại
Thiết chi thêm những tóc uốn trâm cài.

[...] [...]”
― William Lê

“[...] Trước sát na tàn phế mảnh con người
Mọi mộng tưởng thảy đắm chìm khuya tối
Tuồng nhân loại cáo chung hồi hấp hối
Ánh hừng đông họa tô vết đồi mồi.

Tới một mình, thác hóa cũng một mình thế thôi...”
― William Lê

“[...] Gió lặng, sóng chết, núi câm
Con tim đã nứt ca cầm làm chi?

Vì ai mà khổ như ri?
Vì ai cò phải bõm bì đầm đêm?
Vì ai bươn chải rẩm rên?
Vì ai tuyết trắng nhuốc nhem đất bùn?
Vì ai mà núi đẩy đùn
Vầng trăng khuyết tật ngụt ngùn lên cao?
Vì ai khóe mắt tuôn rào?
Vì ai cẩm tú cồn cào nhớ thương?
Vì ai cốm mới mốc trương?
Vì ai Vệ Nữ hoang lương tủi sầu?

[...] [...]”
― William Lê

“[...] Sinh mệnh ơi, sao không mãi trường tồn?
Những linh hồn mái đầu còn xanh tươi
Khát khao sống ý chí với ngang trời
Sao nghiệt cay bứt nghẹt lứa búp chồi?
Tiễn biệt đời khi nhựa mủ đang sôi?

[...] [...]”
― William Lê

“Giấc trầm mê nghén bầu con chữ
Lời nói sảng họa phác trầm tư
Mộng điên phát tiếng gầm gừ
Vầng trăng đứt cánh ậm ừ liêu trai.

[Lời đề từ Mục Siêu Thực, tập Mảnh Trăng Thơ]”
― William Lê

“[Trích từ Thu Cô Đơn]

Soi vô gương vuốt dung nhan rạc rượi
Mắt quèn quẹn, hàng mi xỉn phù nề
Gò má ma lõa lồ tuyến châu lệ
Tình thấp thỏi vung vít gió cuồng mê.

Giai âm gợi nhớ nguyền thề
Hoàng hôn rạn nứt tiệm kề Hoàng giang(1)
Phím trầm bức tử trâm vàng
Thủy tiên lệ ứa thiên đàng rưới hoa.

---
(1). Dòng sông nơi Vũ Nương trẫm mình để minh oan. (Tham khảo Chuyện Người Con Gái Nam Xương, trích Truyền kỳ mạn lục – Nguyễn Dữ).”
― William Lê

“Bản Sonnet Lãng Mạn
[dịch từ Sonnet of Romance, đồng tác giả William Lê, 2020/11/11]

Ôi, Hồng Ân của Chúa!

Bờ ngực thương bỏng của Nàng Thơ
Trắc ẩn trao tôi những mộng mơ
Thoát thai thành khoái lạc thuần khiết
Nảy sinh từ tư ý mãnh liệt.

Mòn rách con tim tôi ngâm hát
Và rồi rạng rỡ ngắm nhân gian
Một thể linh thiêng dầu đơn độc
Thiên nhiên cùng thân xác tồi tàn.

Nhấp nhô đồi núi, suối lay ru
Ballad thảo nguyên vọng muôn thu
Nhuộm mình lộng lẫy màu lam ngọc
Thở ý vị thơ mãn vũ trụ.

Tràng hoa nồng nàn của bờ môi
Đã bao lần chạm hồng điệp tôi
Tựa hạc pha lê tự tụng xướng
Dạ khúc tình thu khuyết lẽ đời.

Yến tiệc thiết đãi bởi trăng thanh
Khó khăn để thấu rõ ngọn ngành
Phấn ong, rượu tiên ngập đĩa Thánh
Hy Lạp nghiêm cẩn hiến quần anh.

Một nhịp tim đập sâu bên trong
Hoà hợp với vàn ngoài thái không
Nội tâm và tâm của hoàn vũ
Điệp mộng vô thanh thảy lẫn đồng.

Chân Lý nên duyên cùng Thẩm Mĩ
Thiên Chúa cũng vô ích phân ly
Con người — tạo vật của Nồng Cháy
Và của Ái Tình, không đổi thay!

Thanh thản ban phát bởi Trí Tri
Chịu hàng trước Tuyệt Vọng cao quý
[Xúc Cảm đăng quang, còn Lý Trí
Rác thải hôi tanh có khác gì?]”
― William Lê

“Los invisibles átomos del aire
en derredor palpitan y se inflaman,
el cielo se deshace en rayos de oro,
la tierra se estremece alborozada.

Oigo flotando en olas de armonías,
rumor de besos y batir de alas;
mis párpados se cierran... ¿Qué sucede?
¿Dime?
¡Silencio! ¡Es el amor que pasa!”
― Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rimas

“Truth without trust is but useless information”
― Jason Daniel Chaplin, The Savage Romantics

“It’s not enough for me to be sure that you and I are together. I want to know if we’re on a shared path to ecstasy.”
― Lebo Grand

“Между поэтом жалким, что грустно, словно четки,
Слова перебирает, чтоб были рифмы четки,
И офицером с саблей, спесивым и надменным,
Какой быть может выбор? Здесь выбор несомненный!
Он женщин восхищает осанкой и мундиром,
И дева выбирает его своим кумиром.
ИКОНА И ОКЛАД”
― Михай Эминеску, Стихотворения. М. Эминеску. Стихотворения. Д. Кошбук. Стихотворения. И. Л. Караджале. Потерянное письмо. Рассказы. И. Славич. Счастливая мельница