Romanticism

It’s 1818, and a man stands on a craggy, perilous alpine peak; beneath it and around it swirl thick clouds of mist, apparently rising up from the chasm into which he is apparently peering. Who is he? His back is to us, his face concealed, but he is at the centre of this cruciform painting, and according to the artist, Caspar David Friedrich, he’s a wanderer; so perhaps are we all. The experiences of Covid have redefined that most Romantic concept, the feeling of solitude, whilst the beauties of nature offer have soothed and inspired, as they did the poets of the 1800s. The Romantic movement is close to my heart, and I’ve lectured on it many times. Lock down has of course, made the public lecture impossible- and so it was that one suitably dark and stormy day during half term I locked myself away and, like the wanderer, peered down into a mysterious entity of which I understood little; his vast chasm, my slightly less poetic laptop. Here’s the result!

https://vimeo.com/truropenwithcollege/review/519895613/d165e710f8