Musings

Catching up last week on my dear friend Anna’s blog, I ran across this quote: “It never made sense to me why sunsets are considered the acme of romantic scenery.” For some reason this caught my attention, and on the way home from Aleg that evening, teeth jangling in my head and hot wind whipping though my head scarf, I watched a fairly standard sunset and ruminated on this question.

So what is “romantic”, anyway? My first inclination is to dismiss sunsets as just another run-of-mill trapping of harliquinesque mushiness. Why? Because, like roses, chocolates, and manly yet tender guys with extremely white teeth, they’re pretty in a very obvious sort of way, and entirely lacking in subtlety. Like other ingredients of modern romance, I’m afraid sunsets strike me as rather bourgeoisie.

To put it a bit more kindly, sunsets have a kind of universal appeal. I think one sort of romance comes from a moment of shared beauty. These moments aren’t always easy to find: the bit of Mozart that thrills my soul may very well put my potential partner in romance to sleep, and the philosophic work of genius that inspires him may look to me like so much jibber-jabber. Even the landscape isn’t universal- perhaps one of us longs for the sight of water while the other feels more keenly the beauty of an empty desert. But everybody likes a sunset, right? Nobody’s going to deny that the shining orange-gold clouds and the pink sky are pretty nifty. Sunsets go nicely with the ocean, the desert, and everything in between, are easily set to any sort of music you like, and are spectacular whether you’re a materialist or a mystic. Maybe that’s why they’ve come into use as a standard romantic set piece.

Of course, the word romantic has another, very different meaning – the Romantic period in literature and art. Are sunsets Romantic? The Romantics were certainly big on beauty in nature and the sublime, and sunsets are definitely both. However, the romantics were a bit on the darker side. They praised beauty “like the night,” were “half in love with easeful death,” and tended more towards deep chasms, ruins, forest shadows, and “faerie-lands forlorn.” The spirit they saw in nature was a rather melancholy one. To be a Romantic is halfway Gothic. Sunsets don’t really fit the picture. There’s nothing subtle and gloomy about that blaze of light in some of nature’s most vivid colors. Though sunsets inspire thoughts of the spiritual, it’s not the haunted, achingly mystic spirit the Romantics saw – it’s a glory and a transcendence. Romantics might find it a bit gaudy.

I think a third definition of “romantic” is in order – not conventional sappiness nor melancholy nature-worship, but a deeper appreciation of the beauty of God’s handiwork combined with a love of the great truths it hints at. Though I’ve called them gaudy, bourgeoisie, and obvious, don’t get the idea I’m anti-sunset. I love watching the sunset every evening; the golden clouds always put me in mind of heaven, which is a good way to end the day. After all, “the heavens are telling the glory of God.”

So, in final summary: Are sunrises...

a. romantic? Yes, but it’s not their fault.
b. Romantic? No, maybe more Baroque
c. Romantic by Beth’s personal definition? Indeed, the very essence.