Daniel’s Travels: On homecomings, Romanticism, and the permanent things

As I’ve been off campus and back home from November 19, 2018, my upcoming trip to Hanover for Winter Carnival will be a homecoming. Though it has taken me a long while to get into the “Welcome Home” spirit thrust upon admitted students at Dimensions, I do now recognize Dartmouth College as one of my homes. It is a place deeply familiar, and though I exist outside many of the most recognizable edifices—Greek life, the D.O.C., and athletics of any kind—of Dartmouth’s “culture,” I still feel a part of the College on the Hill.

Dartmouth, a place perpetually in my thoughts since my admission in March 2017, still carries a different set of emotional associations than those of my childhood home in northern Westchester County, New York. I was fortunate enough to have never had to move during my younger years, so I spent my entire pre-college life in a single house. It’s not surprising, then, that my original home holds a lot of painful nostalgia for me. While strolling through the house’s rooms, I remember visits from dearly departed family members, those sad last days of summer vacations, and that strange isolation of being an only child.

Of course, I do not feel my childhood home is haunted by the past. There are as many good memories as there are bad. I recall pool parties and poker nights, Christmas dinners and Easter egg hunts. These fond memories too can feel quite bittersweet, but they are also inspiring. The deep, primeval woods that surround my home contain the same magic and mystery for me now that they did when I was young. That house is a very languid setting, wherein I feel no great pressure to do anything. That sensation of freedom and autonomy can be overwhelming at times, but more often than not, it encourages my creativity.

My feelings about Dartmouth are very different. My earliest memories of the College are not pleasant or bittersweet, rather, they are uncomfortable and fearful. I first visited Dartmouth at Dimensions in April 2017—at that point, I had already committed to the school. I did not enjoy the program or my host stay at Dimensions at all, and instead of acclimating me to my future home, it filled me with anxiety. I spent the summer before my first year at a study abroad in Paris; that isolating experience only served to heighten my worries about starting college.

As it would turn out, my first term at Dartmouth confirmed my fears. Though I had enjoyed trips and made some good friends on that program, I immediately felt terrible once I moved in and started classes. My sleep schedule fell apart and my physical and mental health deteriorated. There were some good times, certainly, and I made many good friends who remain with me today. I credit The Dartmouth Review for helping me navigate those trying times. I will always remain grateful for the few editors who took a nervous, obsequious freshman under their wings and helped him find his voice.

Still, I went back in January, and I even looked forward to a term that had to be better than my first one. And it was, generally speaking, but it still left me feeling exhausted, though I was able to improve my sleep, my health, and my grades. However, as Yeats’s famous poem proclaims, “things fall apart.” My spring term was more miserable than my fall term, and I came home for the summer utterly exhausted physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I’ve never been a quitter, so the words “transfer” have never been in my vocabulary, but I really didn’t like Dartmouth.

My meditations over the summer convinced me of something, though, that changed my perspective on the situation from one of static acceptance to one of flexibility and growth. As I rested and recuperated, I realized that the problems with my first year at Dartmouth were not the result of the institution, but rather that of my maladjustment. I resolved to change myself and rise to the challenge I faced.

I returned to campus in the fall term with a new plan for my life. In addition to working hard, I would sleep well, I would eat well, and I would pray well. There were costs involved with this lifestyle change. It required a complete reframing of my social life. I had been a fly-by-night drifter in past terms, stalking across the campus at ungodly hours, dropping in on friends and hangouts, and collapsing into sleep on weekend mornings. So, I protected my sleeping hours and tried to get at least seven hours a night. My free time, as well, was highly appraised and reserved for relaxation or a meal with a friend. I went from being a regular at McLaughlin’s late night snack bar to grabbing lunch at ’53 Commons to study and have meetings.

It was like a dark cloud lifted from my life. My second fall term had its challenges, and some were rather dramatic, but they were all external rather than internal struggles. I never encountered any difficulties due to my irresponsibility, laziness, or anxiety. I felt free, focused, and relaxed.  Although the difficulty of finals tested my commitment to my initial plan, I still held it together until I went home. The term was my most successful in every respect and showed me that I could make the most of Dartmouth, even without membership in major social circles.

These fond memories of my fall term have been bittersweet at home, where I have struggled to hold myself to the same degree of personal rigor. I have been engaged at The New Criterion as an editorial intern, and though my work is often very satisfying, the daily commute into the heart of Manhattan leaves me feeling unbalanced. But, the skills I developed over the summer and my sophomore fall have not left me. I am determined to make the most of my present commitments and have eased into a focused, deliberate life at home in New York.

My attitude about returning to Dartmouth has changed, however, from what it once was. Though I am still looking forward to going back, my emotions have shifted. Gone are the days of “It can’t be any worse than last term,” and here are the days of “I’m excited to see how it can get even better.” Some might characterize that latter statement as foolish optimism, but I don’t care. To me, it’s just a matter of faith.

***

One of the greatest aspects of my job at The New Criterion is the amount of reading I get to do. Regardless of whether it’s a fact-checking assignment or browsing the new issue, I am always exposed to such a fascinating range of thought and opinion. Almost by osmosis, I have found my vocabulary enriched and my perspectives broadened. Most stirring of these newfound concepts has been Romanticism.

Previously, I had known Romanticism only as an edgy movement in early German poetry, a vague aspect of European nationalism, and an attitude symbolized by Caspar David Friedrich’s criminally overused painting, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. Gradually, however, I came to understand Romanticism at a deeper level. In readings about Wagner and Nietzsche and on visits to see oil paintings at the Morgan, I saw Romanticism for what it really was and is. It is a deep passion for the beauty and the mystery of the universe, yes, but also a celebration of man’s unique relationship with the sublime. Like Friedrich’s painting, Romanticism reveals to us our infinitesimal place in the natural world, but also pays careful attention to the individual passions and trials of human existence.

For me, the essence of Romanticism is a belief in transcendent value. In this way, Romanticism is very sentimental; it not about just what is visible or tangible, it regards that which lies behind the façade of “objective reality.” This transcendence can be ascribed to all manner of things. Romantic love is a common expression, meant to signify that which is beyond the physicality of human relationships. Romanticism can be applied societally as well, in the exaltation of the individual above the collective. Romanticism can exist as an affinity for the old and enduring rather than for the new and evanescent. Romanticism can manifest in abiding religious or spiritual faith, as a way of expressing that preternatural majesty that exists at the heart of consciousness and experience. Finally, Romanticism is a belief in the expansive power of beauty—that capacity for art, nature, or people to evoke something which is not known empirically but intuited.

In this way, Romanticism constitutes a rejection of the conventional wisdom of the Enlightenment and a return to the humanism of the Renaissance and the mysticism of the Gothic movement. As illiberal as a departure from Enlightenment values sounds, this is actually a good thing. Romanticism was an artistic expression of individual freedom, but unlike classical liberalism, it did not rest upon objective reason and man’s faculty for rational deliberation. Romanticism accepts the unknown, imagines the unthinkable, and realizes the unrealistic.

It would be easy to label Romanticism a “conservative artistic movement” and make a case for that, but that would be to do the tradition a disservice. Romanticism went far beyond pragmatic considerations of common government. As has been applied to politics, Romanticism appealed to the spirit of the nation, that which was inherent in the people, beneath any ostensible façade of electoral pragmatism. It encourages traditionalism and a reverence for aesthetic beauty, but Romanticism is not an ideology. Only the worst artistic movements—Stalinist architecture or Brutalism, for instance—can be regarded as so philosophically limited.

Romanticism is the admiration of things which are not only transcendent but also enduring, such as natural landscapes and the human spirit. Russell Kirk, the great conservative intellectual, spoke often of “the permanent things.” These are those traditions and qualities of human experience which occur naturally and intrinsically. The roles of family and community are such things that have lasted throughout human civilization and still hold value for us today. These things are at once transcendent and permanent. As the editor of The New Criterion, Roger Kimball, wrote recently, “Kirk, in short, was a thinker who coaxed us to enlarge, not diminish, the existential furniture of our world.”

As a cultural movement, Romanticism does the same. It inspires us to look beneath the surface of things and perceive a more profound, more personal meaning.