I'm teaching the novel 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley to my Year 12 English class at the moment. One of the things I love most about it, is its reference to the power of nature to restore. The Romantics called this 'the sublime'. It referenced the power of nature to restore a person's soul. The same ideology is found in lots of poetry from this era. One of my favourites is William Wordsworth's poem 'The Daffodils'. The poet describes how he 'wandered lonely as a cloud' across the 'vales and hills', when he came across the sight of a field of daffodils 'dancing in the breeze'. The final verse is probably the one that resonates most strongly with the notion of the sublime:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
This idea is something that I like to use when I am writing. There is nothing better than getting out of town and spending some time just 'being'. A lot of the settings in my novel 'The Shadow Miner' were inspired by a visit to the Carnarvon Gorge. I thought I would share an extract from the novel along with some photos of my time bush walking. This is my sublime.
Sara set a steady pace as she walked down the narrow path that worked its way through the gorge. The path twisted and turned through the forest. On each side of her were distant towering sandstone cliffs that rose majestically towards the blue sky. Trees hung tenaciously to the wind eroded walls; each sheer sandstone cliff painted in broad stripes of colour from white through to deep red. Crossing the boulder strewn creek that ran down the centre of the gorge, Sara headed up towards the back of the eastern bluff. Moving off the path, she began heading up the steep incline. The slope was covered in a variety of foliage from towering twisted trees to shorter palms and low ferns. Springs of water wound their way in narrow streams down the slope, and green light filtered gently through the thick canopy above. Large basalt rocks were dotted throughout the landscape, thrown by some long extinct volcano. While some were insignificant, others towered above, the size of small houses. Each was covered in soft moss and pale green lichen that traced strange patterns across the smooth dark surface.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
This idea is something that I like to use when I am writing. There is nothing better than getting out of town and spending some time just 'being'. A lot of the settings in my novel 'The Shadow Miner' were inspired by a visit to the Carnarvon Gorge. I thought I would share an extract from the novel along with some photos of my time bush walking. This is my sublime.
Sara set a steady pace as she walked down the narrow path that worked its way through the gorge. The path twisted and turned through the forest. On each side of her were distant towering sandstone cliffs that rose majestically towards the blue sky. Trees hung tenaciously to the wind eroded walls; each sheer sandstone cliff painted in broad stripes of colour from white through to deep red. Crossing the boulder strewn creek that ran down the centre of the gorge, Sara headed up towards the back of the eastern bluff. Moving off the path, she began heading up the steep incline. The slope was covered in a variety of foliage from towering twisted trees to shorter palms and low ferns. Springs of water wound their way in narrow streams down the slope, and green light filtered gently through the thick canopy above. Large basalt rocks were dotted throughout the landscape, thrown by some long extinct volcano. While some were insignificant, others towered above, the size of small houses. Each was covered in soft moss and pale green lichen that traced strange patterns across the smooth dark surface.