Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime Landscape

Overture

3 over­ ture­ Coupling“ro­ man­ tic”with“geog­ ra­ phy”could seem a contra­ dic­ tion of terms, for few peo­ ple now­ a­ days see geog­ ra­ phy as ro­ man­ tic.­ Down-to-earth, full of com­ mon sense, nec­ es­ sary to sur­ vi­ val, yes—but ro­ man­ tic? Yet there was a time, not so long ago, when geog­ ra­ phy did have ­ glamor, was con­ sid­ ered ro­ man­ tic. It was the time of he­ roic ex­ plo­ ra­ tions. Ex­ plor­ ers were known as geog­ ra­ phers,peo­ ple ­ skilled in sur­ vey­ ing and map­ ping. Their ad­ ven­ tures, when re­ ported, were ­ widely fol­ lowed and much ad­ mired. One could make block­ buster mo­ vies of David Liv­ ing­ stone and Er­ nest Shack­ le­ ton as one could of Eliz­ a­ beth I and Gan­ dhi. What they had in com­ mon was that they in­ itiated and par­ tic­ i­ pated in major­ events. 4 overture How­ ever, were these ­ events ­ really geo­ graph­ i­ cal ­ events?­ Wouldn’t an ac­ count of the ad­ ven­ tures of David Liv­ ing­ stone in Af­ rica be his­ tory ­ rather than geog­ ra­ phy? The two ­ fields are very dif­ fer­ ent and yet they are often ­ taught as a pack­ age in ­ schools and col­ leges. How do they dif­ fer? The one tells a good story, the other does not. A his­ tory of the ­ American Civil War is rich in per­ son­ al­ ities and drama, with in­ stances of chiv­ alry that are at the heart of ro­ mance. A geog­ ra­ phy of the ­ American Civil War, by­ contrast, is ­ likely to be in­ for­ ma­ tive and use­ ful but not ex­ cit­ ing. His­ to­ ries can be dry too,of ­ course,but they can at least be ­ deemed “ro­ man­ tic” in the sense that they are an extra or a lux­ ury that is un­ nec­ es­ sary to civ­ il­ iza­ tion and its sur­ vi­ val. India, for ex­ am­ ple, is a great civ­ il­ iza­ tion, one ­ backed by fan­ tas­ tic myths and leg­ ends­ rather than his­ tory of the sort known to Eu­ rope and China. On the otherhand,tosur­ vive,allso­ ci­ eties—prim­ i­ tiveandso­ phis­ ti­ cated— must have a more or less system­ atic knowl­ edge of the lay of the land. His­ tory also has his­ tor­ i­ cal ro­ mances, a genre pi­ o­ neered by Sir Wal­ ter Scott. But to the ques­ tion, are there geo­ graph­ i­ cal ro­ mances? Most peo­ ple would draw a blank un­ less they­ thought of tales of ex­ plo­ ra­ tion. So, again, the idea of a “ro­ man­ tic geog­ ra­ phy”—one that is imag­ i­ na­ tive and dar­ ing yet an­ chored in re­ al­ ity—seems contra­ dic­ tory. Can there, nev­ er­ the­ less, be a ro­ man­ tic geog­ ra­ phy? Can it be ­ argued that there is need for one since much of human life is in fact ­ driven by pas­ sion—by the de­ sire to reach what is out of reach or even be­ yond reach?1 5 overture My an­ swer to both ques­ tions is yes, and I will give rea­ sons for my opin­ ion in this book. But be­ fore I do, I need to take care of a few pre­ lim­ i­ nar­ ies, the first of which is de­ fin­ ing the words “ro­ man­ tic” or “ro­ man­ ti­ cism,” a loose set of ideas and val­ ues that­ emerged in Eu­ rope ­ between 1780 and 1848. The pre­ ci­ sion of the dates is mis­ lead­ ing for the ideas and val­ ues them­ selves are vague and often contra­ dic­ tory. T. E. Hulme ­ opines that ro­ man­ ti­ cism is es­ sen­ tially a transcen­ dence of the every­ day and a faith in human per­ fect­ ibil­ ity. ­ Jacques Bar­ zun ­ speaks of a ro­ man­ ti­ cist tem­ per­ a­ ment, which he char­ ac­ terizes as “ad­ mi­ ra­ tion for en­ ergy, moral en­ thu­ siasm, orig­ i­ nal gen­ ius, rec­ og­ ni­ tion of ­ contrast ­ between man’s ­ greatness-wretchedness, ­ power-misery.” Ro­ man­ ti...