Love betters what is best

April 23rd. You are going to do it, of course you are: Ro­man­ti­cism man­i­fest in a book or a rose. We are all aware of the Sant Jordi bond with Shake­speare and Cer­vantes, but there is a link to an­other writer I also deeply ap­pre­ci­ate – William Wordsworth.

He was among the six great Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture Ro­man­tic poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Co­leridge, Byron, Shel­ley, Keats) who at the end of the 18th and be­gin­ning of the 19th cen­turies turned from the ster­ile logic of the En­light­en­ment ideals.

The Ro­man­tics ad­vo­cated more emo­tional, per­sonal and nat­ural themes in art, ex­plored in what was then every­day com­mon lan­guage and syn­tax, leav­ing be­hind the for­mal forms of verse. Wordsworth, who died on Sant Jordi, 1850, was one of the most in­flu­en­tial. And, for me, his com­fort from na­ture and need for it is soul-lift­ing. He found sanc­tu­ary in the wilder­ness, and so can we all. His feel­ings, thoughts and ap­pre­ci­a­tions of beauty are far more than a de­light.

So maybe add this man (of the vales and hills who chanced upon a crowd, a host of golden daf­fodils) to your book wish-list for the great day. His crit­ics may talk of rep­e­ti­tion, a tame­ness, even a heav­i­ness, but don't be dis­tracted.

Con­sider Lyri­cal Bal­lads which, when it was pub­lished in 1798, changed the course of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture and po­etry. Five poems in the col­lec­tion are by his friend Co­leridge, in­clud­ing his fa­mous and bril­liant “The Rime of the An­cient Mariner”.

Or maybe Wordsworth's au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal giant work The Pre­lude. In blank verse it draws on his ex­pe­ri­ences and is a metaphor for the cir­cu­lar jour­ney of life. We re­turn to where we started but we see it anew. It grew like his mind from a work in two books of a thou­sand lines to four­teen books that will take ten hours to read, a hu­man­is­tic jour­ney from his rural child­hood on to Cam­bridge and uni­ver­sity, to France and the Rev­o­lu­tion, Lon­don and a love of the­atre, then back to the hills of north­ern Eng­land.

Cata­lans, a peo­ple still close to na­ture and wise to its worth, may find Wordsworth to their lik­ing, if they have not done so al­ready. The ro­man­tic age is ideal for a day of tan­gi­ble, pos­i­tive ap­pre­ci­a­tion of oth­ers, of the writ­ten word and nat­ural beauty. Take it slow, stop and rest and think, and on your jour­ney through it you will find won­ders.

On my wed­ding an­niver­sary (yes, April 23rd) I will be read­ing one of Wordsworth's poems to Mag­gie.

Our house will cave in shortly under the weight of books. The best I have read re­cently? The Blun­ders of our Gov­ern­ments, by An­thony King and Ivor Crewe. It is a hair-curl­ing, slap-your-hand-over-your-mouth cat­a­logue of British Gov­ern­ment lash ups that have cost bil­lions and bil­lions: Com­pelling, laugh-out-loud in­ep­ti­tude that you couldn't make up, and most cer­tainly a fair re­flec­tion of gov­ern­ments the world over.

There is a sort of Wordsworth link, be­cause hav­ing read it you will want to take a very long walk in the moun­tains. I highly rec­om­mend our co­marca, the Pri­o­rat.