Volume 34, Number 20 · December 17, 1987
Romantic Originals
By Charles Rosen
La Comédie humaine
by Honoré de Balzac, published under the direction of Pierre-Georges Castex
Gallimard, Editions de la Pléiade, 12 volumes pp., fr2, 878 for the set
Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works
edited by Jerome J. McGann
Oxford University Pess (Clarendon Press), 5 volumes, published to date pp., $565 for the set
The Cornell Wordsworth
edited by Stephen M. Parrish
Cornell University Press, 12 volumes published to date pp., $780 for the set
William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism
An exhibition at the New York Public Library through January 2, 1988
William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism
Catalog of the exhibition by Jonathan Wordsworth, by Michael C. Jaye, by Robert Woof
Rutgers University Press, 261 pp., $29.95 (paper)
It is a convenient and pleasing Romantic myth that the true work of art springs full-blown from the unconscious mind. Revision comes from the conscious intellect or will, and this, as Wordsworth wrote, 'is the very littleness of life,…relapses from the one interior life that lives in all things.'[1] Some years ago, a novelist—Muriel Spark, I believe—was asked how she was able to write so many books in such a short space of time. She replied, 'I write very fast and I never correct.' This is the ideal. Few writers are so fortunate. Most revise and, as they do so, create more problems than they resolve.
Review, 8467 words
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