Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismTranquillity is ObsoleteMaybe once upon a time it was possible to recollect with tranquillity, but in all honesty, how can we today? Between us and the Romantics lie fields of carnage and desolation. The words of C.L.R. James seem urgent here: "The violent conflicts of our age enable our practiced vision to see into the very bones of previous revolutions more easily than heretofore. Yet for that very reason it is impossible to recollect historical emotions in that tranquillity which a great English writer, too narrowly, associated with poetry alone." [1] Tranquillity is a thing of the past. How to remember the Romantics without it? Notes1.C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Overture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd ed., rev. (New York: Vintage, 1989), xi. Navigation |