Class!

I thought we were through with Romantic Poetry. It was a thing of the nineteenth century where poets talked about a ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions recollected in tranquility’. Infact that was Wordsworth the High Priest of Romantic poetry’s definition of poetry. Bryon was so different from the reflective and philosophical Lucy’s creator. Today, however was a day of reckoning when Byron decided to walk in and really prove that ‘poetry indeed is ‘a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions recollected in tranquility’. He came to St.Xavier’s this morning for the 8:50 am lecture ; negotiated four floors of that Gothic heritage structure, climbed its winding steep stairs and came to classroom 43. He came, he impressed and shook the very nucleus of a batch of First year BA students of 2011 with the following:

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sank chill on my brow
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.
- Lord Byron

Teaching this bunch of vibrant teenagers was an eccentric English teacher. She introduced Byron and declared, “ write a letter of Separation to your loved one. Caution: you are not informing your loved one that you are breaking up with him or her.” The deed is done! The relationship is already severed. The task at hand is to write about that in a non-malicious, non-bitter fashion with the intention of a release, a letting-go off pain, attachment; a fond wish that the Other should do well and the realisation that this separation is a must.

Nothing can explain ‘emotions recollected in tranquility’ better than the events which unfolded. This was not happening near ‘Tintern Abbey’. There were no lakes, no nightingales, no skylark, no westwind, no cloud, no autumn. There were no Urns where I could have preserved this incident.

While writing this epistle, the class was tempestuous, it was stormy, it was silent. The palpable silence was fraught with unshed tears, unspoken sorrows, unexpressed pain. Yes, Byron’s “When we two parted” helped in unleashing that reign of tears. Truly it was Romantic in the sense that it liberated the feelings and emotions of those youngsters who discovered a man called Byron. He enabled them to address their pain and look at it in the eye. He was the romantic chemical catalyst which generated the reactions that the students unabashedly displayed today. Byron, it was a stupendous class!

After the Byronic encounter, there was a tangible sense of calm in the air. Some left the place with a sense of relief, some with the realisation that there is so much more to their grief than they could have ever expressed.
I was a mute witness to these events. It is a rare event in a teacher’s life where s/he gets to observe the live, tender and raw emotions of his/her students. Bliss was it (for me) in that dawn to be alive! Byron, Thank you for those soft,vulnerable moments!