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296: Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"

Classical Stuff You Should Know

Tue Feb 10 2026

A drug-fueled romp

Summary

Classical Stuff You Should Know – Episode 296: Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”

Air Date: February 10, 2026
Hosts: A.J. Hanenburg (A), Graeme Donaldson (C), Thomas Magbee (B)

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s mysterious and iconic poem, “Kubla Khan.” The hosts use the poem as a gateway to explore both the historical context of Romanticism and its legacy in modern culture. Graeme leads the discussion, uncovering how the Romantics rebelled against Enlightenment reason, how “Kubla Khan” captures their wild spirit, and how Romantic ideals may have overcorrected and shaped our current worldview.

Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Setting the Stage: Coleridge, Romanticism, and the Poem’s Origins

Timestamp: 02:08–08:22

Who Was Coleridge?
Coleridge was a late 18th/early 19th-century Romantic poet, well-known for his rule-breaking, passionate style. The hosts compare the Romantics’ ethos to “punk rock,” rebelling against the machine-like, rationalist culture of the Enlightenment.

"Coleridge and the Romantics... they're kind of like the punk rock of their time." (C, 05:00)
Romanticism vs. The Enlightenment:
The Romantics sought to restore wildness, passion, emotion, and mystery to art — in contrast to the rigid, mechanistic, and logical mindsets of their predecessors.
Context for “Kubla Khan”:
Coleridge wrote the poem after an opium-induced dream, inspired by a passage in a travel book:

"He is absolutely stoned out of his brain... reading a history of the Khans [and] has like a three hour fever dream about Kubla Khan's garden." (C, 07:10)

On waking, Coleridge wrote down the lines he could remember; the rest was lost, leaving the fragmentary, dreamlike poem we now have.

2. Reading and Unpacking “Kubla Khan”

Timestamp: 09:36–16:13

Graeme reads the poem aloud, with the hosts pausing to comment on its dreamlike imagery, exoticism, and the tension between “ordered gardens” and wild natural forces.
Summary of the Poem’s Action:
Kubla Khan builds a pleasure dome in “Xanadu,” enclosing paradise within walls, but forces of nature (a chasm and a sacred river) rupture this order, bringing visions, tumult, and ancestral warnings of war.

“He wants to sing these passionate songs... not your, your like Normie songs of, you know, of logic and business.” (C, 16:13)
The poem ends with a vision of an inspired performer whose wildness is both alluring and dangerous, requiring magical protection from onlookers.

3. The Ethos of Romanticism and the Countercultural Artist

Timestamp: 16:33–24:39

Poet as Inspired Outsider:
Coleridge aligns with William Blake’s notion of the artist as a channel of passion and freedom, willing to scandalize the buttoned-up conventions of society.

“He is very much the person that his poetic vision is... to move people past their buttoned up lives... He wants to blow things up.” (C, 05:55)
The hosts discuss references to magic and protection in the poem — the triple circle is seen as "a magic ritual to protect the inspired poet from intrusion.” (C, 18:39)
Coleridge/the Romantic artist sees themselves as dangerous to the status quo.
Romanticism’s Legacy:
The Romantics helped shift art from a focus on external beauty and form to a focus on authentic, personal feeling and the voice of the artist.

“The artist is the subject of the art, and it's his expression of his own understanding... This was sort of the newness of Romanticism.” (C, 21:19)
Graeme claims, “I sort of posit that like Romanticism has kind of won the day in terms of artistic expression.” (C, 21:54)

4. Romanticism, Sympathy for the Outsider, and Moral Relativism

Timestamp: 24:48–35:23

Rise of the Sympathetic Outsider:
Romanticism, influenced by encounters with other cultures (e.g., Robinson Crusoe meeting cannibals), increasingly sees “evil” as misunderstood otherness rather than absolute moral wrong.

“The Romantics kind of take that idea... that there is value in singing the songs of the outsider in hopes of shaking up the normative society.” (C, 28:25)
Examples from Literature:
- Frankenstein as a Romantic re-reading of Paradise Lost, with the “monster” or “Satan” as tragic, misunderstood figures.
- Jane Austen’s Emma — a comparison of justice (duty/rules) versus mercy (context/story) as approaches to human action and motivation.
  
  “Mr. Knightley says, essentially, if he wanted to, he would... Emma says, we need to contextualize and know the whole story before we can sort of pass judgment.” (C, 35:24–36:23)
Graeme points out Romanticism’s growing tendency to “sympathize with the outsider” and sometimes “fetishize” foreignness or strangeness, seeing it as more authentic than the familiar.

5. Modern Storytelling: Sympathy and the Loss of Moral Clarity

Timestamp: 41:39–55:36

Modern Tropes Rooted in Romanticism:
- Today’s stories often present villains as misunderstood anti-heroes, with “the real villains... those people who shout, beware. Beware his flashing eyes” (C, 40:55)
- Discussion of media like the Hannibal TV series, Frankenstein, and movies (Death Wish), all show culture’s shifting focus from justice to understanding/mercy for outsiders — often at the expense of moral certainty.
  
  “We sort of lack really great heroes and really great villains because we don't have... objectivity right and wrong positions anymore.” (C referencing video essays, 32:44)
Potential Imbalance:
Graeme raises the concern that while Romanticism’s challenge to rigid justice was necessary, dominant “outsider sympathy” can go too far:
“Mercy to the guilty is murdering the innocent... The Romantics came on the scene to try to be the counterbalance weight to maybe a more justice oriented society... But... a society that swings too far in the direction of mercy... all monsters are misunderstood heroes.” (C, 45:17–46:16)
Hosts reflect on the emptiness sometimes found in pure self-expression and question whether Romanticism provides a constructive alternative or simply tears down the past.

“What exactly are you expressing other than you want to express something?” (B, 55:39)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Coleridge’s “lost” masterpiece:

“He writes out 25, 50 of these lines, has to go into town on business, comes back and can't remember the 250 other lines of his poem.” (C, 08:05)
Romantics as Punk Rock:

“He’s not smashing guitars... but he really wants that kind of, that ethos.” (C, 05:35)
Romanticism’s Legacy:

“I sort of posit that like Romanticism has kind of won the day in terms of artistic expression.” (C, 21:54)
On Modern Storytelling and Moral Clarity:

“We sort of lack really great heroes and really great villains because we don't really believe in objectively right and wrong positions anymore.” (C, 32:44)
On the Downside of Endless Rebellion:

“Emptiness of that punk rock ethos. It's like dissatisfaction with the status quo... but I don't have a cohesive vision of what should come after that.” (C, 56:49)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:00–01:03 — Announcements (skip, no content)
02:08–08:22 — Introduction to Coleridge, the Romantics, and the origins of “Kubla Khan”
09:36–16:13 — Reading and first reaction to “Kubla Khan”
16:33–24:39 — The Romantic worldview, poet as outsider, and art as personal expression
24:48–35:23 — Romanticism’s embrace of the outsider, examples from literature (Frankenstein, Emma)
41:39–55:36 — Modern legacy of Romanticism, villain-sympathy, ethical relativism, cultural swings between “mercy” and “justice”
55:36–End — Closing reflections on Romanticism’s limits and enduring influence

Conclusion

The episode presents “Kubla Khan” as a microcosm for Romanticism’s ambitions: breaking the chains of order, celebrating passion and feeling, and unsettling the comfortable. The hosts trace how this ethos still shapes art, literature, and moral thinking today, for better and for worse — suggesting we now live in a world the Romantics remade, one where sympathy for the outsider has at times replaced the pursuit of justice or truth. They close by weighing Romanticism’s achievements against the emptiness that can come from endless rebellion and unanchored self-expression.

Recommended for listeners interested in:

Classic poetry and the Romantic era
How literature shapes society
Deep dives into philosophical and cultural history
Lively, insightful, and humorous critical discussions

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Transcript

A (0:00)

Hey everyone. Before we get into the episode, I wanted to let you know that Evergreen Classical School in the Woodlands, Texas is currently seeking their next head of school. Evergreen is a hybrid model Christian school focused on developing well ordered hearts and minds who will recognize, desire and proclaim the triune God of the Bible. If you or someone you know would like to speak further about the opportunity to lead this growing school community, please visit evergreenclassical.org or you can email evergreenboardvergreenclassical.org I'm a big fan of Evergreen. I do hope that if you or someone you know is interested and would be a good fit for the opportunity that you will reach out again. That's evergreenclassical.org Email address evergreenboardvergreenclassical.org all right, with that, let's go ahead and get started with the episode.

B (1:03)

Hey everybody, and welcome to Classical Stuff youf Should Know. We're a podcast about the classical world, about books and philosophy and sometimes other stuff. What we want to talk about. Mostly. Mostly books and philosophy, sometimes education, mostly that. My name is AJ Henneberg. I'm joined by Thomas Magby.

A (1:17)

Hello.

B (1:17)

And Graham Donaldson.

C (1:18)

Hi.

B (1:19)

And we're coming at you from sunny Austin, Texas, where it's been.

C (1:22)

It's cold out, though.

B (1:23)

It's been like freezing at night. Not right now.

C (1:25)

It's probably 64 degrees out there. No, no, it's. It's almost. It's hovering at freezing. It's gonna be cold this weekend.

B (1:30)

Well, I have done a podcast about Genghis Khan and I think really it's my paternal aura that Graham is drawing from because he's about to. About to give us the story of Genghis Khan's son. Right. So he's taking my, you know, he's riding my wave. Really. I established the kingdom and Graham is just gonna try to manage that kingdom, I think.

C (1:55)

Yeah, you carve it out through bloodshed and misery and I turn it into a functioning society of.

B (2:00)

No, that sounds about right.

C (2:02)

No, we're gonna be looking at. We're not really looking at Kubla Khan. I mean, we're looking at a poem called Kubla Khan.

C (3:35)

So we're going to be looking at a poem called Kubla Khan, which is a poem that was inspired by a drugged out dream that the poet had. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. So he. So Tamila Taylor Coleridge is a Romantic poet. He is writing at the end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century. So era of revolutions, the French Revolution has happened. This poem is published I think 1797, 1798. So he is. And in a weird way, Coleridge and the Romantics, they're kind of like the punk rock of their time. Now if you Google pictures of them, they don't seem like the punk rock of their time, but they were kind of the punk rock of their time because they were coming after a society that was very much sort of at the tail end of the Enlightenment. Highly. So The. The. The 18th century, highly scientific, moving towards logic, moving towards systems deism. A society where even the arts and poetry were becoming a lot more formulaic. You had like Alexander Pope, who wrote poems that were these perfectly rhyming little couplets that gave these little perfect moral sayings. This is the era of watches and the era of machines and the era of deists and the era of thinking that. Think of, Think of Kant. If you go back and listen to our episodes of Kant, where Kant is trying to understand human ethics based on pure reason alone. Right. This is the 1700s is an era of where we can. Where man is a. Where We've sort of turned man into a machine, or we tend to think of the world in mechanistic terms. And then you get the rise of these room and these Romantic poets, and they come in and they are trying to rest that image from the cultural zeitgeist and bring it back to a place of wildness, a place of mystery, a place of maybe something more earthy and more humane, filled with passions and filled with emotions. And instead of man being a machine, a man is also a creature and a heart and all these kinds of things. Jane Austen, who I love, does a great job sort of lampooning and making fun of Romantics in her literature. Marianne in Sense and Sensibility. And there's also a character, some characters who love reading Romantic poetry in Persuasion, whose names I can't remember right now. But Samuel Taylor Coleridge comes in and he is very much a person that his poetic vision is. He wants to shock and scandalize people and he kind of wants to use his artistic voice as something that is going to move people past their sort of like buttoned up lives of. Of sort of having figured everything out. And he wants to sort of blow things up and have people kind of like shake them up and. And you know, that kind of thing. So he's very much kind of that, like that. That punk rock ethos. He's not smashing guitars on stage or he's not dyeing his hair green or whatever, but he's. He really wants that kind of, that ethos. Anyway.

C (9:36)

Oh, you can definitely read it. Yeah, yeah, you got it in front of. I'm just going to read it here. It's only 50 lines or so. In Xandu did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree. Where Alf, the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round. And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills where blossomed many an incense bearing tree. And here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny spots of greenery. So beautiful, beautiful scenery where Kublai Khan is gonna make his little happy. His little happy pleasure dome. That sounds awesome, right? Little place, little country Place, you know, have an outdoor grill. You've got some. Some smelly trees, incense bearing trees. Sounds great. Sacred river. But oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover. A savage place as holy and enchanted as air beneath the waning moon was haunted by woman wailing for her demon lover. And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing a mighty fountain momently was forced amid whose swift half intermitted burst huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail. And mid these dancing rocks, at once and ever it flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion through wood and dale the sacred river ran, then reached the caverns measureless to man and sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean. And midst this tumult, Kubla heard from far ancestral voices prophesying war. All right. So big like geyser underneath the pleasure dome erupts and explodes and the sacred river like erupts and destroys his beautiful garden and then creates this big hole in the ground and runs back into the hole, the ground. And Kubla hears like the chants of war in the background. The shadow of the dome of pleasure floated midway on the waves, where was heard the mingled measure from the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device. A sunny pleasure domes with caves of ice. A damsel with a dulcimer. In a vision once I saw it was an Abyssinian maid, and on her dulcimer she played singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me her symphony and song to such a deep delight. Twould win me that with music loud and long I would build that dome in air, that sunny dome, those caves of ice. And all who hear should see them there and all should cry. Beware. Beware his flashing eyes, his floating hair. Weave a circle round him thrice and close your eyes with holy dread. For he on honeydew hath fed and drunk the milk of paradise.

C (21:10)

Yeah, that's where the. So he kind of has this. I'm here to tell us that we're all lame or tell you that you're all lame. And really like the songs of passion and. And. And exploding feelings are the true. Are like the true way of life. You can see why I sort of call them a punk rock. Right? Punk comes in and. And you know is like think of the Sex Pistols in England, right. Singing God Save the Queen but doing it in that punk way. That's poke. That's like really sort of tearing down that vision of. Of the. You know, the, The. The normative society. So he wants to come in and he wants to. And he's. He's. He's sort of. Yeah. Saying that this is. These are the songs that I'm going to try to sing. And this is like the. What Romanticism was doing at this time. And I sort of posit that like Romanticism has. Has kind of won the day of. In terms of artistic expression. No longer is art an artist who is trying to portray beauty and reality of the world. So think of like someone who is. Is trying to mimic the masters to try to be as realistic as possible on a canvas. It's all about sort of the artist. The artist is the subject of the art and it's sort of his expression of his own understanding of the world projected out into the world. This is. This was sort of the newness of Romanticism. This is what they were doing is that they were trying to express their own feelings of the world through the medium of whatever art they had. For Coleridge, it's poetry. And that was supposed to be the thing that we cared about as a. Less about the. The. The message of the. Of the. Of the. Or the content of the art. But maybe the medium of the art or the. The. The deeply held feelings of the artist. And having someone's deeply held feelings be the. The driver of the creative act is a very romantic thing. And I would. And I Think a lot of our. Sort of the way we tell stories, the way we sort of portray heroes, the way that we have, the kinds of things we lionize are people who feel things very deeply. I feel something more deeply than the normie milkmaids of my village. And so my deeply held conviction about the wildness and passions of life is a more true or is a more value. Valuable expression of human life than somebody who held conventional beliefs, that conventional beliefs are to be blown up, gardens are to be exploded, walls are to be floating away on the passions of the. Of the sacred rivers. And so this is kind of Coleridge's, his poetry of this. And if you've listened to any other poems that we've had or any other talking of Romanticism or maybe our William Blake episode, you can kind of see that this is the ethos of Romanticism. Wordsworth, less so, but even he is in that kind of. That kind of zeitgeist. Any thoughts or reflections, AJ I can see wheels turning.

C (25:18)

Yeah. A man who loves his monsters. I haven't watched it, but anyway, Frankenstein is another great example of this kind of romantic idea of. If you really wanted to push it far, you would say the Romantic movement questioned the idea of whether evil was a thing, was actually evil, or whether it was just an understood other thing, a misunderstood thing. This was the reading that the Romantics had of Paradise Lost. They thought that Satan in Paradise Lost was a misunderstood true hero, and they loved Paradise Lost for it. William Blake, this was his reading of Paradise Lost. So Paradise Lost coming out in, like, the 1600s or the late. Yeah, post Shakespeare. But William Blake reads it and interprets Satan as this hero. Coleridge reads it, interprets Satan as this sort of sympathetic hero. And then there's this sort of undercurrent that I think, Aisha, I was even thinking about this in your episode of Robinson Crusoe, the last one of. When Europeans left Europe and they started going off into the world, they began to encounter other cultural expressions that called into question their moral beliefs. Like Robinson Crusoe encountering the cannibals, right? And you all of a sudden have this crisis of like, is cannibalism bad? Because it is. It is like, objectively bad, or is it just bad because we think it's. We think it's bad, but they just sort of see it as an acceptable practice. And this sort of enters into the. The sort of. The social current of belief a little bit of a doubt about the objectivity of right and wrong. Because you're encountering all of these cultures that are doing cultural practices that the Europeans at first blush are like, immoral, but then upon further reflection are like. Or they don't realize it's moral because it's cultural practices. Wait a minute. Maybe we have. Maybe what we call an objective morality is like just your opinion, man, right? Like you get into the. So this. This is definitely. The Romantics kind of take that idea of a. Of a moral. Not. I don't know if you would go so far as to say a moral relativism, but they definitely take that idea of. That there is value in. In singing the songs of the outsider in hopes of shaking up the normative society. And that is the role of the artist, and that is the role of the poet. And I think any undergrad at art school gets given that message on day one, is you go to art school. It's like your role in society is to make people uncomfortable because that is a valuable thing in and of itself. That is the triumph of the Romantic artist under the self understanding. That is not the only self understanding that artists can have, although I think most people who go to art school who are artists, that is the line that they are fed is that your role in society is to poke holes at, undermine, make uncomfortable, deconstruct, or even rip apart the conventions and the normative beliefs of the society around you. There is a value to that. But we're probably. I think my conviction is we're living in a time where that has gone and become sort of swung to the. To the. To the far extreme. Maybe we talk about that in the. In between. Coleridge is, of course, he's. He's writing at a time of like, this is what, 10 years before Austen is writing her books. So, like, think of the world they're inhabiting. Austen is going to be writing in the sort of this Regency England of manners. And clearly delineated lines between the sexes and how you interact with one another and how high society sort of works. And this idea of noblesse oblige, that the nobles have an obligation to use their privilege in order to con, to construct a. A. A better society for everybody that is under their care. And. Yeah, and it's paternalistic, and it is, but it also has its own way that it works. So if you. If you have read any of our Jane Austen books or a fan of Jane Austen, think of somebody with this attitude of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, like, stomping around the Somerset countrysides with this kind of vision. It is very much this kind of, like, I'm gonna take you by the collar and try to shake you out of your. Out of your. Your. I'm trying to make you upset. Not upset, but like, I'm trying to shake you out of your conventions. And that is. That is my role of the artist.

C (32:47)

Well, I think. I think that is a. That's a reaction video against her. Got it. But she sort of has this view that our stories, especially children's stories, aren't very good because we as modern people have a hard time saying Frankenstein's monster is bad because of the bad things that he's done. Or we have a hard time saying there are. That evil is a thing that can exist in this world and needs to be fought against. Whereas our modern storytelling is evil is just a misunderstood other point of view. And the only villains that really exist in the world are either anti heroes of people that we should actually be listening to, but they're just like the normies don't understand them or they are personifications of things that we as modern people want to reject. As, as, as, as. Like we are things that we want to. We. We sort of turn them into cartoon versions of things we in society don't like, you know, so whatever that is. But her conviction is that we. We sort of lack really great heroes and really great villains because we don't have. We don't really believe in objectively right and wrong positions anymore. She's worth a listen. She's very interesting. Very interesting lady. But that is the triumph of the Romantics. The triumph of the Romantics is. Is that these. Saw these outside Songs of Hell are worth listening to and are worth championing because they need to come and they need to undercut sort of normative society. If you want to think about it as a spectrum, human beings operate on a mercy justice spectrum. Right. That we can tend. We tend to think of the world in terms of rules and justice, and we make decisions based on a right and wrong framework or we can think of. We can make decisions on people based on sort of mercy in context and story. Let me give you a great example of this in Emma. So Jane Austen's Emma Knightley and Emma are debating whether or not Frank Churchill is a good person for something. Let me. So, for people. So who are these people? So Emma and so Knightley is sort of like the great, the great character of Emma. He's very knightly and good. Emma is the, the, the. The fun, loving, but can kind of get herself into trouble. Lady of the small town.

C (35:39)

Yeah, so she kind of. But anyway, but she wants to be a reader and wants to be a piano player. This is Emma. We love her. Frank Churchill is a young. A young roguish dude whose dad just got married to somebody sort of lower in society, and he has yet to come and meet his new stepmother and has yet to come pay his respects to his dad, Emma. And they sort of have heard rumors that he's off gallivanting at, like, in Weymouth, which is like a place where you go and drink and sort of party. And so they are debating about what they think about the character of Frank Churchill. And I think Emma and Knightley sort of are good examples of this mercy justice framework and how you think about people. Mr. Knightland Knightley says essentially, if he wanted to, he would and he hasn't. Like, it is his duty. There is nothing that he should. There is nothing that a man should do or should care about more than just his duty. His duty was, and he knows it is to come and pay respects to his father. Even if somebody has said, oh, but Frank, we need you here. Oh, Frank, we need you to do X, Y and Z. Oh, Frank. Frank should be able to look somebody in the eye as a man and say, I'm sorry. I need to go and pay respects to my father. And Knightley has said, and because he doesn't do it, he didn't want to do it. And I judge him for that. He did not. He's not done the right thing. And that reflects badly on him. And Emma says, oh, Knightley, how can you? You don't even know what things are in or what sort of demands are on Frank's life. We know he has an overbearing aunt who controls him, and so maybe he's thought that it's like, it's not an easy time for him to get away, and he's trying to manage all of these other people's emotions and feelings, and he is just waiting for an opportunity where he's going to offend the least amount of people to come and pay respects to his father. We can't pass judgment on him until we know more about his story and situation. And Nylie says, that's ridiculous. We don't know you need to know anything else. He has a duty, and he's not following his duty. If he wanted to, he would. And Emma says, but he. You know, you say that, but maybe he would. He would be wrecking the relationship with his aunt. We shouldn't pass judgment until we know more about Frank. So that little interaction between Emma and Knightley is like the perfect interaction between. Do you make decisions about people based on, like, an idea of justice, rules and regulations, and some sort of internal. Some concept of duty and responsibility? You need to do this. You're not doing this. That reflects badly on you. Not saying that you're 100% evil. I'm just saying that, like, you're dropping the ball, man. Like, man up and do what you're supposed to do. It's a very sort of masculine Knightly position. Emma comes in and. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Emma's wrong, and I'm not saying Knightley's right. I'm saying that they are exemplifying what may be considered like a. More of a masculine position and more of a feminine position. On. On Prudence. Emma comes in and she says, we need to contextualize this thing. We shouldn't just harshly pass judgment without knowing the whole story. There's not. I think Emma has a point on this. Turns out Knightley's right. Frank is kind of a ninny, and he's not paying respects to his father because he didn't want to. And in fact, the only reason he comes to Highbury is that the girl he's got a crush on also comes to Highbury, and he's like, hey, I can talk to my dad while I'm there. And Frank's like, I told you so. But the very fact that. But Emma also has this point where she's like, we. We need to contextualize and know the whole story before we can sort of pass judgment on this kind of thing. I would say that this point of view that Emma has, this sort of, like, more mercy point of view is very much in line with this Romanticism. Wanting to sympathize with the outsider, sympathize with the other sympathizer, sympathize with the. The foreign positions. And there's a little bit of this. I think. I hate the word fetishization, because I think that's too strong. But there is a little bit of this, like, love of the foreign and love of the different. And then that something foreign and different has more of a moral hold on us because it is different. And now here's an opportunity for us to shake up our lie, you know, shake up our conventional ways. So if Emma was like, you know, a romantic version of Emma would be that Emma would be trying. Would be trying to shake Knightley out of his, like, his convictions about the rightness and wrongness of people by trying to be like, you see, Nightly. Frank was misunderstood, and you had prejudice in your heart against him. And Nightly would be like, oh, man, you're right. I'm sorry, Frank Churchill. I thought you were so bad. But it turns out you're actually way better than I realized. And I just didn't realize it because I was so full of my own prejudices. Emma doesn't go that way. In fact, Emma is very much in line with more of classical thought on morality than the Romantics are. But the Romantic story is the villain is the person that doesn't understand the outsider. The villain is the person that. That is. Those. Those people who shout, beware. Beware his flashing eyes, his floating hair. They want to weave a circle around the poet. They want to keep him at arm's length because he's saying uncomfortable things. The real villains are the ones that don't understand punk rock. They're the. They're the lames who. Who, you know, want. Don't want to be shaken out of their comfortable existence. And I think the Romantics won. We tell more Romantic stories than we tell conventional moral stories. We sympathize, like Hannibal Lecter is a misunderstood bad guy. In fact, we need to go and tell the, like Hannibal Lecter origin story, where at the end of that, we're like, dang, I should go eat somebody. Right? Like.

C (45:32)

Sure. Mary Shelley is writing a book to try to say like people that we call evil are, they come by it honestly and we would be better if we understood how they came by it. And, and it. She has, you know, it's this, not so much like abolition of jails, but this, she has this belief that the justice system is an inherently. Is going to always get things wrong because they're just going to look at the acts of people and not understand the motivations of people. So that book has, like Justine who gets killed for a crime she doesn't commit because of the prejudice that people have towards her. The monster is, is bad because of the prejudice that people have have towards him. It is the role of the Romantic artist to get rid of people's prejudice for Pete, for others and to have mercy be the, the ruling faculty of the day. And a society that swings too far in the direction of justice can be a harsh society. And a society that swings too far in the direction of mercy can be a, can be a harsh society. You know, mercy to the guilty is, is, is mercy to the guilty is murdering the innocent. Right. Like it's, it's. And so the Romanticism was. Came on the scene to try to be the counterbalance weight to maybe a more justice oriented society or maybe not even justice oriented, but more of a like mechanized society. A society that believed that with the right inputs you get the right outputs and human beings and society in and of itself is just a machine. And we need to figure out the machine using reason. And if we do that, we can perfect human humanity sort of this, this, this myth of human perfectibility. And the Romantics come in and say like no, you can't do this. You can't just put your cold, your cold mathematical logic to the human experience. You're gonna, you're going to trample on, on, on human beings or enslave them or, or misunderstand them or, or call people bad that are in fact just misunderstood. And we need to come in and be this counterbalancing force. And that was probably a good thing. But if we, we can also envision a society that, if it swings too far into the realm of mercy, that all monsters are misunderstood, are misunderstood heroes. And the real monsters are the ones that are trying to keep some kind of semblance of order together. A jal there or. I mean that's a bad example. Or like, you know, the people that are sort of dismissing the artists. RoboCop or the real RoboCop. Right then, you know, then you've Then. Then there's maybe gonna be a swing in the other direction that you are gonna start having art and literature that comes in that is going to, again, sort of lionize justice and truth and, you know, getting. Getting rid of the bad guy. An example I can think of. This is a stupid example. Do you guys ever remember. Oh, what was that? It was the old movies in the 1970s. I think it was called Death Wish. Do you remember Death Wish? The movies?