Talk:James Thomson (poet, born 1834)

A Misreading of "City"

"The City of Dreadful Night" is many things (all of them dark) but it's hardly "an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment." -- That's boilerplate crit and untrue, as even the most cursory reading of "Night" will show. Thomson's epic poem has nothing to say about "dehumanization" or the modern city's "uncare" for people. The poem is about melancholy in its purest, most formless and existential sense -- Durer's Melancholia -- and in a brilliant imaginative stroke Thomson *builds* his city street by street to illustrate it. I mean it's such a basic point that one fears for the rest of the article, which I stopped reading but which maybe someone else can go over. -- Egomet Bonmot

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The City of Dreadful Night is "an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment?" -- boilerplate and untrue imho. Thomson's epic poem doesn't even touch "dehumanization" or the modern city's "uncare" for people. The poem is about melancholy in its purest most existential sense -- Durer's Melancholia -- and in a brilliant imaginative stroke Thomson *builds* a city to illustrate the feeling. I mean it's such a basic point that one fears for the rest of the article, which I stopped reading but maybe someone else can check. -- Egomet Bonmot

Substituted at 21:46, 26 June 2016 (UTC)