Abstract. John Clare (1793–1864), the “green man” of English literature, is one of the most fascinating romantic poets, who wrote prolifically excellent poetry, yet struggled hard for a long time for a hearing in academic circles. Even if today the situation is better than it was a few decades ago, there are still little researched facets of his poetic works. The present paper proposes the reader an introduction to Clare’s system of thought, whereby the “Northamptonshire Peasant Poet” tried to understand the mystery of reality, which for him is the same as the mystery of Nature itself. His works show Clare as a writer who experienced Nature in all its complex aspects; in this sense, Clare is a kind of “archetypal” Nature poet, who manages to internalize Nature and thus make it his own: Nature and Poetry fuse in Clare’s mind by a mysterious poetic “alchemy,” which enables the poet to transform human language into an often onomatopoeic vehicle, an “ecolect” for the perpetual discovery of the infinite latent horizons of natural phenomena. This is what we call Clare’s magic naturalism or deep naturalism, which is unique in the English letters and world literature (although equally tributary to both Wordsworth and Blake), and which is based on a poetics of the “breathing word” that is close in its essence to the spirit of the I Ching; or, Book of changes, a five-thousand-year old book that the Chinese considered to be alive. The final conclusion of this journey of (self-)discovery through Nature and poetic language may sound startling, because it has affinities with Oriental and Hindu thought: by his quest, in which he engaged via a direct experiencing of Nature, Clare comes to realize that the essence of things, the supreme mystery of reality, is the fact that all is suspended for ever in the dialectic of existence and non-existence in simultaneity. Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” with Clare thus definitively becomes “to be and not to be.” The artifex who knows this deep mystery of reality becomes, as if magically, capable to create living art, thus bringing to fruition Pygmalion’s old dream of giving life to a dead marble. Clare often managed to do that, to create living poetry, by “fishing” for the “breathing words” that are swarming invisible and in vast numbers, both around us and inside us. By doing that, in a way Clare managed to vindicate the very notion that a book (be that the I Ching or the other sacred books of humanity) can be alive.

Key words: green man; green delight; green language; breathing word / hues / lines; living song; deep / magic naturalism; romantic impressionism; hieros gamos; sadasat; I Ching; poetic ecolect

Stroe MA (2024) John Clare and the romantic universe. Creativity 7(1): 3–173. doi:10.22381/C7120241