In lieu of Personal Introductions

The German literary movement of Sturm und Drang was relatively short-lived, lasting just around twenty years, and it was ultimately undermined by its own proponents (e.g. Goethe), who dismissed it as youthful folly and turned to other styles. But for that brevity of its movement-form, Sturm und Drang as a concept is omnipresent. We love storms! Rage! Fire! Exclamation points! It was a dark and stormy night...

And so, to christen this blog, and to explain the title image, I quote two authors who have nothing to do with the German movement of Sturm und Drang but everything to do with the concepts of Storm und Drunk.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the strait way was lost.

-Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, trans. by Robert and Jean Hollander

Receive thy new possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

John Milton, Paradise Lost, available online via Dartmouth's Milton Reading Room.

<3
-Drunk