romancing our language

Thinking about the film Casablanca recently -- that part where Louie says to Rick, "I have often speculated on why you don't return to America.  Did you abscond with the church funds?  Did you run off with a senator's wife?  I like to think you killed a man.  It's the romantic in me."

...the first time I watched that movie, (on TV, in Boston, in my bedroom, on a work-night...) that line washed over me and I thought, The Great Gatsby:

[excerpt]-------"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."

A thrill passed over all of us.....

She leaned forward with enthusiasm.  "You look at him sometime when he thinks nobody's looking at him.  I'll bet he killed a man."

--------------------- [end excerpt]

I think when you read the Gatsby section, it's clear from the context that the word "romantic" is being used in the way where it means -- some far-off strange, extreme occurrence, far-removed from ordinary life.
However, the Casablanca exchange -- while meant the same way -- could be listened to by someone who hadn't read The Great Gatsby and they might think, "Romantic?  Killing a guy is romantic?  yikes...

When I hear the word "romantic" the first thing I think of is candlelight and loving words being said between a man and a woman -- usually in the movies ... I have to shift gears to take the word romance, or romantic the way they mean it when speaking of adventure.

Online dictionary gives us this:

1.  a love affair, esp an intense and happy but short-lived affair involving young people
2.  love, esp romantic love idealized for its purity or beauty
3.  a spirit of or inclination for adventure, excitement, or mystery
4.  a mysterious, exciting, sentimental, or nostalgic quality, esp one associated with a place

5.  a narrative in verse or prose, written in a vernacular langauge in the Middle Ages, dealing with strange and exciting adventures of chivalrous heroes
6.  any similar narrative work dealing with events and characters remote from ordinary life
7.  the literary genre represented by works of these kinds
8.  (in Spanish literature) a short narrative poem, usually an epic or historical ballad
9.  a story, novel, film, etc., dealing with love, usually in an idealized or sentimental way
10.  an extravagant, absurd, or fantastic account or explanation
11.  a lyrical song or short instrumental composition having a simple melody

-------------------  Romance "be" a busy word!

Another recent reference to it -- the Internet Comment-person who discussed quality of movies and said he liked the quote from a movie called The Funeral where the character says, "They're criminals because they've never risen above their heartless, illiterate upbringing.  And there's nothing, absolutely nothing, romantic about it."

(I guess we could say Mafia life is "romantic" in the sense that it's "dealing with events and characters remote from ordinary life."...)

------------------------------------------
Online Dictionary added these illustrations:

In traditional literary terms, a narration of the extraordinary exploits of heroes, often in exotic or mysterious settings.  Most of the stories of King Arthur and his knights are romances.

The term romance has also been used for stories of mysterious adventures, not necessarily of heroes.  Like the heroic kind of romance, however, these adventure romances usually are set in distant places.  William Shakespeare's play The Tempest is this kind of romance.

[end quote]
----------------------------------
And there are even more applications for the word "romance" -- the Romance Languages, for example, which include Spanish, etc.  It's a word of elasticity.  It is a "big tent" of a word.

-30-