"In our romantic groves I adored her like a divinity"
About this Quote
A composer doesn’t “love” here; she stages devotion as a scene, lush with set dressing and sound. “In our romantic groves” is already a cue for atmosphere: a private pastoral where feeling can be stylized, not merely confessed. Groves are classical props (nymphs, rites, Orpheus) and also deliberately artificial spaces in the Western imagination - nature arranged to look like nature. Boyd’s phrasing signals that what follows isn’t raw diary entry so much as an aesthetic choice: romance as a cultivated environment.
“I adored her like a divinity” pushes the emotion into the register of ritual. The comparison doesn’t simply flatter; it admits imbalance. Divinity demands worship, distance, and a kind of self-erasure from the admirer. That’s the subtext that makes the line sting: adoration is beautiful, but it’s also surrender. For a composer, the metaphor carries extra freight. Music is one of the few arts that can make devotion feel physically plausible - a sustained note, a recurring motif, the way harmony resolves like relief. The sentence reads like a program note for an inner life: I built an Eden, I installed a goddess, I played my part.
Context matters, too. Boyd’s work is known for intimacy with landscape and a sensitivity to the natural world; the “groves” can be read as both literal refuge and compositional space, where memory and desire are arranged with care. The line understands romance as something we compose - and, sometimes, something that composes us.
“I adored her like a divinity” pushes the emotion into the register of ritual. The comparison doesn’t simply flatter; it admits imbalance. Divinity demands worship, distance, and a kind of self-erasure from the admirer. That’s the subtext that makes the line sting: adoration is beautiful, but it’s also surrender. For a composer, the metaphor carries extra freight. Music is one of the few arts that can make devotion feel physically plausible - a sustained note, a recurring motif, the way harmony resolves like relief. The sentence reads like a program note for an inner life: I built an Eden, I installed a goddess, I played my part.
Context matters, too. Boyd’s work is known for intimacy with landscape and a sensitivity to the natural world; the “groves” can be read as both literal refuge and compositional space, where memory and desire are arranged with care. The line understands romance as something we compose - and, sometimes, something that composes us.
Quote Details
| Topic | Romantic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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