Ruins of Despair
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Ruins of Despair
@ruinsofdespair.bsky.social
A weary pilgrim on the grave of the Romantic Hero, a forlorn eulogist cast upon the desolate shore of the exquisite agony that is The Gothic.

#books #gothic #romanticism

'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' (P.B. Shelley)
Ivan Suytin's interpretation of the Russian version of Snow Maiden, Snegurochka.

Circa 1900

#LegendaryWednesday #folklore #fairytale
December 3, 2025 at 12:10 PM
“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning ..."

Mr Enfield leads us on the dark journey that we know as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R. L. Stevenson.

#WyrdWednesday 🩸📚💙
December 3, 2025 at 5:59 AM
'Die Ruine des Klosters Walkenried im Winter' (The Ruins of Walkenried Abbey in Winter)

Carl Hasenpflug 1843

#art #painting #gothic #winter #snow
December 2, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow,—
Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;

– P.B. Shelley 1810

#poetry #gothic #romanticism #booksky #December
December 1, 2025 at 12:17 PM
Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.

– Edward Young, from 'Night Thoughts' 1742-1745

#poetry #gothic #books #booksky
December 1, 2025 at 4:30 AM
In the concisely titled 'TO A LADY WHO PRESENTED TO THE AUTHOR A LOCK OF HAIR BRAIDED WITH HIS OWN, AND APPOINTED A NIGHT IN DECEMBER TO MEET HIM IN THE GARDEN', Byron laments on the wintery setting of the proposed date, noting that Juliet romanced in a milder climate.

#ShakespeareSunday #booksky
November 30, 2025 at 8:43 AM
'I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.'

– Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Black Cat' 1843

#motivational

#caturday #gothic #books #booksky
November 29, 2025 at 2:26 PM
'When I have fears that I may cease to be' seems prophetic to us, as Keats died only a few years after writing the sonnet.

Yet, in 1818, he was still very much alive and in those exhilarating years of young adulthood and overwhelming call of life.

#BookWormSat #poetry #booksky #romanticism
November 29, 2025 at 9:37 AM
'Boulevard in the Evening'

Isaac Ilyich Levitan 1883

#art #painting #winter
November 29, 2025 at 5:14 AM
'Night Scene with a Monk in a Gothic Cloister'

A. E. Haffer 1845

#gothic #art #painting
November 28, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Fragment of a Ghost Story by P.B. Shelley

Often mistaken for Percy's entry to the famous Villa Diodati ghost story competition of 16 June 1816, that saw the drafts for Polidori's Vampyre and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Sadly, no text by Percy survives.

#PhantomsFriday #poetry #gothic #booksky
November 28, 2025 at 10:04 AM
'The Grave' by Robert Blair 1788

#poetry #gothic #romanticism #books #booksky
November 27, 2025 at 2:35 PM
'View of a Church Yard Entrance in Winter', Edmunc Koken c. 1862.

#gothic #romanticism #art #painting
November 26, 2025 at 4:58 PM
In Goethe's version of the Faustian pact, the sacriface ought to give you pause:

If you ever come across a moment in life so beautiful that you wish it never to end, the devil will claim your life and soul.

#WyrdWednesday #romanticism #books #booksky
November 26, 2025 at 8:14 AM
'It is actually possible to become amateurs in suffering.'

– Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

#goals

#gothic #books #booksky
November 25, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Prozession im Nebel (Procession in the Fog) by Ernst Ferdinand Oehme 1828

#MistyMonday #art #painting #gothic
November 24, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

– From 'Remembrance' by Emily Brontë 1845

#poetry #romanticism #books #booksky #snow
November 23, 2025 at 10:09 AM
What is there in our nature that is for ever urging us on towards pain and misery?

– Mary Shelley, The Last Man

#gothic #scifisaturday #books #booksky 🪐📚
November 22, 2025 at 12:10 PM
In 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751), Thomas Gray first falls into rural reverie in a crepuscular graveyard, then laments the inequalities of society, and finally resigns himself to death.

Well, that escalated quickly.

#BookWormSat #poetry #romanticism #books #booksky
November 22, 2025 at 6:07 AM
'Ghosts on a Tree'

Franz Sedlacek 1933

#art #painting ##PhantomsFriday
November 21, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Ghost is sorrow in Wordsworth's 'Lucy Gray', 1799.

William heard the story from his sister: Near Halifax, a young girl lost her way in a snow-storm. The parents traced her footsteps in the snow to the middle of the lock of a canal, where they stopped.

#PhantomsFriday #poetry #romanticism #booksky
November 21, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Lord Byron had cup made out of a monk's skull found on the grounds of his home, Newstead Abbey.

It could hold an entire bottle of claret, and was passed around 'in imitation of the Goths of old', among the Order of the Skull that Byron had founded at Newstead.

#BookologyThursday #gothic #booksky
November 20, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Ecstasy only smiles — despair laughs.

– Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

#WorldPhilosophyDay #gothic #books #booksky
November 20, 2025 at 9:48 AM
In Finnish mythology the sacred white Swan of Tuoni swims in the black river of the underworld.

#WyrdWednesday #folklore #epic #Kalevala
November 19, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

– William Wordsworth

#poetry #gothic #romanticism #books #booksky
November 19, 2025 at 8:18 AM