Childhood itself is the quintessential Romanticism, and every child needs to be allowed to live in that state of grace, but wider society also needs the romance of childhood for its very creativity, requiring the reckless rapture of the puer* figure, the eternal child within culture, whose incandescence must be tended and attended to, so that its light can flare in the storyteller or dancer, so that the risk-taking, anarchic and flame-like quality, the eternal return of the great romance of childhood which exists within us all, can flame in a resurgent romantic revolution. The chill of our utilitarian age needs that fire.
-Jay Griffiths, A Country Called Childhood
*in case you are wondering about the choice of this word, go here.
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