Yesterday, to the day, two hundred years ago Shelley and Byron met on the shore of Lake Geneva. Little knowing that books will come to be written about the friendship that sprung to life on this day. That it would spark scandal could perhaps be anticipated, but not that it would, over time, come to seem as intriguing as what they wrote.
But marking this anniversary, essentially treating life coincidences as editorial choices, also seems nonsensical. Days line up and have their dates arbitrarily assigned to them, and that now two hundred years worth of numbered days has passed may be aesthetically pleasing, but how can one expect any significance from it? Or anything more signficant than the date as an excuse to organise a commemorative event, itself a thing poised beween promotion and entertainment (to make the romantics seem present in the present by noting how distant their present is to this very present we’re presently in).
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 