History 1122 Romanticism

The Shaping of the "Second Europe" by Revolutions, 1750 - 1914

Romanticism

Outline of Lecture

I. Introduction: The Many Sides of Romanticism
II. Romantic Themes
III. Literary Romanticism
IV. Romanticism in Music
V. Romanticism and the Second Europe

Introduction

Romanticism, a movement of wide and varied character in literature, philosophy, and the arts, was another "ism" spawned by revolutions which shaped the Second Europe. It is a term capable of varied meanings. In the 19^th century it was both (1) a broad attitude toward man and the world and (2) an array of attitudes about literature, art, music, and philosophy. As a general outlook on life, it was a reaction against central tenets of the Enlightenment, particularly the emphasis on reason and logic and the scientific spirit with which men sought to understand themselves and their world. Romantics were sympathetic to the French Revolution and willing to join any crusade for political freedom. At the same time, they steadfastly opposed the Industrial Revolution which they saw as crippling and deadening the spirit of man. As a medley of attitudes about literature, art, music, and philosophy, Romanticism was a body of work which emphasized feeling, intuition, the commonplace, the spiritual and the mysterious.

Romantic Themes

Certain themes are characteristic of Romanticism, whether it appears in literature, art, music, or philosophy. Since we will not have time to examine all facets of the movement, we need first to take a broad view of Romantic themes and the characteristics of Romantic work, no matter the medium in which they appeared. The following is generally true of the Romantic:

· (1) an emphasis on emotion, feeling, and firsthand experience rather than on logic, reason, and scientific principles as the means by which man gained his greatest understanding. Romantics did not reject reason and science. They had their place. But they did not lead man towards understanding the great truths of life; only the intuition and will could do that. Romantics tended toward a simple optimism about human nature. But they, perhaps more than the classicists who preceded them, also comprehended both man's god-like and demonic qualities.

· (2) an obsession with nature as a living presence surrounding man. Romantics looked on nature as revelatory of man, God, and ultimate reality, almost divine itself. This interest was not the cool measured view of the scientist who is looking for the laws and formulas by which the universe is to be explained. It was akin to religious reverence. Nature is a living presence which nurtures and teaches man, if he will but cultivate his capacity for feeling and emotion and be absorbed in the wisdom of nature.

· (3) akin to (2) was a belief in the organic wholeness of Reality and the need to grasp this unity if one is to understand the meaning of life and the universe.

· (4) a fascination with erotic love, particularly the unrequited kind, and with death.

· (5) a reverence for imagination and the unique powers it confers to make the individual capable of transcending ordinary men and to experience and describe feelings and emotions ordinary men do not express. All men had this capacity, Romantics believed, but poets, writers, musicians, and artists had the gift in abundance. They pointed the way for all.

· (6) a fascination with the ordinary and commonplace, the unique and colorful. Truth lay not in the great abstract ideas, but in the everyday experiences of human life.

· (7) an inquisitiveness about the spiritual, the deeply mysterious, a focusing on the strangeness of life. Romantics invented the mystery and the horror tales.

· (8) an emphasis on the freedom and responsibility of the individual to grasp truth and live its meaning, even in nonconformity and rebellion. Especially in rebellion. Romantics redefined what it meant to be the heroic individual. The ancient and medieval ideal hero embodied the highest values of society and the group and led in attaining that goal. The Romantic hero is alone, isolated from society and the group, and struggling alone towards goals or causes which society and the group do not accept or understand, at least not yet.

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Stop and think with me about each of these. Theme one originated in the Judae-Christian tradition. Themes two and three, ironically, in the myth-making cultures of the ancient Near East, which the Judaeo-Christian tradition rejected. Theme four in courtly love of the Middle Ages. Theme five has its roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition but is a modern phenomenon. I can show you the roots of theme six in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but the fascination with the commonplace is new with Romanticism. Theme seven also is rooted in ancient Judaism and Christianity but is new in Romanticism. Theme eight is also old and new: the heroic figure is ancient (classical and Judaeo-Christian) but Romantics redefined the idea.

Literary Romanticism

Romanticism touched art, music, and philosophy. It permeated intellectual life on every level. But it is its influence on literature and music that we want to look at in this session. You need to read the text for other aspects and, ideally, will want to read a Romantic work or listen to an example of Romantic music to get a deeper understanding of what Romanticism was.

A partial list of some of the major Romantic writers follows:

· (1) the British writer, William Blake (1757-1827), whose life and work vividly illustrate many of the Romantic themes listed above. At best Blake could be called eccentric. He was openly religious, unabashedly so, when it was fashionable to be a Deist or an atheist, and when, as a young boy, he reported a vision of angels sitting in a tree, many suspected he was mad. As a Romantic, he cared nothing for others opinions, and drew on his visions for works such as "Songs of Innocence and of Experience." His last breath was of the joy and beauty of heaven which filled his mind's eye as he died. The plight of the poor enraged him against established authority. As did the evil and oppression which he believed the Industrial Revolution had inflicted on the common man.

To see his language and imagery, and his keen sense of man's god-like as well as tigerish qualities, read his poem "Tyger" (1789).

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

And then there is Blake the artist, no less gifted than Blake the poet. Critics consider him to have been one of England's greatest painters and engravers. When you read his poetry, you also see the prints he created to illustrate those poems. While a detailed description of his art as an aspect of Romanticism is not our interest here, perhaps one of his works will suggest his genius and illustrate several elements of Romanticism. Think about which ones as you click on the next link: his water color of Isaac Newton. Tellingly, Blake depicts him gazing down and "measuring" the world. Is this the way to understand the natural world? What do you think Blake's answer is?

· (2) the German writer, Johann von Goethe (1749-1832) who wrote the Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Faust (1808-1831). Although Goethe bridges the periods of literary Classicism (Enlightenment) and Romanticism and can be seen as representative of either, he illustrates in these two works many of the Romantic themes discussed above. Werther, for example, is a young man who commits suicide because of an impossible love (erotic love and death). Faust, the central figure in the other work, is the solitary Romantic hero struggling to master all knowledge, who makes a pact with the devil to achieve his goal. Throughout, however, he maintains his humanity and his moral perception. He struggles alone against all odds, and is saved by his innate moral sense and humanity. In Faust, Goethe sums up the Romantic credo of individual fulfillment and salvation through personal struggle and involvement with God and humanity.

It is man's nature to struggle, and in his struggle--not in his attainment--is his salvation

[the angels in Faust sing] Who strives forever with a will,

By us can be redeemed.

[the Lord says] A good man, struggling in his darkness,

will always be aware of the true course.

He only earns his freedom and existence

Who daily conquers them anew.

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Western or European man has been said to be "Faustian" in his ceaseless yearning and striving for that which has been thought to unattainable. Can you understand why?

· (2) the English poet, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) who defined a new poetic style in the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798) and proceeded to illustrate it with poems evoking the beauty of nature, the innocence of youth, and the deadening effect of materialism and industrialism.

Just a sampling of works and lines:

"MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD" (1802):

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

From "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey" (1798):

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

Lines from "The Prelude" (1805):

One summer evening (led by her) I found

A little boat tied to a willow tree

Within a rocky cave, its usual home.

Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in

Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth

And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice

Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;

Leaving behind her still, on either side,

Small circles glittering idly in the moon,

Until they melted all into one track

Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,

Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point

With an unswerving line, I fixed my view

Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,

The horizon's utmost boundary; far above

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnace; lustily

I dipped my oars into the silent lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat

Went heaving through the water like a swan;

When, from behind that craggy steep till then

The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,

And growing still in stature the grim shape

Towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seemed, with purpose of its own

And measured motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the covert of the willow tree;

There in her mooring-place I left my bark,

-- And through the meadows homeward went, in grave

And serious mood; but after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days, my brain

Worked with a dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts

There hung a darkness, call it solitude

Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colors of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind

By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

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If I say that Wordsworth taught us the themes these preceding lines illustrate, and that we still feel their power, will you understand why I say this? (See this link for scenes of the Lake District where Wordsworth was born and lived for many years. The lakes and their environs help us understand Wordsworth's sense of the brooding presence of nature)

· (3) The English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), colleague and friend of Wordsworth with whom he wrote Lyrical Ballads. One of his works was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1797), a poem full of the supernatural telling the tale of a sailor cursed to wear an albatross around his neck until he is redeemed by God's love. Another poem, only a fragment famous for having been written under the influence of opium, was Kubla Khan, a dream poem infused by Coleridge's heightened imagination and sense of mystery.

From Kubla Khan (1798)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round :

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !

A savage place ! as holy and enchanted

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced :

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves ;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !

His flashing eyes, his floating hair !

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Romanticism in Music

Romantic themes infused music as well as literature. Two composers interest us, not because there are not others of equal importance, but because I am telling you about what I know best.

The first is Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) whose Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral" exudes Romanticism. In program for the symphony Beethoven explained his purpose in the different movements. Movement one was intended to evoke the mood of a beautiful morning in the country and "cheerful sentiments upon arriving at the countryside." The mood of Movement two is a walk by a murmuring brook, "scene at the brook." See if you can hear these two moods as I play movements one and two. (For another link click here.)

Next is a work by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), Le Symphonie Fantastique, "March to the Scaffold" (1830). This work too depicts a walk in the countryside and the sights and experiences one might see, including a public execution. Notice that the strings make the sound of the head skipping along after being removed from the body.

Romanticism and the Second Europe

Romanticism challenged the Enlightenment which it thought wrong-headed in many respects. Romantics agreed that man was basically good, that he should be able to remake any society which failed to secure natural rights, and that the future was bright with promise for man. But they sharply rejected the idea that reason and logic were man's two greatest attributes. Instead they believed feeling, intuition, and imagination to be man's greatest gifts.

They also took a more spiritual view of the world than the scientific view in vogue among Enlightenment thinkers. It was as a brooding presence that Romantics saw the universe, not as a Great Machine. In fact the whole mechanistic, materialist view of the universe left them cold. They transformed ways of looking at man and the universe, for better or worse, and it is the latter sometimes that makes their legacy so problematic. For instance, Romanticism survives today as a general outlook in the trend towards individualism and primitivism as themes in our society (individualism, meaning maximum freedom from any kind of restraint; primitivism, meaning the destruction of traditional standards and the idealization of the "unfitting" in personal and social behavior). The implications of those two trends unfold daily, at least they do so from my perspective. You may say better than I whether that is good or bad.

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Without suggestion from me at the outset, what examples can you give of Romanticism's influence today? Am I too pessimistic about the legacy of Romanticism? Why? Reasons?