With the Romantic
period one has a multifaceted movement originating in Europe that made its way
to the US with the onset of the nineteenth century. Actually, the movement started in the late 1700s
and can be seen as one of those social forces that served to heighten people’s
awareness of the detrimental effects of a growing political upheaval and the initial
industrialization of European life.
Central to its
messaging was a focus on emotions and individualism. Part and parcel of its impact was its influence
on liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, and radicalism.[1] While the movement’s most observable affect
was on that time’s art and literature, the political world was also highly impacted. But to appreciate in which ways it moved
politics, one needs to appreciate the directions it maneuvered the creative
world of the arts – both the physical arts and in their written forms.
The Enlightenment adopted
the classical tradition; the Romantics favored medieval expression. In that, it turns away from concerns of
balance, proportion, and idealistic form (the bedrocks of classical art) to expressions
of raw emotions and seeing art as the opportunity to be exposed to real
experiences. That even included stirring
the emotions of horror, terror, fear, and awe.
But in the main, it shifted people’s attention to nature and its
abundant beauty in its raw states.
With these focuses,
Romantic art placed newfound appreciation for what had been previously judged
to be common and plebian, that being folk art and national expressions. Now, with this newer view, such traditions
were judged as worthy of being honored as noble. This included ascribing honor on national
traditions of artistic endeavors that originated in those medieval days before
firm national borders and national institutions took hold.[2]
An early expression of
this newer sensitivity can be traced to Germany. There the Sturn und Drang (“storm and
desire”) movement in that nation’s music and literature – taking place in the
late 1760s to early 1780s – one finds works highlighting extreme emotions. They were considered as concerted efforts to
rebel against rationalism as dictated by the Enlightenment. Credited with its early expression in words
was the works of the philosopher, Johann Georg Hamann, an early proponent of
the philosophy of language.
The movement, first in
Europe and then in the US, had a recurring tangible target, that being industrialism
and urban living as it sprawled with the rise of factories and other manufacturing
centers. It was a recurring reaction to
the lasting consequences of the Enlightenment, not the least being the French Revolution,
even soliciting criticism among many Romantics who initially supported that
overthrow of the French monarchy.
As this messaging
matured, definite themes emerged. Those
included placing high credit on the spokespeople of the movement judged to be
heroic as individuals and artists, championing a better society. Especially honored were those seen as leading
the way by the expressions of their individual imaginations. A general sense of liberation took hold, that
being free from classical dictates as to what was legitimate art and it ushered
in a Zeitgeist of this visceral expression.
A German artist, Casper
David Friedrich, captured the new thrust with his summary remark, “the artist’s
feeling is his law” or the English poet, William Wordsworth’s notion that art
is the product of an artist’s powerful feelings that gets refined through the
tranquility of his/her recollection.
Handed down rules from previous disciplined schools of art were merely
considered obstacles to the creation of legitimate art, for after all, these
rules were artificial and not the product of the creative process.
The new criteria were
authenticity, originality, and the expression of genius. Ultimately, great art was the creation of an expression
from nothing. Interpretation or derivation
were belittled, originality or novelty were praised. To this one can readily see the role of emotions,
not well-thought-out plans or rationales, to calculate what should be done,
what should be expressed, and what should be illustrated.
And what better source
of such inspiration than nature? While
not an essential attribute of Romanticism, nature turned out to be a recurring
subject that Romantics exploited in their works. It functioned as a normative standard of
goodness, unaffected by societal corruption.
People are born as a product of nature and as such are initially innocent
as they begin their lives. It is society
that corrupts not only humans but defaces nature as well.
Nature, sans society,
is pure and worthy of almost spiritual esteem.
It took on a status among many Romantics as being worthy of devotion. A painting that is often is depicted as
symbolizing this association between the movement and nature is Friedrich’s Wanderer
above a Sea of Fog.
Born with the backdrop
of war in Europe, this movement had first the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic
Wars up until 1815 as its setting. In
France, the generation that took up the Romantic movement was weaned with the
sounds and turmoil associated with this upheaval. According to Alfred de Vigny, the initial
artists of this movement were “conceived between battles, attended school to
the rolling of drums.”[3]
As for political views,
Romantics are judged to have been mostly liberal to progressive but not
exclusively. Within their ranks, mostly
due to their emotional strains, conservative and even nationalist biases
developed. In the extreme, this line of
thought or feelings even led to fascism in the twentieth century. Constant attacks on reason led to the
questioning – even rejection – of objective truth.
Before finishing these
initial introductory remarks on Romanticism, a word on its relation to
nationalism seems in order. It, the Romantic
inclination, became a source of ongoing messaging or linking of emotional ties
to this excessive attachment to one’s nation.
And that, as just mentioned above, survived into the twentieth century,
and some would argue, the twenty-first century.
This is attributable by
historians to the emotionalism of that time.
It led to ties not only to a person’s nationality but his/her ethnicity,
and race. Of special interest was/is
national language and a nation’s folklore.
With that, people expressed increased interest in local customs with
their accompanying traditions. It also
led to national policies that had little concern about the legitimate claims of
other nations or peoples.
During that time,
Europe, partly because of this emotional bias, experienced various redrawing of
national boundaries and even the creation of newer national polities, for
example, the unification of Italy and Germany.
In addition, nationalism incentivized people to become familiar with the
medieval history of their nations when many of the folkloric traditions they
could still identify got started and added to their sense of peoplehood.
Renewed popularity in
epic poems from that past took on a special interest. And some of that digging into the past even
stretched to pre-Roman, Latinization days especially in Germany and Celtic Scotland
and Ireland. In many areas of Europe,
Napoleonic Wars caused further motivation to heighten national commitments to
first fight off this threat and then the actualization of French control.
This is a bit ironic in
that the initial reaction to the French Revolution, as alluded to above, stirred
Romantics to support its aims and successes.
But as Napoleon expanded his control over the various nations of the
continent, those nationalists became anti French and anti-Napoleon. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a German philosopher,
provides an eloquent expression of this line of thought:
Those who speak the same language are joined to each other
by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art
begins; they understand each other and have power of continuing to make
themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by
nature one and an inseparable whole … Only when each people, left to itself,
develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only
when in every people each individual develops himself in accordance with that common
quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality – then, and
then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as it
ought to be.[4]
And that sets the stage
for this blog to look at the way Romanticism made its presence known in the US.
[1] John Morrow, “Romanticism and Political Thought in
the Early 19th Century,” in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century
Political Thought: The Cambridge History
of Political Thought, eds. Garth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 39-76.
[2] Nuria Perpinya, “Ruins, Nostalgia and Ugliness: Five Romantic Perceptions of Middle Ages and
a Spoon of Game of Thrones and Avant-Garde Oddity,”, Logos Verlag Berlin
(2014), accessed September 9, 2021, Buchbeschreibung: : (logos-verlag.de) .
[3] “Neoclassicism and Romanticism,” Lumen: Boundless Art History (n.d.). Accessed September 9, 2021, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/neoclassicism-and-romanticism/.
[4] Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Modern History Sourcebook: Johann Gottlieb Fichte: To the German Nation, 1806,” Fordham
University (n.d.), accessed September 9, 2021, Internet History Sourcebooks (fordham.edu) .
