We explain what were the characteristics of Romanticism, its themes, values and disciplines in which it manifested itself.
Romanticism arose in northern Europe in the late eighteenth century.Romanticism
The Romanticism (1789-1880) was at the same time an artistic, philosophical, aesthetic, musical and literary movement. It arose in the north of Europe (in Germany and England) at the end of the 18th century, and took a position contrary to the Illustration and the neoclassicism dominant at the time.
In addition, it was a new way of thinking that soon spread throughout Europe and the entire world. Thus, it changed forever the way in which we in the West relate to the nature, the love, the art and the worked.
Heir to important works and European artistic trends such as the Sturm und Drang (“storm and impetus”) German or the novels of Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), among others, Romanticism is a crucial movement to understand the history modern West and the world.
So much so that, to some extent, we are all romantics today, since many of the values central to this movement are still alive, despite the fact that almost two centuries have elapsed since its heyday, in the mid-nineteenth century.
The name of the movement is a matter of debate, since it has important links with the French term romantic, used in the 16th century to refer to chivalric novels. They were then published in the Romance language (while scientific and philosophical treatises were published in Latin or Greek, classical and "serious" languages).
Consequently, the term would initially be associated with the picturesque, the sentimental, the characteristic of this type of literature. Perhaps for this reason, throughout the 19th century, different ways of referring to the movement were used in the different European languages: romantisch either romantic in German, romancesque Y Romantic in Spanish.
The important thing today is to understand that the romantic does not necessarily have to do with erotic romance and love stories, but rather with an approach to life that exalts feelings above the logical and rational world proposed by modernity.
Next we will see the main characteristics of Romanticism and we will detail some of its most outstanding authors, thinkers and artistic works and literary.
Characteristics of Romanticism
1. Feelings come before reason
Romanticism was, above all, a reaction against the cold, rational and millimetric world that spawned the French Enlightenment and that was put into practice with the industrialization. Gone was rural time, with its contemplative nature: the modern world was fast and troubled, with measured time and reason as the supreme value of humanity.
Therefore, Romanticism aspired to recover what was considered a lost or forgotten aspect of the human being: the sentimental. For this reason, romantic artists extolled the uniqueness of their inner world, understanding their work as that of a demiurge or creator god of their own universe, and thinking of themselves as different, unique, original individuals.
For them, the instinct and the creative I had much more value than the universalistic considerations of rationalism, which thought of the human being in rather scientific and sociological terms.
That is why romantic works usually represent lonely and long-suffering heroes, caught up in the passion of their inner storm, like Goethe's young Werther, whose impossible love with Carlota leads him to suicide.
2. Childhood as paradise lost
For the romantics, civilization makes people sick. Humans, since with it we imposed a strict and rational order that distanced us from nature and our origins. Therefore, it was necessary to reconnect with that lost nature, fully represented in the figure of the child: the rebel par excellence, naive, pure, still uncorrupted by the banal ambitions of commerce and industry.
Many romantic artists fled industrial civilization to exotic and natural lands, either on long journeys or in continual search for a natural refuge, to reconnect with "true" nature. In that sense they expressed a certain nostalgia for the rural, for life before the cities.
Others, on the other hand, embraced political and revolutionary ideas that defended the inherent goodness of the human being against the corrupting influence of the bourgeois world.
In the romantic imaginary, the rebel and the tragic hero occupy an important place: those who rise up against the entire society and are misunderstood, branded crazy or sacrificed by the masses, except for those chosen few who manage to understand the depth and honesty of his fight. In it, the romantic heroes are heirs to the myth Christian.
3. The exaltation of nationalism
Romanticism recovered elements of the medieval imaginary, such as witches.Unlike what was proposed by the Enlightenment, much more cosmopolitan and universalist, Romanticism was a profoundly nationalist movement. His works took up folklore and legends and rural traditions of each country, and defended the uniqueness and originality of each culture, its own spirit or Volkgeist.
This led to the exaltation of the golden ages, that is, the past moments of glory and plenitude. The nationalisms Europeans were largely a romantic invention.
In this way, the medieval imaginary was recovered, so denigrated by the Humanism and the Enlightenment since they associated it with religious obscurantism and the superstition, the opposite of human reason.
The romantics, on the other hand, saw in the medieval a state of greater purity, and rescued numerous stories from yesteryear, such as Arthurian mythology or the Scandinavian sagas, as well as poetic traditions in local languages such as Welsh, Scottish, Galician, etc. In this way they avoided the Greco-Roman European legacy, on which the neoclassicals focused.
Examples of this are novels such as Splendor of Goethe, Frankenstein of Mary Shelley or ivanhoe by Walter Scott, as well as paintings such as Lady Godiva by John Collier and The coven Y witch flight of Francisco de Goya, among many others. So are the musical compositions of the Italian Giacomo Puccini and the german Max Brunch, in which they took up the popular legacy.
4. Aesthetic rebellion
Placing so much originality, the romantics necessarily had to be rebellious against traditional norms and prevailing styles in art.
On the one hand, this meant stopping copying traditional classical motifs, and on the other, breaking with the idea of the finished and total work, appreciating instead the unfinished, open works, which allowed us to appreciate what was unique and personal in each artist. The canons and schools did not interest them as much as the power of subjective expression.
Creative freedom, in that sense, was the most important thing. The romantic poets broke with the rigor of the meter and allowed themselves verses more free; they mixed prose and verse at will; broke with the three Aristotelian units of the theatrical play; they rescued medieval genres such as ballads and romances; and in the music they embraced improvisation.
5. Return to Christianity and the experience of God
The romantic experience of the natural world was sublime, almost mystical.The imaginary of Romanticism had firm Christian roots, unlike the Enlightenment. Many of his paintings deal with biblical or New Testament scenes, and in his lyrical works and novels the theme of the sacrifice of the messiah is constantly present.
Poets like the German Novalis (1772-1801) wrote to his dead beloved (another of the great motifs of the Romantic poets), comparing his love for her with the love for Jesus, or describing her in terms similar to those of the Virgin Maria.
On the other hand, the romantics were great admirers of landscapes, and their experience of the natural world was sublime, almost mystical, similar to that proposed in previous times by miracles or divine revelation. In a way, they loved God outside the churches, in natural beauty, since at the same time it was a lay movement, not at all related to the moral religious and with the Catholic Church.
Thus, romantic landscapes were abundant in painting and they sought to exalt emotions, rather than copy a real, topographical perspective. The picturesque and the sublime were what interested them most.
Later, this gave way to the idea of flaneur or the wayfarer, the individual who wanders through modern cities without haste, simply observing, and thereby distancing himself from the troubled life of the bourgeoisie. The French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) wrote many verses about it.
6. Appreciation of fantasy and the grotesque
Finally, Romanticism was not a precious and perfectionist movement, of symmetrical and balanced works, but it valued passion and impetus above all else. They were also not interested in a realistic perspective, one that dealt with social issues. For this reason, fantasy, the grotesque, the horrendous and the supernatural have a place in his imaginary and the sublime can also be appreciated in them.
In romantic novels monsters and ghosts abound, the sinister and the devilish, and from there the so-called Gothic literature was born in the 19th century. Novels and stories such as those by Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Lord Byron and John William Polidori are examples of this, as is the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, in which vampires, prostitutes and even syphilis abound, or that of the British John Keats and William Blake.