ROMANTICISMROMANTICISM

by Ana Tudor

What is romanticism?

Romanticism “is not exactly [found] in the choice of subjects nor in the exact truth, it is in the way of feeling […]If you say Romanticism, you say modern art – that is to say intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards infinity expressed by all means that contain the arts”.

Charles Baudelaire

The beginning

originated in the 18th century in Western Europe was an intellectual movement that influenced many works of

literature, music, painting, architecture etc. was prepared by a literary transitional movement from Enlightment,

called pre-romanticism it passed through different stages that were specific for the diverse

regions of Europe

Hugo and the Romanticism

Hugo was the one who wrote the literary manifesto of the romanticism in the preface to his tragedy called Cromwell

he says that the new doctrine is the “liberalism in literature” and that “there are neither rules, nor models” for romantics

as Hugo presents it, Romanticism evolves as an opposition to Classicism and Romantic Parnassianism, offering literature freedom of expression through the dismission of norms.

Classicism Romanticism

presents an ideal, static,

objective world has ideal categories and

eternal types of characters has an abstract, equilibrated

and dominated by morals character

simply observes the nature preaches rationality the rule of the 3 entities: of

time, space and plot     

presents a universe determined by the movements of history, which is fantastical, subjective

the nature overwhelms the character

has a dynamic, sentimental hero, who is in a constant search for the absolute

artists reinterpret the nature through their own subjectivity

emphasizes sentiments, passions abolishes the rule of the 3 entities

Romantic character

is an exceptional character put in exceptional situations(hero, genius)

is confused, unsatisfied is continually fighting himself and his limits can belong to any social class has good and bad traits, like any human being the artist is the supreme being, who doesn’t have to

comply to the rules

Characteristics

promotes antithetical constructions, contrasts, extremes distinguishes artistic values in the less esthetical parts of reality and

therefore anticipates the Symbolism which will found a true “esthetic of the ugly”

symbols: the sky, the stars, the ocean, the sea, the lake, the spring, the woods

rediscovers the folkloric creation, the history and the nature has a predilection for the fantastic, tragic, grotesque, macabre,

mystery, occult, diseased and even satanic places the individual at the centre of all things, of life and of all

experiences

The French Revolution

as the French Revolution started, the whole idea of nationalism changed, and so did the romantic view; it consisted then in self-determination and a pride in the national origins and unity; they said that every human being should be pride of his origins and nation, but at the same time he should develop as an individual; they claimed that there should be a balance in the development of each person between the common interest of the nation and his own personal goals

the accent was put on the national history and folklore, and furthermore, the values of tradition and customs were put at the center of the romantic movement

inspired by this view upon the country, the peoples of Europe had the power to redraw the map of their continent and free themselves

Romanticism in Europe

GERMANY - was favored by the artistic vision of Goethe, Schiller, von Kleist and was supported by the 3 great schools: the ones from Iena(Ludwig Tieck, Novalis), Heidelberg(valorizes folk literature - Clemens Bretano, Achim von Arnim) and Berlin(E.T.A. Hoffman – the promoter of grotesque humor)

FRANCE - V. Hugo is not only the theorist of the Romanticism, but also the poet, novelist and playwright that experimented in practice everything that he preached in theory; Alphonse Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny and Alfred de Musset invigorate the poetry by using the romantic themes: love, nature, time, genius, life and death through meditations, lit poems of nature or elegies

RUSSIA - Puskin observes the society and the history from the point of view of the citizen-poet whose destiny is labeled by his love for the country; Lermontov says through his poetry that the genius can only be saved by love

BRITAIN - the first manifestation is represented by the “poets of the lakes”: Samuel Taylor, Coleridge, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth and John Keats; the great representatives of romanticism are Shelley and Byron

romanticism is the first literary movement to cross the Atlantic; there, E.A. Poe develops an artistic universe where comic and tragic, absurd and fanatic, beauty and ugliness stay together

Romanticism and other types of art

Painting(Eugène Delacroix) Sculpture(François Rude) Music(Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von

Weber, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt)

Romanticism & painting

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People

Romanticism in Romania

it started developing in Romania in 1840, 8 years before the Revolution, when Mihail Kogalniceanu published the first edition of his literary magazine, Dacia literara; there, he published an article called Introduction to Dacia literara in which he emphasized the need for a new Romanian literature and in which he encouraged writers to produce original works inspired by the nature, the history and the folklore of their nation(romantic themes)

Kogalniceanu wanted to help realize a common literary language for Romanians, because the only things that got published at the time were translations from foreign authors or works inspired by the famous literary works at the time

Introduction to Dacia literara is the Romanian romantic manifesto, a reply to Hugo’s manifest

Dacia literara gathered around it the most important Romanian writers of that moment, who put the basis of the Romantic literature: Kogalniceanu, Negruzzi, Alecsandri, Alexandrescu

Eminescu – the last great European Romantic

is considered to be the greatest Romanian poet and the last European Romantic

his main themes are typically romantic: time, cosmogony, history, folklore, love and nature(which always go together in his poetry)

he lived in a time when the “social romanticism” was a fashion because of the revolution; much of his work was detached of this aspect, but he wrote some poems which dealt with this problem

he was preoccupied by cosmogony and the passing of time; all his poems are based on the German and Indian philosophies which he studied while in Vienna and Berlin

The symbol of the genius

the romantic theme of the genius is the type that appears very often in his creation; he considers that a genius is never understood by the society, that he always has to stay apart from everything, to look at the world with detachment, to keep aloof and stay cold

Hyperion or The Morning Star illustrates this way of thinking; in the end, the genius, represented here by the morning star, realizes that he is not to give up his immortality just for the sake of love for a mortal; but this is not a poem about the defeating of the titans, as Keats’s The Fall of Hyperion is; and it is not about the reconciliation with the world, as Holderlin’s Hyperion oder der Eremit von Griecheland is;his world is above all that is good or bad, apart from everything that impure passion implies, it is a peaceful world, preoccupied only by the inner perfection

Questions and Answers

“What did Eminescu leave behind which brought about his literary canonization such a short time after his death? Why should Romanians at every period since his death have remained so faithful to this man? The answer almost certainly lies in his utter devotion to all things Romanian, a devotion so complete that even his bad verses acquired a life outside themselves. He knew his Romania at a time when regionalism was the rule and Wallachians made jokes about going to Transylvania which were not really jokes at all. He saw beyond the rivalries between Bucharest, Iasi and Cluj to a day when the fragile union of the provinces would grow into a really united Romania. He collected the folk tales, the collective memory of the past, and made them more acceptable in the salons than the French epigrams and pleasantries he found there. Like Shakespeare, whose works he read often, he made his country’s past a thing of literary and historical interest. Like Shakespeare, he was not above rewriting history where necessary to give the past coherence and fill it with his ideal national types”.

Roy MacGregor