To follow up on last month's post "Romanticism or Renaissance?", I decided to read two books by scholars for whom I have a great deal of respect: Classic, Romantic, and Modern by cultural historian Jacques Barzun and The Roots of Romanticism by intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin. Although I'm far from sagely on these matters now, I do feel somewhat better informed.
Barzun states at one point that "Romantic striving may therefore be summed up as the effort to create order out of experience individually acquired." This "implies that the primary reality is the individual"and that order is not merely theoretical or handed to one from on high but must be created by the individual to serve the individual (or, on some interpretations, a group or nation). This "in turn suggests that the first law of the universe is not thought but action" - which "means effort, energy, possibly strife and certainly risk." The Romantics felt that the old world had run its course and that the challenge was now "to create a new world on the ruins of the old" - a world not of absolute aesthetic rules and moral codes followed to the letter, but of novel values invented and pursued. In the arts, the result was unrestrained observation and imagination, spurring a diversity of creations that were "simultaneously idealistic, realistic, and symbolic" (Barzun argues - paradoxically to our modern ears - that Romanticism was not opposed to "Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Naturalism, and Post-Impressionism" but contained within itself the seeds of these later movements). Indeed, because of its respect for facts, experience, activity, and the passions of life, Barzun boldly claims that "romanticism is realism", for the Romanticists "sought and found ... not a dream world into which to escape, but a real world in which to live."
Berlin finds similarly idealistic values in the Romantic movement: "integrity, sincerity, readiness to sacrifice one's life to some inner light, dedication to some ideal for which it is worth sacrificing all that one is, for which it is worth both living and dying." Yet taken too far this leads to "the Nietzschean figure who wishes to raze to the ground a society whose system of values is such that a superior person who truly understands what it is to be free cannot operate in terms of it, and therefore prefers to destroy it." Berlin traces such ideas not to England around 1805 or France around 1825, but to Germany around 1775, specifically in the persons of Johann Herder and his "master" Johann Hamann, the "Magus of the North" as he was known. The view and practice of art that resulted from these currents put a premium on the living expression and unique voice of an original personality and creative genius: "to stop expressing is to stop living", "to live is to do something", "to do is to express your nature" - an "infinite nature to soar to greater and greater heights and become wider, deeper, freer, more vital, more like the divinity towards which it strives." Yet Berlin uncovers a more pessimistic strain as well, according to which one's nature is inexpressible, one's ideals are unattainable, dark forces prevent us from finding true freedom, and so on.
My initial foray into cultural and intellectual history leaves me with two questions.
First, what led to the birth and development of Romanticism? If Berlin is right, its roots were planted before the French Revolution in reaction to the overbearing rationalism of the Enlightenment, which imposed a simplistic account of human experience, a superficial universalism that stifled individuality, and an over-emphasis on rules and manners - all the while refusing to criticize in any fundamental way a hollowed-out social system overseen by corrupt monarchs and aristocrats.
Second, are we ripe for a Romantic resurgence? Here I'm not so sure that history is about to rhyme. I suppose one could argue that our tottering system of rule by the experts (who often are merely the credentialed) is overly rationalistic and universalistic, and furthermore that the emerging technopoly is becoming literally inhuman through the expectation that people will conform to the outputs of so-called "artificial intelligence" programs. Yet it seems to me that our world is also characterized by a witches' brew of atomistic self-indulgence, anything-goes irrationalism, and a nihilistic pursuit of fame, riches, power, and prestige that would make Machiavelli blush. The antidotes to that aren't fully clear to me, but I suggest they will involve leaving behind the artificial for the human, the political for the personal, the fake for the real - even, if you will, the art of the deal for the art of the ideal.
If this be Romanticism, make the most of it.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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