I agree with Leigh's point that the basic idea of Romanticism was to shift the focus of art and thought toward the passionate, emotive side of individuals. However, I don't see it as an individualistic movement. The whole Romatic ideal of the "creative genius" only existed insofar as individuals tapped (sometimes in dramatic fashion) into a common reservoir of human emotion. Beethoven did not create something "new" through his Eroica Symphony, for example, but tapped into something that was already there. In fact, no one could really appreciate his work if there were not some commonality with his audience in it. Even though Romantics celebrated individual experience, they did not see it the individual as the end-all of human existence.
This explains how pliable Romanticism became in the political sphere. Conservatives like Chateaubriand could emphasize the unity and solidarity that such experience brought to people. Liberals could portray the ideal of solidarity as the basis for a "non-repressive society" (to use Marcuse's term) where a free and tolerant social context allowed individuals to embrace their own romantic essence. Nationalism most clearly manifests this kind of romantic paradigm--defining a community in terms of its shared cultural values and qualities focuses on the basic, universal side of human nature, not the apogee of human nature that the Enlightenment revered.
On page 730, however, the textbook asserts that it was Romaticism's individuality that associated it with nationalism. I beg to differ. Individuality divides the community as opposed to uniting it. If nations are unique entities, why are people within them not? This is an incoherent argument. Rather, Romanticism's interest in the "primitive" side of human nature could show how bonds of society brought people together into distinct cultures, forming the basis of nations.
This brings me to Leigh and Nate's comments. Modernism and Romanticism have nothing to do with one another. Modernism is, as its name suggests, about "modern" things, sophisticated, pointy things with lots of sheet metal and minimalist design. It's about progress, building the new and sweeping away the cobwebbed vestiges of old outdated ideas like human emotion and irrationality. Compare a piece of art from the Bauhaus School to Delacroix. They have absolutely nothing in common.
Modernism grows out of the same current Romanticism opposed, the application of the rational human mind to everything. Marx, Darwin, Bertrand Russell, even John Maynard Kenyes and the like are all trying to categorize and systematize and control the universe under their little analytical microscopes, whereas Romanticism just wants to run free in the woods. To conflate the two is a mistake.
But that's just my opinion.
No comments:
Post a Comment