Romanticism: A Movement of Emotion and Individuality
No aesthetic, ideological, or even vital movement emerged in the late 18th century, in Germany or England, against the excessive reliance on reason of the Enlightenment. Romanticism considered that reason may lose the mystery that is necessary for life. The Romantics assessed aspects such as emotion, mystery, imagination; in short, what is irrational. Two critical features appear: the assessment of the “I” and the conflict between the individual and their life.
Romanticism and Philosophy
1. Romanticism was born attached to certain philosophical ideas. The Romantics not only sought a way of understanding reality, but the emphasis was also to exalt the individual to an “I” full of passion and enthusiasm. Closely related to individualism, art became fully subjective, not from the copy of external reality, but of privacy, an expression of feelings. So, the artist tended to identify with the protagonist of their works, being as passionate as their creator. These works expressed beauty as an end, the sublime, being largely free of rules and regulations. This valued originality and individual and collective freedom. It rejected any norm that was born of the self; standards were called into question because it is the individual who would decide. It was perceived that everything lives in change, that nothing has to be fixed. This romantic and revolutionary spirit changed in principle when one looked less to the future and more to the past. From these ideas, there has been talk of two types of Romanticism: one liberal and revolutionary, and a conservative and traditionalist.
The Idea of Freedom
2. In Romanticism, we find, on the one hand, the conflict between the individual and society, and on the other hand, between the self and life (between wishes and reality).
A) The Artist and Society
The artist lives their relationship with society as a conflict. First, by defending the rules of society, there will be a revolt against these standards that limit the individual. On the other hand, there is a great distance between the artist and society. The artist feels different, even superior, misunderstood, and alone. The idea of genius develops, the artist as a special being who cannot find their place in society. But now there is another fact: the artist also feels uncomfortable with the people of their time and the life of their time, a life of mediocrity and boredom. They do not like a world in which aesthetic values are lost. People are attentive only to the material, to a monotonous life, satisfied people who measure everything by utility. It is the ordinary man who shows no curiosity about what is new and strange, a conformist person who prefers an orderly, safe life, and even betrays the dreams of children. The bohemian spirit lives on, provocative because the avant-garde poets and painters want to shock the bourgeoisie. They reject a uniform, regular, predictable world that ventures nothing. It is the perception of a life that is mediocre.
B) The Conflict Between Wishes and Reality
This issue is more ambitious, and it shows that Romanticism really raised profound issues. In their usual state, Romantics are dissatisfied with life. In the idea of rebellion, we see the tragic sense because they proudly rebel against what life is. The key is the desire for either freedom or fullness of love. This feeling is the result of a deficiency and asks for something more from life. But desire is not met; it is faced with reality. So, the vital, passionate attitude contrasts with the anguish of a consciousness of reality, of frustration. Therefore, the Romantic feels an anxiety about the impossibility of achieving their desires. Fullness, sometimes, is represented in a nature that is mystified, in childhood or the past, others in a deep and lost world, others in dreams, others in a somewhat platonic ideal, but always an ideal rather than real, and finally, in beauty. They trust art and its ability to create a world that is born of the self and allows oneself to live another reality.
Death and the Romantic
Death and its reasons loom large: they show us a meaningless existence of romantic pessimism, which is attracted to gloom. Against life, death may be one answer: in a life of agonizing pain, accepting death is a gesture of rebellion; to live life to the limit brings us to the risk of death, the sidewalk to love, love matches with death in its annihilating force.