ROMANTICISM
& Victor Hugo
Most of us have some kind of idea of what the word romantic means. It holds a notion of emotion, of sentiment - it's fantasy and fiction; an escape from reality. It's far away places, exotic and strange. We use the word frequently to describe candle-lit dinners and other passionate moments. In every day life, the word is far from controversial.
However, in intellectual circles, among historians and literary historians, there has been an ongoing dispute for decades regarding the meaning of the word Romanticism. The reason for this may very well be that in the ranks of the Romantics, you could find liberals as well as conservatives, revolutionaries as well as reactionaries, Christians as well as atheists; the movement of the Romantics covered such a diversity of ideas it's almost inevitable that they would cause conflict not only in their own time, but also more than a century later.
What was the Romantic era? Well, let's start with a time frame. Although early pieces like Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Defoe and Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Swift, certainly would qualify as Romantic literature, it's generally held that the Romantic era started in 1770-1780. The end of the era is most commonly set to around 1850, although many consider later works of Hugo to be "realistic" Romanticism and musicians like Puccini - born in 1858 - are referred to as Romantics. But - individual accomplishments aside - as a dominant intellectual movement in the western world, Romanticism prospered from the end of the 18th to the midst of the 19th century.
More than anything else, Romanticism was a reaction against the Enlightenment. The age of Reason put man in a logical world, ruled by the laws of nature. And man was a logical being, with rationality as his main tool in life. The Romantics rejected this as being a renunciation of individuality. They emerged as champions of emotion and creativity. Newton's natural philosophy had put man in intellectual chains, choking imagination, feelings and spontaneity. Instead of living by the values and rules imposed by a philosophy of reason and reason alone, the Romantics urged man to discover the self, to explore his uniqueness, to express his self. Where the philosophers saw uniformity, the Romantics saw diversity; the Enlightenment regarded man as a reasoning stereotype - the Romantics regarded him as an individual apart from other individuals. "Live life your own way!" they cried.
The Romantics were true rebels - in mind and spirit. They expressed themselves with passion and devotion.
Jean Jacques Rousseau was the father of Romanticism. Covering both literary and political life, Rousseau's writings peaked in the 1760's and 1770's, with the novel Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse, the radical and revolutionary treatise Contract Social and the pedagogical classic Émile ou de l'éducation. He stated that "man is born free and everywhere he is in chains". The romantic revolution wouldn't have emerged without Rousseau, at least not in the shape it did; the cultural criticism, the tendency to introspection and the political radicalism of the Romanticists definitely derives from his works. You might say he set the standard for European intellectuals for many decades ahead.
Another romantic milestone was the German Sturm und Drang movement. Almost simultaneously, the critic Winckelmann, the poet Klopstock, the philosopher Kant and the writer Lessing appeared in the politically torn and uncultured Prussia. Although regarded as Classics, their work - directly or indirectly - influenced many German romantics. In the Weimar Republic, Martin Wieland's and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's early romantic work attracted von Schiller and von Herder and soon the tiny Weimar Republic became the cultural capital of Germany. The German early romantic period stretched from the 1770's to the 1780's, with Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther being its most representative work. It then died when Schiller and Goethe turned to more classic ideals, only to be reborn a couple of decades later, stronger than ever.
From Germany it spread to Scandinavia and then to England, Poland and Russia. Although Chateaubriand and Lamartine had maintained the heritage from Rousseau, France came in last with a romantic break-through. The revolution followed by the Napoleon era wasn't the best soil for the romantic seed - or any intellectual activity for that matter. But the French Romantic movement came on strong, perhaps due to the same cause of it being late - the cultural vacuum after Napoleon left the field open for those who wanted a change. It is generally held that Victor Hugo's preface of Cromwell started French Romanticism in 1827. In the preface, Hugo challenged the classicists and took charge of the rebellious generation. He called for a renewal of the language, urged artists to break out from classical dogma. In the Cromwell preface, he laid down the principles that revolutionized the literary France. However, it is important to remember that Hugo and his colleagues didn't consider themselves Romanticists, but rather liberals of literature and art. Another important moment, also orchestrated by Hugo, was the premier of Hernani in 1830, when representatives of the old classicism clashed against the new movement in what is remembered as The Battle of Hernani. The intellectual significance of that event might not have been that great, but the demonstration of strength and dedication was. Romanticism in France was short-lived but it was intense, strong and vital.
It is pretty safe to establish that Romanticism was the dominant cultural movement in a time when the printing industry boomed, distributing more books and papers than ever before, thus spreading literature, ideas and art to a fast growing reading audience - this is also the period when the middle class becomes a large and important factor in society.
If you're interested and want to read more, I suggest you start with the book Holy Madness by Adam Zamoyski. It gives a good historical overview of the period and the ideas that affected it. You will find this work and more in our Victor Hugo Shop.
