I really enjoyed this. One aspect of Romanticism that I think is missing from your analysis is the sense of nostalgia for a nobler era. The famous romantics were themselves in many cases imitating earlier romantic figures, or they were attempting to harken back to some kind of lost purity, to folk customs, or primitivism, or pre-christia…
I really enjoyed this. One aspect of Romanticism that I think is missing from your analysis is the sense of nostalgia for a nobler era. The famous romantics were themselves in many cases imitating earlier romantic figures, or they were attempting to harken back to some kind of lost purity, to folk customs, or primitivism, or pre-christian paganism and so on. I think of "Liszt at the Piano" where everyone's fixated on the bust of Beethoven. Even to proclaim a Neo-Romantic Age is a romantic impulse, in this sense. Nostalgia exists in every age, but I think we do see it deepening and spreading as a cultural force on all sides in reaction to the accelerating alienation of our society. Ironically, even the growing trend of conversion to older forms of Christianity could be seen as a kind of Neo-Romanticism.
From another quarter, I think the "genius plus criminality" style of Romanticism you've described here does live on, although in very different forms, in the culture of hip-hop.
I really enjoyed this. One aspect of Romanticism that I think is missing from your analysis is the sense of nostalgia for a nobler era. The famous romantics were themselves in many cases imitating earlier romantic figures, or they were attempting to harken back to some kind of lost purity, to folk customs, or primitivism, or pre-christian paganism and so on. I think of "Liszt at the Piano" where everyone's fixated on the bust of Beethoven. Even to proclaim a Neo-Romantic Age is a romantic impulse, in this sense. Nostalgia exists in every age, but I think we do see it deepening and spreading as a cultural force on all sides in reaction to the accelerating alienation of our society. Ironically, even the growing trend of conversion to older forms of Christianity could be seen as a kind of Neo-Romanticism.
From another quarter, I think the "genius plus criminality" style of Romanticism you've described here does live on, although in very different forms, in the culture of hip-hop.
excellent points