This is a wonderful post and, frankly, a very welcome distraction at a difficult and stressful time. If it were to be expanded, I would add the observation that "romanticism" and its cult of intense feeling may better be viewed as part of a larger thing, or alternatively, was big enough to contain more than aestheticism and doomed sex. Certainly it was associated with philosophical idealism and its attempts to meet/justify/ground human needs for cultural identification and expression and (in a way that did not depend on revealed religion) human thirsts for transcendence. Herder and Fichte and Emerson and Thoreau lack the louche appeal of the crowd you mention, but they share something with them. (Last year's WoC podcast with Charles Taylor gets at some of this.)
And then there is this one incredibly romantic thing about idealism: it fails as a philosophy but succeeds as anthropology. Like romanticism, idealism get us. (Sigh.)
It's interesting to me that Wordsworth and Coleridge, usually considered the first of the British Romantics, were both, even at their early career Romantic heights, were both quite pious Christians and lived relatively quiet small-c conservative lives; certainly they did not indulge in the Byronic excesses later associated with the movement.
This is very good. I spent quite a bit of time with Goethe, a lifetime ago. The problem of love leads, most directly through children, to the problem of responsibility. And the notion that the ego is somehow transcendent is a very dangerous, and juvenile, notion. SO, yeah. Those things said, I am sympathetic with the call for a new "Romanticism," although perhaps that is not really the right word. Surely we need more sense of the meaning of things, and "Romantic" is a perhaps unsurprising term for fairly educated folks raised in the radical subjectivity/conformity of the contemporary, in matters sexual and otherwise. Perhaps an (older, more mature) engagement with the sublime might be a way to start. Worth thinking about. At any rate, keep up the good work.
Excellent piece, as one would expect from Gasda. One thing that stood out to me which may be worth a mention, is that here again (in the rise of "Neo-Romanticism" discourse) we seem so anxious to recast our own age/era as a second coming of a different time, with Neo-Romanticism here the latest example. It seems we want our era, need our era, to be (to actually reveal itself as) some other time in order to justify and love our own moment. It's strange, and while not unique to our times, I think the power of this urge is in most respects unrivaled at any point in history. You can see this urge in many forms from left to right and in very different quarters. For instance, although I disagree with them vehemently if one thinks of the people who are so convinced that Putin really is Hitler, 2025 is really 1938, and that Ukraine as the equivalent of the Spanish Civil War -- this tendency also fits the pattern to need to see our own time as another time from the past, born again. It's strange. Gasda brings up the 1960s at a few points here, and I think that one thing that made the 60s great was that there was not an obsession by those driving it to recast that decade as a Neo-whatever. I'm not saying there was no sense of this, but nothing compared to our own era. It's like a weird self-hatred of our era that drives this desire to recast it as another time period altogether. I wonder if we can love our own era as such, somewhat a la Nietzsche's "amor fati," or if we are bound to grasp endlessly at identities from a different era which we ultimately are not, and can never be.
I was waiting for you to mention Mana Afsari... If romanticism is a transformative love worth giving up everything for, it's out there, though it looks nothing like the traditional description. I've seen it repeatedly in Ukraine, among the citizens and young international volunteers who work tirelessly, unpaid and unknown, to support a people they did not know until tanks headed toward Kyiv. There are no lobsters on leashes, no aesthetic flourishes, just people at a 3D printer or a soldering station trying to kill an evil. Orwell lived it and took a bullet in the throat.
You did not mention Charles Taylor’s take in Cosmic Connections (perhaps less directly, Secular Age, etc.), or if you did I missed it. I am curious where you would place him on a quasi-romantic-revival. Clearly not a full blown Romantic. Is he romantic discourse-adjacent?
Gregory: I made a similar point in my comment, then saw yours. I would say Taylor is adjacent to romanticism just because philosophical idealism is adjacent to it.
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.
Only distinction I would add is that romanticism is very politically influential — that follows hippies, revolutions, Napoleon, Dr Spock, Marxism, Fascism, Nazis etc — but I don't think it's governmentally influential (there's no "romantic" constitution — and there can't ever be).
Excellent. Two things about variation -- the Byronic Romantic is not the Obama Romantic, and I'd argue that the 2008 campaign (not the governing) was edging right up to Romanticism. (It came to me in a flash during a Decembrists campaign song.) The West Wing was Romantic. Who knew there could be ensemble Romanticism. But the Byronic may be returning yes. And the Coleridgian, which perhaps applies to Burning Man and ayahuasca parties. The upside is, as you suggest, "likes" and "podcasts" aren't Romantic.
> The 2008 campaign (not the governing) was edging right up to Romanticism. (It came to me in a flash during a Decembrists campaign song.) The West Wing was Romantic.
In the way McDonalds is akin to French Cuisine. It doesn't allude to it, doesn't claim to be, and has only the vaguest resemblance of the most superficial elements (both use beef and potatoes)
This is a wonderful post and, frankly, a very welcome distraction at a difficult and stressful time. If it were to be expanded, I would add the observation that "romanticism" and its cult of intense feeling may better be viewed as part of a larger thing, or alternatively, was big enough to contain more than aestheticism and doomed sex. Certainly it was associated with philosophical idealism and its attempts to meet/justify/ground human needs for cultural identification and expression and (in a way that did not depend on revealed religion) human thirsts for transcendence. Herder and Fichte and Emerson and Thoreau lack the louche appeal of the crowd you mention, but they share something with them. (Last year's WoC podcast with Charles Taylor gets at some of this.)
And then there is this one incredibly romantic thing about idealism: it fails as a philosophy but succeeds as anthropology. Like romanticism, idealism get us. (Sigh.)
It's interesting to me that Wordsworth and Coleridge, usually considered the first of the British Romantics, were both, even at their early career Romantic heights, were both quite pious Christians and lived relatively quiet small-c conservative lives; certainly they did not indulge in the Byronic excesses later associated with the movement.
this rules
Absolutely fascinating
This is very good. I spent quite a bit of time with Goethe, a lifetime ago. The problem of love leads, most directly through children, to the problem of responsibility. And the notion that the ego is somehow transcendent is a very dangerous, and juvenile, notion. SO, yeah. Those things said, I am sympathetic with the call for a new "Romanticism," although perhaps that is not really the right word. Surely we need more sense of the meaning of things, and "Romantic" is a perhaps unsurprising term for fairly educated folks raised in the radical subjectivity/conformity of the contemporary, in matters sexual and otherwise. Perhaps an (older, more mature) engagement with the sublime might be a way to start. Worth thinking about. At any rate, keep up the good work.
Excellent piece, as one would expect from Gasda. One thing that stood out to me which may be worth a mention, is that here again (in the rise of "Neo-Romanticism" discourse) we seem so anxious to recast our own age/era as a second coming of a different time, with Neo-Romanticism here the latest example. It seems we want our era, need our era, to be (to actually reveal itself as) some other time in order to justify and love our own moment. It's strange, and while not unique to our times, I think the power of this urge is in most respects unrivaled at any point in history. You can see this urge in many forms from left to right and in very different quarters. For instance, although I disagree with them vehemently if one thinks of the people who are so convinced that Putin really is Hitler, 2025 is really 1938, and that Ukraine as the equivalent of the Spanish Civil War -- this tendency also fits the pattern to need to see our own time as another time from the past, born again. It's strange. Gasda brings up the 1960s at a few points here, and I think that one thing that made the 60s great was that there was not an obsession by those driving it to recast that decade as a Neo-whatever. I'm not saying there was no sense of this, but nothing compared to our own era. It's like a weird self-hatred of our era that drives this desire to recast it as another time period altogether. I wonder if we can love our own era as such, somewhat a la Nietzsche's "amor fati," or if we are bound to grasp endlessly at identities from a different era which we ultimately are not, and can never be.
I was waiting for you to mention Mana Afsari... If romanticism is a transformative love worth giving up everything for, it's out there, though it looks nothing like the traditional description. I've seen it repeatedly in Ukraine, among the citizens and young international volunteers who work tirelessly, unpaid and unknown, to support a people they did not know until tanks headed toward Kyiv. There are no lobsters on leashes, no aesthetic flourishes, just people at a 3D printer or a soldering station trying to kill an evil. Orwell lived it and took a bullet in the throat.
You did not mention Charles Taylor’s take in Cosmic Connections (perhaps less directly, Secular Age, etc.), or if you did I missed it. I am curious where you would place him on a quasi-romantic-revival. Clearly not a full blown Romantic. Is he romantic discourse-adjacent?
Gregory: I made a similar point in my comment, then saw yours. I would say Taylor is adjacent to romanticism just because philosophical idealism is adjacent to it.
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
Only distinction I would add is that romanticism is very politically influential — that follows hippies, revolutions, Napoleon, Dr Spock, Marxism, Fascism, Nazis etc — but I don't think it's governmentally influential (there's no "romantic" constitution — and there can't ever be).
You’ve informed and helped me as a writer, reader, and teacher with this one — thank you!
Excellent. Two things about variation -- the Byronic Romantic is not the Obama Romantic, and I'd argue that the 2008 campaign (not the governing) was edging right up to Romanticism. (It came to me in a flash during a Decembrists campaign song.) The West Wing was Romantic. Who knew there could be ensemble Romanticism. But the Byronic may be returning yes. And the Coleridgian, which perhaps applies to Burning Man and ayahuasca parties. The upside is, as you suggest, "likes" and "podcasts" aren't Romantic.
> The 2008 campaign (not the governing) was edging right up to Romanticism. (It came to me in a flash during a Decembrists campaign song.) The West Wing was Romantic.
In the way McDonalds is akin to French Cuisine. It doesn't allude to it, doesn't claim to be, and has only the vaguest resemblance of the most superficial elements (both use beef and potatoes)
Who could be Byron (and who would want to)?