/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18982528]

Romanticism sucks, it's a soulless philosophical and literary movement that postulates a faux return to the ideals of the ancient past while also ignoring everything that made the past worthy of being remembered, all the pre-christian cultures in romanticism are seen through a judeo-christian perspective that automatically makes them antithetical to the social and cultural context of the epochs it tries to bring back from the grave. Romanticism is what Wicca and other pseudo-religious new age cults are to the ancient pre-christian traditions, romanticism has nothing in common with what its authors attempted to revive.

[Anonymous No.18982535]

>>18982528
Cry more fedorafag

[Anonymous No.18982602]

>posts romantic image of the romans

[Anonymous No.18982725]

Romanticism is the way of the future, so you might as well hop on board.

[Anonymous No.18982739]

Based. It's a good thing that the Nazis killed romanticism for good, it really was aesthetically bankrupt.

[Anonymous No.18982741]

>>18982602
yes, you usually post a pic of what you are talking about

[Anonymous No.18982747]

>>18982602
are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.18983000]

>>18982528

Romanticism =/= Classicism

[Anonymous No.18983034]

Read Novalis and shut up.

[Anonymous No.18983075]

>>18982602
>>18982528
>>18982741
That pic is neoclassicism, pretty much the direct opposite of romanticism, easily showing that nobody ITT has the slightest idea about the topic.

>postulates a faux return to the ideals of the ancient past
Not really. Pretty much all of post-humanism art had that ideal, but their veneration of the antiquity was frequently accompanied by deformation and borderline fabrication (see the classicist doctrines, artificially imposed and even made-up, while claiming to follow the ancient authorities). Romanticism was precisely the moment when the ideal underwent a drastic rethinking and refocusing, seeking the natural expression of genius, replacing Horace and Vergil with Homer and Ossian.
>all the pre-christian cultures in romanticism are seen through a judeo-christian perspective
Well, yeah, since pretty much nobody sought to understand the prechristian cultures very deeply before the romanticist era, obviously they were initially led astray by their own contemporary culture and values. But it was precisely that interest that gave rise to philology and increasingly precise historiography, and thanks to that we finally did get the tools to understand other and old cultures better.

[Anonymous No.18983083]

>>18983034
Read him. Ass.

[Anonymous No.18983145]

>>18982528
What a fucking brainlet.

[Anonymous No.18983187]

>>18982535
Why did you have to make me cry?

[Anonymous No.18983209]

>>18983075
>neoclassicism
>direct opposite of romanticism
Retard

[Anonymous No.18983217]

>>18983075
>Romanticism was precisely the moment when the ideal underwent a drastic rethinking and refocusing, seeking the natural expression of genius, replacing Horace and Vergil with Homer and Ossian.
Would you mind expanding a little on the Romantic understanding of the Ideal? What do you mean when you say they sought the "natural expression of genius"?

[Anonymous No.18983223]

>>18983217
Don't ask retards for advice.

[Anonymous No.18983270]

>>18982528
>Judeo-Christian
Stopped reading there because only pseuds speak like this

[Anonymous No.18983391]

>>18983209
Don't call people retards just because you don't know the very basics of art history and the numerous polemics throughout the late 18th and early 19th century. Read some introductory textbook and calm the fuck down.

>>18983217
Assuming the capitalisation wasn't intentional and you didn't think that was some specific philosophical term (I have no particular knowledge regarding philosophy, and would not dare to go into the philosophical basis for the romanticist thinking), the (neo)classicist era especially valued the technical and the rational side of art. Although they certainly did give due to the innate talent, they believed it has to be reined in through study of the artistic classics (ancient, mainly Roman ones) and rationally directed to greatness. Classicism was a first real rise of literary criticism that was directly in contact with the literary practice. The best known examples of that are Boileau's and Pope's (Essay on Criticism).
Romanticism had two particular focal points, though in the end they would both amount to what they saw as natural, intuitive expression. On one hand they created the cult of the artist as a genius from whose soul the art pours out - the less artificially constrained, the better. Intuition of a genius is the best guide. On the other hand they also saw the naturalness of expression in folk (oral) literature, one that wasn't created by a particular genius but by a whole nation. Both Homer's and Ossian's work fit that model (Homer was at the time more and more frequently considered to be a construction, which was in line with those desires), but they also started to read folk poetry in general (Lönnrot's Kalevala, brother Grimms' Fairy Tales, Vuk's Serbian Folk Poems, Herder's Stimmen der Völker in Liedern, Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry...). It was a desire to affirm the local, the original and the particular, as opposed to classicism which was generally imitative and seeking a more universal approach to artistic expression. The romanticists would in many countries with a weaker literary tradition criticise the older writers for not being "their own", but merely imitators of the antiquity and of the culturally emissive European countries.
Obviously, this oftentimes wasn't a doctrine (the doctrinal treatment of classicism and a strongly articulated romanticist fight against it was characteristic for France and Russia, not so much for e.g. England), but more of a wide tendency. And Goethe and Schiller are considered to have outright switched from their early romanticism to a specific sort of late classicism (Weimar classicism).

[Anonymous No.18983404]

>>18983083
I do read him, anon. I have pity for those who don't.

[Anonymous No.18983408]

>>18983391
>calm down
>flips out over joke

[Anonymous No.18983425]

>>18983391
Your posts are interesting and you seem well-informed, anon. Do you have any suggestions for decent texts on the subject?

[Anonymous No.18983458]

>>18983391
It's a mistake to see things so crudely as opposites and poles, especially something so close as Neoclassicism and Romanticism.
Romanticism also had an extreme rationalist or political position, for better or worse. and there are deep connections to Christianity and the Enlightenment, which in your scheme would seem far more distant than even Neoclassicisim.

Read Hölderlin as one opposite example to what you are saying.

[Anonymous No.18983499]

>>18983425
Along with the ones I've mentioned (do read Boileau and Pope, they're really short and interesting, and Horace's Epistle to the Pisones, which was the primary model for both), and the romanticists' own critical texts (Wordsworth's Preface, Shelley's Defence), I actually don't have any singular texts that I could rec, other than a really general one - J.M. Cohen's History of Western Literature. The rest I've pieced together from various texts that aren't available in English.

>>18983458
That's why I note that they're tendencies and not doctrines, and already gave two examples that are not easily classified.
>Romanticism also had an extreme rationalist or political position
Yes, in many countries it was very political, being connected to nationalism. I do not know of any extremely rationalist romanticists, however, could you give me any examples?
One poet would not be enough to reshape the general scheme, which is in great part not just mine but that of scholars who have read much more than me and whose ideas seem to fit what I come across in my own work.

[Anonymous No.18983567]

>>18983499
Well Hölderlin is the greatest of the romanticists, and this should be taken as something other than gathering the whole through the majority. (Of course, it may be argued that he surpassed romanticism, and is thus an exception, but I think it is better to see him as the highest expression where others were becoming, or simply fell short.) His reverence for Plato, for one, gives us something other than the seemingly Nietzschean reading you have, which aside from being historically influenced would weight things against the romanticists. Should we not read them on their own terms rather than as self- or objective-interested academics (those who want to clean things up and set them aside for the passing of time or knowledge)?
Schmitt's book is the best there is on the subject. If I remember correctly he defines it as something like 'subjectified occasionalism'. The importance of the relation of occasionalism and pantheism as a religious type of ultra-rationalism cannot be overstated - of which we can only say that the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism are only an interim between two theological eras of thought (which themselves are not entirely distinct).

[Anonymous No.18983598]

>>18983567
One example could be the boisterous proclamations of a political representative who is really only looking out for himself: the political experience becomes little more than occasion of his own representation, the perfection of the private man. This was a political catastrophe of the 1830s, although perhaps an example only of the lowest romantic type, or its complete failure, ruination.

From the intro to Schmitt's book.

"Schmitt's analysis of the romantic movement begins with a critique of three generally accepted conceptions of romanticism. First, romanticism cannot be ostensively defined by a collection of objects or artifacts that are said to be romantic because of certain distinctive properties they have in common. Thus it cannot be said that mountainous landscapes, primitive societies, architectural ruins, mysticism, lyric poetry, love songs, or the Middle Ages are intrinsically romantic. Second, romanticism cannot be defined by reference to a purely psychological state. Thus romanticism cannot be understood as emotionality, innocence, a love of adventure, or a flight into the remote, the exotic, or the alien. Finally, it is also necessary to reject a dichotomous conception of romanticism that represents it as the polar antithesis of classicism or rationalism. There are two reasons why such a dichotomous conception is mistaken. First, these dichotomies are not exhaustive. From the fact that an artifact is not a product of classicism or rationalism, it does not follow that it falls within the domain of the romantic. For example, Schmitt argues that Roman Catholicism is mistakenly linked with romanticism because it is not a product of rationalism, and the modern historical consciousness is fallaciously attributed to romanticism because its genesis lies in a critique of eighteenth-century rationalism. Second, what qualifies as classicism or rationalism is historically variable. If classicism is understood as the culture of classical antiquity, then its historical antithesis is the Christian culture of the Middle Ages. But classicism may also be identified with the aesthetic principles dominant in the French high culture of the seventeenth century, in which case its antithesis is the German Sturm und Drang of the late eighteenth century. Schmitt concludes that it is preposterous to suppose that romanticism can be defined in terms of properties that the medieval culture of Christianity and the German literary culture of the late eighteenth century have in common."

[Anonymous No.18983619]

And of course, Hölderlin speaks to something completely other than the cult of the artist. The catastrophe is a complete loss or even suicide of the artist, at least as he exists for law and state.

[Anonymous No.18983620]

>>18983567
>Well Hölderlin is the greatest of the romanticists
This isn't a way to meaningfully talk about literary history. Yes, the history of literature should very much take into account the general and the widespread, rather than the exceptional. Moreover, using single authors as "true expressions" of a particular literary spirit leads to a limiting historical viewpoint, which I am strongly against, being interested in a lot of "peripheral" literature.
>the seemingly Nietzschean reading you have
What makes it Nietzschean?
>Should we not read them on their own terms
I literally did recommend critical texts by classicists and the romanticists, and I've read several other. None of them make mention of the terms that you bring up near the end, and which I frankly do not comprehend at all.
It is obvious that there are continuities and discontinuities, it is just simpler to point out the discontinuities to illustrate the romanticist tendency.

[Anonymous No.18983627]

>>18982747
Isn't this the guy who raped an unconscious chick on stream

[Anonymous No.18983643]

>>18983598
Or rather, not looking out for himself, but from a perspective which is beyond both himself as private man and representative of the state - even as human or being. He is beyond the consequences of death, whether of himself or the species.

"According to Schmitt, these views of romanticism are committed to a naive realism that assumes that certain objects or artifacts are inherently romantic, independent of how they are conceived and experienced. In opposition to this assumption, Schmitt contends that an adequate analysis of romanticism must begin with a characteristic attitude and its posture toward the world. Like any other cultural movement, the romantic movement rests on a distinctive set of commitments and the idea of an ultimate axiom or a final authority, the basic metaphysical principle on which these commitments rest. In the language of German philosophical idealism that Schmitt often favors, romanticism is not defined realistically, by reference to a certain collection of objects, but rather transcendentally, in terms of the romantic subject or person: a specific type of human being and its characteristic mode of existence. Schmitt also insists that the way to understand a metaphysical position is not to analyze it in the abstract, but rather to explore the concrete situations and circumstances of life in which its commitments are exhibited. Suppose we take this suggestion seriously.

[Anonymous No.18983653]

>>18983643
"A young man named Johannes finds himself strolling the streets of Copenhagen on an early April evening. By chance he notices an innocent-looking young girl who strikes his fancy. He follows her to a shop, where he manages to observe her without being detected. Seeing that she does not wear a wedding band, he hears that she is about to give her address to a clerk but takes care not to listen, ensuring that he does not deprive himself of a future agreeable surprise. Instead he withdraws, savoring the expectation of another chance meeting in unexpected circumstances. This duly happens when he encounters her on another aimless stroll, whereupon he manages to discover both her name (Cordelia) and residence. He cleverly arranges an introduction, which is followed by furtive and carefully calculated observations that disclose a quiet, modest, sensitive girl, possessed of great passion and imagination that seem to have remain untapped. In other words, here is an object worthy of a seduction, which Johannes plans with the consummate care of the master artist who works in that most recalcitrant and unpredictable of media, the interplay of human emotions.

His plan is complex, elegant, and ironical. First, he will find an object for her emotions, not by immediately interesting her in himself, but rather by providing her with an appropriate suitor: a respectable and attractive young man, but someone who will prove incapable of plumbing the depths of her feelings. Pursuing this strategy, Johannes choreographs an adolescent infatuation between Cordelia and the hapless Edvard, whose deficiencies give her both a distaste for love and a desire to transcend her own limitations. This experience of the disparity between the suitor's banality and her own emotional possibilities also gives Cordelia a more precise sense of what a proper object of her desires should be. Ultimately, the suitor will bore her, and she will despair of the possibility of erotic love, a despair that — given the appropriate occasion — Johannes will be able to dissolve. This will make Cordelia all the more interesting. Not only will he enjoy the contemplation of her nascent passion, the inadequacy of its satisfaction, and her premature despair. He will also be able to observe her spontaneous delight in discovering the differences between himself and the suitor as potential lovers. Thus his plan is to form a series of purely aesthetic contrasts that will serve as objects for his own contemplative pleasure."

[Anonymous No.18983659]

>>18983653
So here we see that in form the poetic and experiential has nothing distinct from the legal and rational, from critique. They proceed as the same methodological being in the world.

[Anonymous No.18983734]

>>18983620
It isn't meaningful to discuss the greats rather than any common expression? Why then does The Iliad or Faust still exist?
It certainly is meaningful, as the highest expression is worth more than thousands of fruitless attempts. One does not discuss Thersites and Thrasymachus, even though they played an important part in events. They discuss Achilles and Plato.

The highest expression is like a Janus figure, he forms in our world like the mirror image of the form of the law.

What is limiting in it? You seem to be taking a quantitative approach even though you claim to have read men like Herder. The shortest and perfect expression is worth more than what is complete in material but lacking in morphological quality. Such failures are why we have so many books which say nothing more than 'this is a great general law' while leaving a greater void behind them.

I mean nietzschean in the sense of a certain or even fatalistic conflict between poetics and the rational. This appears nowhere before him - at least to such a warlike extent - and would seem alien even to a Hölderlin or Goethe, who lived only a few years before.

I think the problem is mainly in trying to enframe or create a taxonomy of literary types, which reduces the movement to its technical aspects. This is an impossibility, and requires distorting and exaggerating differences, while at the same time ignoring what is essential.
From a theological perspective, is man closer to the eagle or the mouse? Classification based on surface characteristics often leads us astray.