The Quest of the Absolute: Birth and Decline of European Romanticism

Preface

p r e f a c e The ideas and artistic achievements of a culture reflect the mind’s light on being at a particular epoch. That light waxes and wanes. Ideas emerge, dominate public discourse for a while, and then fade away, only to be rediscovered later. They may be forgotten, but they have become an integral part of a living tradition. They are transitory and yet permanent. The intellectual revolution initiated by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo started a process that ever since has extended to more and more areas. We have learned what it means to live in a cosmos that has no mathematical center, that is virtually unlimited, and yet, even in its remote areas, is ruled by identical laws. As we no longer are at the physical center of the cosmos, we have come to realize that the mind must all the more assert its spiritual dominance and assume full responsibility for our personal destiny as well as for the world that surrounds us. Freedom has become an unconditional demand of human existence. Creative freedom has also transformed the nature of modern art and poetry. Artists should follow the creative impulse they experience in themselves. Expressiveness, not imitation of nature, has become the leading aesthetic norm. Such are some of the fundamental principles of the modern mind. In two previous studies on modern culture, one about Renaissance Humanism and the other about the Enlightenment, I have traced the earlier stages of the process of modernity. The present work investigates its next major development. The French Revolution radicalized the principles of modernity. It opened a prospect of ever more extensive programs of emancipation. The drive toward personal and social freedom was too comprehensive to be contained within the restrictions of a political program. Indeed, all finite attempts to realize the new ideal proved to be no more than way stations in the pursuit of an unconditioned Idea. The two foremost Romantic philosophers, Fichte and Schelling, openly vii professed that they aimed at an unlimited absolute. Through the entire epoch we sense a desire for the unattainable: Novalis’s and Hölderlin’s Sehnsucht, Byron’s and Shelley’s defiance, Lamartine’s sadness, and de Vigny’s Stoic resignation all reveal an aspiration to surpass the limits of human capacity. The nature of this search as expressed in poetry, art, and philosophy, but also in political theory and in new modes of religious symbolization, forms the subject of this investigation. Unquestionably, the present age enormously differs from the early nineteenth century. Yet the aspirations of the Romantic mind continue to resonate today. Even the frequent use of such terms as late Romantic or neo-Romantic points to the endurance of at least some of the Romantic ideals in our time. Our contemporaries, like the Romantics, typically resist political restrictions, social divisions, fixed moral rules, and dogmatic religion. They experience the same desire for global unity while fiercely resisting any attack on their regional autonomy. The seeds of the two powerful ideologies of the twentieth century, communist universalism and fascist nationalism, were buried deep in Romantic thought, waiting to germinate and overrun the entire twentieth century. Much in our social behavior we have inherited from the Romantic response to pressure in spontaneous outbursts of protest or exuberance, cultural rebellions, vociferous strikes, and street demonstrations. The Romantic cult of nature has survived in our present care for the earth, in our preservation of wilderness, and in our preference for all that is “natural.” A fascination with the mysterious, the esoteric, and the irrational, which is apparent in popular mysticism, in religious syncretism, and in efforts to attain instant ecstasy, testifies to a continuing spiritual unrest that can be traced back to the Romantic era. I have limited this investigation to the cultures that played a leading part in this spiritual revolution: the German, the English, and the French. Those restrictions unfortunately have forced me to exclude great poets such as Mickiewicz, superb novelists such as Manzoni, and the entire contribution of such major North American writers as Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne, and Mark Twain. Some of the spiritual fathers of Romantic thought, such as Rousseau, Herder, and Jacobi, are only briefly mentioned, because I have discussed them at length in my book The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture. viii | Preface Much else has been omitted that could or perhaps should have been included . I have not tried to write a history of Romantic literature, philosophy , art, or religion...