Romanticism

            During the early eighteenth century, a new movement in art and literature began throughout Europe and the Americas, it was Romanticism. This marked a turning point in western culture, as many other changes had occurred, and thus, the arts changed along with them. We see in Romanticism an emphasis on returning to simplicity and recapturing the perfection of the classics, in which it would seem, there will always come a time when people and culture will long to return to the beauty of the ancients. 

            We can see the effects of Romanticism in every part of life, as it ushered in a new age of how people thought about the arts. In Romanticism, we see an emphasis on simplicity and feeling, and the idea of coming back to the beautiful and simple standards in culture, and this can be most clearly seen in the architecture, and art, for example, the tombs we see prior to the Romantic era are of many colors, and have much complexity in their form, but during this time we see plain, pale stone used to build these structures, with a very minimalistic approach to the carvings. Also, in painting we get a strong feeling of simplicity, in the Baroque and the Mannerist tradition we saw complex images with movement and feeling, whereas now, we experience wide open scenes giving us a sense of vastness, although we do see some preservation of prior traditions, especially in the desire for emotion. One reason that there was such a longing to return to a simplistic style might be because during this time, it was a powerful trend to view the ancients as being the perfect standard which all other things must measure up to, and the new modernistic approach a flawed and destructive path, having fallen far from it’sonce glorious stature, and in addition to this, transcendentalism took hold, with emphasis on children being born perfect and living innocently. These developments are important to remember, as they shape how we think about many of these same ideas today.

            On the point of feeling, this age stands out in the crowd, as never since the Renaissance has there been such an emphasis on the essence of emotion, however, instead of being captured in dynamic sculpture, we now see it in literature and music. This might have been triggered by the dramatic events occurring in the world, as art reflects its surroundings, but whatever the reason, we see a rich source of self expression in the arts. We know this because, in music especially, as we see the composers actually describing the story of their symphonies, whereas in the past we would see artists, composers, and playwrights, leaving their work up to interpretation, but the Romantics worked meticulously to build their work around a preconceived idea, the best example of this is the Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz, in which he tells the tale of being in love and captured in the “idee fixe” that is, obsession with someone, and the pursuit unto death. Also we see this theme in literature with the popular novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, were we see intense emotion, which is almost the driving force which moves the novel forward. But more than that, we see a true connection between the novel and Mary’s personal story, she had been born at the cost of her mother’s life, and she herself had birth complications, so it is speculated that she imparted many of these ideas into her book, possibly viewing birth like giving life to a monster, although a less outlandish view would be that she saw the monster as the industrialization of her time, as it was popular among Romantics to dislike these new developments because they compromised nature, leaving a wake of destruction. In conclusion, the Romantic era has two dominating themes, the first is simplicity and the second is feeling, we see some of the finest treasures coming out of the arts during this time, especially in writing, painting, and composing, but we clearly observe a return to the ancients, in many ways, especially in these primary themes. Events like these show us that no matter how far a society develops, there will always be a coming back to the ancients in order to recover their beauty. 

            Romanticism marks a unique movement in western culture, and we see many important themes in it, but from it, we can see that there comes a time in every culture when there is a hunger to return to the past, and reclaim the beauty that has been lost. We too can take something away from this, respecting and imitating those who we admire from the past, in order to become more like them and thus achieve similar results.