Romanticism | From Enlightenment to Emotion
Oh! to see the linstock lighting,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
Oh! to hear the round shot biting,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
Oh! to see the linstock lighting,
And to hear the round shot biting,
For we're all in love with fighting
On the fighting Téméraire.
It was noontide ringing,
And the battle just begun,
When the ship her way was winging,
As they loaded every gun.
It was noontide ringing,
When the ship her way was winging,
And the gunner's lads were singing
As they loaded every gun.
There'll be many grim and gory,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
There'll be few to tell the story,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
There'll be many grim and gory,
There'll be few to tell the story,
But we'll all be one in glory
With the Fighting Téméraire.
There's a far bell ringing
At the setting of the sun,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of the great days done.
There's a far bell ringing,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of renown for ever clinging
To the great days done.
Now the sunset breezes shiver,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
And she's fading down the river,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
Now the sunset's breezes shiver,
And she's fading down the river,
But in England's song for ever
She's the Fighting Téméraire.
— Sir Henry Newbolt, "The Fighting Téméraire," 1897 —
The old ship still stood proud amidst the fleet of vessels laying at anchor. Her masts rose higher than the smokestacks of the tugs, a testament to her greatness. But now, she was little more than a hulk. Her days were at an end, and the captain, who had once battled the old enemy across the Channel aboard her, was gripped with sadness. Two tugboats pulled alongside, and their crews fastened ropes to the mighty wooden vessel. For the first time in two years, the captain felt the deck lurch as the ship got underway—though not by its own sails. Smoke billowed from the tug's stack and stained the planks of the veteran warship. The captain coughed, his face stolid but his heart sad.
On a nearby boat, an artist watched as the warship was pulled from its anchorage toward a nearby beach, where she would be run aground and then broken up. He felt the same sadness as its captain, and a tear slipped down his cheek. He knew he had to commemorate the old ship's service, and when he returned to his studio, he began to paint the masterpiece that defined his career.
The Romantic Era
It is very common throughout history to see periods of great innovation and artistic expression follow times of great turmoil and death. The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) were some of the worst years in the history of Europe, and in their wake many artists, writers, philosophers, and common people took stock of what they had just endured. Some blamed the devastation on the exiled French emperor, but others looked more deeply at the cultural movement that had created the revolution in France and caused Napoleon's rise. The Enlightenment had emphasized rationalism and science as the supreme elements in the human psyche, and its principles had undergirded the principles of the 1789 revolutionaries—though they were soon forgotten by the Jacobins who had followed. Now, with the coming of peace and the demobilization of armies across Europe, people had a chance to take stock of what had just happened. Perhaps, they thought, science and reason could not explain everything in this world and should not be the focus of national thought. Artists picked up their brushes, writers their pens, and philosophers their cups of coffee or tea in the cafés of Paris, and they began to infuse their work with emotion and individualism.
The Romantic period was not the direct result of the Napoleonic Wars, and it had actually started in some countries before the rise of the French emperor to power. But there was a clear link between the end of the wars and the increase in artistic output—it seemed as though their end had broken a dam and unleashed a flood of expression from Europe's intellectual and artistic communities. The results are some of the most beautiful pieces of visual, musical, and written art in world history. For the sake of time, only a few may be mentioned herein brief, but I would encourage each of you in our audience to take some time and find these wonderful pieces of art, music, or literature on your own.
The Romantic Arts
In German Europe, the writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller penned some of the greatest works in their language. Goethe's Faust and Schiller's Wilhelm Tell may be familiar to some listeners, and they epitomize two of the most common themes in Romanticism: the emphasis on individuals over groups or states, and an interest in the common man and childhood. Faust embodies the quest of the Romantics to embrace emotion over reason; its protagonist, Dr. Faust, has learned—he believes—all that there is to know in this world, so he makes a bargain with the devil. He will surrender his soul to the evil one in exchange for a life of endless pleasure. I won't spoil the ending, but it's a good one! Wilhelm Tell blends Romanticism with German nationalism and retells a medieval folktale of the Swiss hero William Tell, who famously shoots an apple off his son's head and then leads his people in a revolution against the oppressive Austrian state. Again, no spoilers, but Schiller's story is one of bravery in the face of danger and the triumph of the common man over the establishment. France produced its own Romantic master-works, especially from the pens of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo are just two of thousands of fantastic works by these authors and others, and again they reflect the importance of individuality and an emphasis on emotion over reason.
Music was also revolutionized by the Romantics, especially through the works of the deaf German composer Ludwig van Beethoven and others such as Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner. Many of their works hearkened back to before the Enlightenment when classical composers like Mozart, Haydn, and Handel wrote music glorifying the state or the Church. Wagner's operas retold German fairytales (often in very long and complicated forms), and Beethoven and Liszt's concertos and symphonies were meant to lift the soul rather than edify those in power. Composers from other European lands credited these men as inspirations, and music became a tool of the artist to inspire audiences to feel rather than to think.
Yet another element of the visual arts influenced by Romanticism was architecture, seen in neoclassicism, a return to the forms of construction of ancient and classical Greece and Rome. Across Europe and the United States, buildings became less functional and more beautiful, filled with sculptures and images to enrich the mind and soul rather than simply shielding inhabitants from the weather. The great Gothic cathedral in Cologne, left half-finished until a new building program began in 1832, and many government buildings in London, Berlin, and Washington, DC, incorporated columns and other architectural features of classic Greco-Roman buildings like the Colosseum and Parthenon. Monarchs, now flush with cash thanks to the Industrial Revolution and rising tax revenue, began building lavish palaces that looked like medieval castles across Europe. Many of them hoped to inspire visitors to recall the glories of the ancient empires when walking their halls. The greatest example of this neoclassical trend are the palaces of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, whose Neuschwanstein Castle in far-southern Germany is still an architectural wonder—though completely indefensible from a military point of view.
Probably the greatest artistic revolution created by the Romantics was in painting. Again, there are thousands of examples of Romantic painters, but in my humble opinion, two stand above the rest. The first is Eugène Delacroix, who created the defining image of nineteenth-century revolutionary Europe: Liberty Leading the People. Delacroix painted this work after a revolution in France toppled the tyrant King Charles X and replaced him with a reformer, Louis Philippe. He hoped to encapsulate the bravery of the revolutionaries who took to the barricades in Paris after Charles imposed martial law, and the result was an artistic paragon. The image of a young woman, bare-breasted and obviously having just escaped the clutches of a would-be ravisher, holding the French tricolor flag high atop a mountain of defeated corpses as other revolutionaries join her cause. The image inspired thousands who saw it to stand up to tyranny across Europe during the uprisings of 1848. Romantic art sought to evoke strong feelings in the audience, and Liberty Leading the People is a triumph in the genre. The second great Romantic painter, whose style also evoked strong emotion but in a less political manner, is Joseph Mallord William Turner, a British artist who created the image of The Fighting Téméraire after watching the ship, a hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, be tugged to its last berth to be broken up near Greenwich on the Thames River. Turner's use of color to depict light is unmatched in Romantic art, and the feelings his pieces inspire are deep and everlasting. Many of his greatest works are landscapes, and they capture the beauty of creation better than even the best high-definition cameras of today—reflecting another important Romantic theme, an appreciation of nature's beauty. Viewing The Fighting Téméraire evokes sadness and the end of an era as the ship, a symbol of the old and simple world of the past, is towed away by a small, ugly, black tugboat belching smoke into a misty sky.
The Romantic Sciences
Romanticism was not confined to the visual arts, and its influence spread far and wide across European, and world, intellectual life. In science, the Romantics continued to pursue their quest to understand nature's beauty by seeking to comprehend the totality of creation. This led scientists to new discoveries in biology, botany, astronomy, and chemistry. The German scientist Friedrich Schelling summed up Romantic science by developing what he called Naturphilosophie, "natural philosophy," and writing that nature and science were "a history of the path to freedom." To understand nature was more than the simple rational pursuit of facts—it was about understanding ourselves and our place in the universe.
The two greatest natural scientists of the Romantic period were, again in my opinion, Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin. Many of Humboldt's university students became some of the most important contributors to our understanding of the world today. He believed in collecting data according to the Scientific Method, but he disliked the Enlightenment philosophes' practice of ignoring the beauty of one's subject—a plant, an animal, or a planet. Humboldt sought to inspire his students to pursue knowledge for its own sake rather than its utility. He believed that science connected every person on earth, and that a greater understanding of every aspect of nature would allow us to understand each other. "Humboldtian Science" was put into practice by Charles Darwin when he journeyed to the Galapagos Islands and recorded observation of various animal species. Darwin's goal was not to create a set of facts to publish and then use to promote a social or political agenda (as was common of Enlightenment scientists). Rather, he wanted to understand the development of different species across time and space. His theories of natural selection and evolutionary biology reflect Humboldt's desire to understand the interconnected nature of our world and all creatures, great and small, who lived in it.
There was one other interesting contributor to Romantic science, though she was not herself a scientist: Mary Shelley, the British author of Frankenstein. Frankenstein is, of course, not a work of science but fantasy, and many of Shelley's ideas were ridiculous. But the message found in the book reflects a key tenet of Romantic science: that scientists should avoid trying to manipulate nature (in this case the human body and the natural process of death). According to one historian of this period, the real message of Frankenstein was that "Science can easily go wrong unless man takes more care to appreciate nature rather than control it."
The natural sciences were not the sole province of Romantic influence—political science also felt its touch as well. A new movement developed in France by the revolutionaries and then unleashed across Europe by Napoleon's armies blended perfectly with the Romantic principles of individualism and the interests of the common man. This was nationalism, a sense of pride in one's nation, and a desire for unity within one's tribe or ethnic group. Nationalists utterly rejected both the staunch conservatism of the Enlightenment philosophes and the high-minded goals of liberal reformers in post-Napoleonic Europe. They appealed to the feelings of patriotism in ground-down ethnic groups across the continent and hoped to motivate them in an almost-spiritual quest for unity—even if it meant by force. Nationalism took hold in Germany and Italy very quickly, as both of these regions had experienced unity under Napoleon, only to have it ripped from them by the victorious Coalition at the Congress of Vienna. Within a half-century, nationalists were clamoring for the unification of the ethnic German and Italian states, and strong leaders like Camillo di Cavour and Otto von Bismarck made these dreams a reality.
Learning from History
Romanticism's final contribution to the intellectual development of our world is in the realm of history. It produced both positive and negative changes to historiography, the study of how history is written, and both provide lessons for us today. The British historian Thomas Carlyle was the first of many Romantic writers who subscribed to the "great man" theory of history, that the past is driven by the actions of strong leaders rather than underlying cultural trends shaped by everyday people. This is not necessarily inaccurate, but Carlyle and others used biographies of great leaders such as Oliver Cromwell of England, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Napoleon Bonaparte to push certain agendas. They often ignored flaws in their character or crimes they committed in an unpardonable misuse of history. The second, positive trend in Romantic history was an understanding that every period of history has its own unique identity and that it was the task of later generations to discern its lessons and draw upon them to improve their own lives. Scholars should examine the specific details of an event, a person's life, or a social movement without inserting their own philosophy or ideology as they interpreted it. In short, those studying history should avoid judging the past by their own moral or ethical standards.
Unfortunately, many historians today follow Carlyle's example—they ignore distasteful parts of a nation or a person's past to make them into heroes. Some also omit or reinterpret events to promote a religious or political agenda. Both of these are incredibly dangerous, as they risk either turning dangerous leaders of the past into models for the present or else miseducating students of history into following paths that lead to tragedy and disaster. As we enter this second "block" of podcasts this season, I want to assure you, our wonderful audience, that we at 15-Minute History are committed to teaching you about the good and the bad in history, that we will share our agenda with you whenever we offer an interpretation of past events, and that above all, we are committed to the truth here on this podcast. We are glad to be back with you after a prolonged break, and we hope you enjoy the rest of this season!
Credit: National Gallery