Isaiah Berlin

The Roots of
Romanticism
With a foreword by
John Gray
 THE ROOTS OF
ROMANTICISM

ISAIAH BERLIN

Edited by HenryHardy

THE A. W. MELLON LECTURES IN THE FINE ARTS

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC

BOLLINGEN SERIES XXXV:45

Second Edition

Forewordbyjohn Gray

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Berlin, Isaial1,1909-1997.
1he roots of roma.ncicism / Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy;
foreword by John Gray. - 2nd ed.
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(Bollingen series 45)
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I 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
 In Search of a Definition

I MIGHT BE EXPECTED TO BEGIN, or to attempt to begin, with

some kind of definition of Romanticism, or at least some general-
isation, in order to make clear what it is that I mean by it. I do
not propose to walk into that particular trap. The eminent and
wise Professor Northrop Frye points out that whenever anyone
embarks on a generalisation on the subject of Romanticism, even
something so innocuous, for example, as to say chat a new attitude
sprang up among English poets towards nature - in Wordsworth
and Coleridge, lee us say, as against Racine and Pope - somebody
will always be found who will produce countervailing evidence
from the writings of Homer, Kalidasa, pre-Muslim Arabian
• epics, medieval Spanish verse - and finally Racine and Pope
themselves. For chis reason I do not propose to generalise, but
co convey in some other way what it is that I chink Romanticism
co be.
Indeed, the literature on Romanticism is larger than Romanti-
cism itself, and the literature defining what it is chat the literature
on Romanticism is concerned with is quite large in its turn. There
is a kind of inverted pyramid. It is a dangerous and a confused
subject, in which many have lost, I will not say their senses, but at
any race their sense of direction. It is like that dark cave described
by Virgil, where all the footsteps lead in one direction; or the
cave of Polyphemus - chose who enter it never seem to emerge
again. It is therefore with some trepidation that I embark upon
the subject.
The importance of Romanticism is that it is the largest
 2 • The Roots of Romanticism In Search ofa Definition • 3

recent movement to transform the lives and the thought of the This notion that there is somewhere a perfect vision, and that
Western world. It seems to me to be the greatest single shift in it needs only a certain kind of severe discipline, or a certain kind
the consciousness of the West that has occurred, and all the other of method, to attain to this truth, which is analogous, at any
• shifts which have occurred in the course of the nineteenth and rate, to the cold and isolated truths of mathematics - this notion
twentieth centuries appear to me in comparison less important, then affects a great many other thinkers in the post-Platonic
and at any rate deeply influenced by it. age: certainly the Renaissance, which had similar ideas, certainly
The history not only of thought, but of consciousness, opinion, thinkers like Spinoza, thinkers in the eighteenth century, think-
action too, of morals, politics, aesthetics, is to a large degree a his- ers in the nineteenth century too, who believed it possible to
tory of dominant models. Whenever you look at any particular attain to some kind of, if not absolute, at any rate nearly absolute
civilisation, you will find that its most characteristic writings knowledge, and in terms of this to tidy the world up, to create
and other cultural products reflect a particular pattern of life some kind of rational order, in which tragedy, vice and stupidity,
which those who are responsible for these writings - or paint which have caused so much destruction in the past, can at last
these paintings, or produce these particular pieces of music - are be avoided by the use of carefully acquired information and the
dominated by. And in order to identify a civilisation, in order application to it of universally intelligible reason.
to explain what kind of civilisation it is, in order to understand This is one kind of model - I offer it simply as an example.
the world in which men of this sort thought and felt and acted, These models invariably begin by liberating people from error,
it is important to try, so far as possible, to isolate the dominant from confusion, from some kind of unintelligible world which
pattern which that culture obeys. Consider, for instance, Greek they seek to explain to themselves by means of a model; but they
philosophy or Greek literature of the classical age. If you read, almost invariably end by enslaving those very same people, by
say, the philosophy of Plato, you will find that he is dominated by failing to explain the whole of experience. They begin as liber-
a geometrical or mathematical model. It is clear that his thought ators and end in some sort of despotism.
operates on lines which are conditioned by the idea that there are Let us look at another example - a parallel culture, that of
certain axiomatic truths, adamantine, unbreakable, from which the Bible, that of the Jews at a comparable period. You will find
it is possible by severe logic to deduce certain absolutely infallible a totally different model dominating, a totally different set of
conclusions; that it is possible to attain to this kind of absolute ideas, which would have been unintelligible to the Greeks. The
wisdom by a special method which he recommends; that there is notion from which both Judaism and Christianity to a large
such a thing as absolute knowledge to be obtained in the world, degree sprang is the notion of family life, the relations of father
and if only we can attain to this absolute knowledge, of which and son, perhaps the relations of members of a tribe to one
geometry, indeed mathematics in general, is the nearest example, another. Such fundamental relationships - in terms of which
the most perfect paradigm, we can organise our lives in terms of nature and life are explained - as the love of children for their
this knowledge, in terms of these truths, once and for all, in a father, the brotherhood of man, forgiveness, commands issued
static manner, needing no further change; and then all suffering, by a superior to an inferior, the sense of duty, transgression, sin
all doubt, all ignorance, all forms of human vice and folly can be and therefore the need to atone for it - this whole complex of
expected to disappear from the earth. qualities, in terms of which the whole of the universe is explained
4 • TheRootsof Romanticism In Searchof a Definition • 5

by those who created the Bible, and by those who were to a large this bearded being, which is not on the face of it intelligible. Vico
extent influenced by it, would have been totally unintelligible to then argues with great imagination and cogency that the view of
the Greeks. these ancient peoples, so remote from us, must have been very
Consider a perfectly familiar psalm, where the psalmist says different from ours for them to have been able to conceive of
that 'When Israel went out of Egypt [... ] the sea saw it, and fled: their divinity not only as a bearded giant commanding the gods
Jordan was driven back. 1he mountains skipped like rams, and and men, but also as something of which the whole heavens
the little hills like lambs', and the earth is ordered to 'Tremble could be full.
[... ] at the presence of the Lord.' This would have been totally Let me give a more familiar example. When Aristotle in the
unintelligible to Plato or to Aristotle, because the whole notion NicomacheanEthics discusses the subject of friendship, he says,
of a world which reacts personally to the orders of the Lord, the in what is to us a somewhat surprising manner, that there are
idea that all relationships, both animate and inanimate, must various kinds of friends. For example there is the friendship
be interpreted in terms of the relations of human beings, or at which consists in passionate infatuation by one human being
any rate in terms of the relations of personalities, in one case with another; and there is also a friendship which consists in
divine, in the other case human, is very remote from the Greek business relations, in trading, in buying and selling. The fact
conception of what a God was and what his relations were to that for Aristotle there is nothing strange in saying there are two
mankind. Hence the absence among the Greeks of the notion kinds of friends, that there are people whose whole lives are given
of obligation, hence the absence of the notion of duty, which it to love, or at any rate whose emotions are passionately engaged in
is so difficult for people to grasp who read the Greeks through love, and on the other hand there are people who sell shoes to one
spectacles partly affected by the Jews. another, and these are species of the same genus, is something to
Let me try to convey how strange different models can be, which, as a result, perhaps, of Christianity, or of the Romantic
because this is important simply in tracing the history of these movement, or whatever it may be, we find it rather difficult to
transformations of consciousness. Considerable revolutions have acclimatise ourselves.
occurred in the general outlook of mankind which it is some- I give these examples merely in order to convey that these
times difficult to retrace, because we swallow them as if they were ancient cultures are stranger than we think, and that larger trans-
familiar. Giambattista Vico - the Italian thinker who flourished formations have occurred in the history of human consciousness
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, if a man who was than an ordinary uncritical reading of the classics would seem
totally poor and neglected may be said to have flourished - was to convey. There are of course a great many other examples. The
perhaps the first to draw our attention to the strangeness of world can be conceived organically - like a tree, in which every
ancient cultures. He points out, for example, that in the quota- part lives for every other part, and through every other part - or
tion 'Jovis omnia plena' ('Everything is full of Jove'), which is mechanistically, perhaps as a result of some scientific model, in
the end of a perfectly familiar Latin hexameter, something is said which the parts are external to one another, and in which the
that to us is not wholly intelligible. On the one hand Jupiter or State, or any other human institution, is regarded as a gadget
Jove is a large bearded divinity who hurls thunder and lightning. for the purpose of promoting happiness, or preventing people
On the other hand, everything - 'omnia' - is said to be 'full of' from doing each other in. These are very different conceptions of
6 • The Roots ofRomanticism In Search of a Definition • 7

life, and they do belong to different climates of opinion, and are The common view of history and historical change gives us
influenced by different considerations. this account. We begin with a French dix-huitieme,1 an elegant
What happens as a rule is that some subject gains the ascen- century in which everything begins by being calm and smooth,
dancy - say physics, or chemistry - and, as a result of the enor- rules are obeyed in life and in art, there is a general advance
mous hold which it has upon the imagination of its generation, of reason, rationality is progressing, the Church is retreating,
it is applied in other spheres as well. This happened to sociology unreason is yielding to the great attacks upon it of the French
in the nineteenth century, it happened to psychology in our philosophes.There is peace, there is calm, there is elegant build-
own. My thesis is that the Romantic movement was just such ing, there is a belief in the application of universal reason both
a gigantic and radical transformation, afi:er which nothing was to human affairs and to artistic practice, to morals, to politics,
ever the same. This is the claim on which I wish to focus. to philosophy. Then there is a sudden, apparently unaccount-
Where did the Romantic movement take its rise? Certainly able, invasion. Suddenly there is a violent eruption of emotion,
not in England, although technically, no doubt, it did - that enthusiasm. People become interested in Gothic buildings, in in-
is what all the historians will tell you. At any rate, that is not trospection. People suddenly become neurotic and melancholy;
where it occurred in its most dramatic form. Here the question they begin to admire the unaccountable flight of spontaneous
arises: When I speak of Romanticism, do I mean something genius. There is a general retreat from this symmetrical, elegant,
which happens historically, as I appear to be saying, or is it glassy state of affairs. At the same time other changes occur too.
perhaps a permanent frame of mind which is not exclusive to, A great revolution breaks out; there is discontent; the King has
is not monopolised by, any particular age? Herbert Read and his head cut off; the Terror begins.
Kenneth Clark 1 have taken up the position that Romanticism It is not quite clear what these two revolutions have to do with
is a permanent state of mind which might be found anywhere. each other. As we read history, there is a general sense that some-
Kenneth Clark finds it in some lines of Hadrian's; Herbert Read thing catastrophic occurred towards the end of the eighteenth
quotes a great many examples. The baron Seilliere, who has writ- century. At first things appeared to go comparatively smoothly,
ten extensively on this subject, quotes Plato and Plotinus and the then there was a sudden breakthrough. Some welcome it, some
Greek novelist Heliodorus, and a great many other persons who, denounce it. Those who denounce it suppose this to have been
in his opinion, were Romantic writers. I do not wish to enter an elegant and peaceful age: those who did not know it did not
upon this issue - it may be so. The subject with which I myself know the true plaisir de vivre,2 as Talleyrand said. Others say it
wish to deal is confined in time. I do not wish to deal with a was an artificial and hypocritical age, and that the Revolution
permanent human attitude, but with a particular transformation ushered in a reign of greater justice, greater humanity, greater
which occurred historically, and affects us today. Therefore I freedom, greater understanding of man for man. However that
propose to confine my attention to what occurred in the second may be, the question is: What is the relation of the so-called
third of the eighteenth century. It occurred not in England, not Romantic revolution - the sudden breakthrough in the realms
in France, but for the most part in Germany.
1
'Eighteenth [century]'.
1 2
Both previous Mellon Lecturers: see list after index. 'Pleasure of living'. Sometimes quoted as 'douceur de vivre', 'sweetness of living'.
8 • TheRootsof Romanticism In Searchof a Defi,nition • 9

of art and morals of this new and turbulent attitude - and the Revolution, there is the great French political revolution under
revolution which is normally known as the French Revolution? classical auspices, and there is the Romantic revolution. Take
Were the people who danced upon the ruins of the Bastille, the even the great art of the French Revolution. If, for example, you
people who cut off the head of Louis XVI, the same persons as look at the great revolutionary paintings of David, it is difficult
those who were affected by the sudden cult of genius, or the sud- to connect him specifically with the Romantic revolution. The
den breakthrough of emotionalism of which we are told, or the paintings of David have a kind of eloquence, the austere Jacobin
sudden disturbance and turbulence which flooded the Western eloquence of a return to Sparta, a return to Rome; they com-
world? Apparently not. Certainly the principles in the name municate a protest against the frivolity and the superficialiry
of which the French Revolution was fought were principles of of life which is connected with the preachings of such men as
universal reason, of order, of justice, not at all connected with Machiavelli or Savonarola or Mably, people who denounced the
the sense of uniqueness, the profound emotional introspection, frivolity of their age in the name of eternal ideals of a universal
the sense of the differences of things, dissimilarities rather than kind, whereas the Romantic movement, we are told by all its
similarities, with which the Romantic movement is usually historians, was a passionate protest against universality of any
associated. kind. 1herefore there is, prima facie at any rate, a problem in
What about Rousseau? Rousseau is of course quite correctly understanding what happened.
assigned to the Romantic movement as, in a sense, one of its In order to give some sense of what I regard this great break-
fathers. But the Rousseau who was responsible for the ideas through as being, why I think that in chose years, say 1760 co
of Robespierre, the Rousseau who was responsible for the 1830, something transforming occurred, that there was a great
ideas of the French Jacobins, is not the Rousseau, it seems to break in European consciousness - in order to give you at any
me, who has an obvious connection with Romanticism. That rate some preliminary evidence of why I think there is even a case
Rousseau is the Rousseau who wrote the Social Contract,which for saying this, let me give an example. Suppose you were travel-
is a typically classical treatise that speaks of the return of man ling about Western Europe, say in the 1820s, and suppose you
to those original, primary principles which all men have in spoke, in France, to the avant-garde young men who were friends
common; the reign of universal reason, which unites men, as of Victor Hugo, Hugolatres.1 Suppose you went to Germany and
opposed to emotions, which divide them; the reign of universal spoke there to the people who had once been visited by Mme
justice and universal peace as against the conflicts and the de Scad, who had interpreted the German soul to the French.
turbulence and the disturban.ces which tear human hearts from Suppose you had met the Schlegel brothers, who were great
their minds and divide men against themselves. theorists of Romanticism, or one or two of the friends of Goethe
So it is difficult to see what the relation is of this great Romantic in Weimar, such as the fabulist and poet Tieck, or other persons
upheaval to the political revolution. Then there is the Industrial connected with the Romantic movement, and their followers
Revolution too, which cannot be regarded as irrelevant. After in the universities, students, young men, painters, sculptors,
all, ideas do not breed ideas. Some social and economic factors who were deeply influenced by the work of these poets, these
are surely responsible for great upheavals in human conscious-
ness. We have a problem on our hands. There is the Industrial 1
'Hugolacors' by analogy with 'idolacors'.
IO • The Roots of Romanticism In Search ofa Definition • II

dramatists, these critics. Suppose you had spoken in England to you had a conversation in the sixteenth century with somebody
someone who had been influenced by, say, Coleridge, or above fighting in the great religious wars which tore Europe apart at
all by Byron - anyone influenced by Byron, whether in England that period, and suppose you said to a Catholic of that period,
or France or Italy, or beyond the Rhine, or beyond the Elbe. engaged in hostilities, 'Of course these Protestants believe what
Suppose you had spoken to these persons. You would have found is false; of course to believe what they believe is to court perdi-
that their ideal of life was approximately of the following kind. tion; of course they are dangerous to the salvation of human
The values to which they attached the highest importance souls, than which there is nothing more important; but they are
were such values as integrity, sincerity, readiness to sacrifice one's so sincere, they die so readily for their cause, their integrity is so
life to some inner light, dedication to some ideal for which it is splendid, one must yield a certain meed of admiration for the
worth sacrificing all that one is, for which it is worth both living moral dignity and sublimity of people who are prepared to do
and dying. You would have found that they were not primarily that.' Such a sentiment would have been unintelligible. Anyone
interested in knowledge, or in the advance of science, not inter- who really knew, supposed themselves to know, the truth, say
ested in political power, not interested in happiness, not inter- a Catholic who believed in the truths preached to him by the
ested, above all, in adjustment to life, in finding your place in Church, would have known that persons able to put the whole
society, in living at peace with your government, even in loyalty of themselves into the theory and practice of falsehood were
to your king, or to your republic. You would have found that simply dangerous persons, and that the more sincere they were,
common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. the more dangerous, the more mad.
You would have found that they believed in the necessity of No Christian knight would have supposed, when he fought
fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you against the Muslim, that he was expected to admire the purity
would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom and the sincerity with which the paynims believed in their absurd
as such, no matter what the martyrdom was martyrdom for. doctrines. No doubt if you were a decent person, and you killed
You would have found that they believed that minorities were a brave enemy, you were not obliged to spit upon his corpse. You
more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, took the line that it was a pity that so much courage (which was
which had something shoddy and something vulgar about it. The a universally admired quality), so much ability, so much devotion
very notion of idealism, not in its philosophical sense, but in the should have been expended on a cause so palpably absurd or
ordinary sense in which we use it, that is to say the state of mind dangerous. But you would not have said, 'It matters little what
of a man who is prepared to sacrifice a great deal for principles these people believe, what matters is the state of mind in which
or for some conviction, who is not prepared to sell out, who is they believe it. What matters is that they did not sell out, that
prepared to go to the stake for something which he believes, they were men of integrity. These are people I can respect. If they
because he believes in it - this attitude was relatively new. What had come over to our side simply in order to save themselves,
people admired was wholeheartedness, sincerity, purity of soul, that would have been a very self-seeking, a very prudent, a very
the ability and readiness to dedicate yourself to your ideal, no contemptible form of action.' This is the state of mind in which
matter what it was. people must say, 'If I believe one thing, and you believe another,
No matter what it was: that is the important thing. Suppose then it is important that we should fight each other. Perhaps it is
I2 • TheRoots ofRomanticism In Searchofa Definition • IJ

good that you should kill me, or that I should kill you; perhaps, [... ] second-hand century'. Carlyle is not in the least interested
in a duel, it is best that we should kill each other; but the worst in the truths of the Koran, he does not begin to suppose that the
of all possible things is compromise, because that means we have Koran contains anything which he, Carlyle, could be expected
both betrayed the ideal which is within us.' to believe. What he admires Muhammad for is that he is an
Martyrdom, of course, was always admired, but martyrdom elemental force, that he lives an intense life, that he has a great
for the truth. Christians admired martyrs because they were wit- many followers with him; that something elemental occurred,
nesses to the truth. If they were witnesses to falsehood there was a tremendous phenomenon, that there was a great and moving
nothing admirable about them: perhaps something to be pitied, episode in the life of mankind, which Muhammad instantiates.
certainly nothing to be admired. By the 1820s you find an out- The importance of Muhammad is his character and not his
look in which the state of mind, the motive, is more important beliefs. The question of whether what Muhammad believed was
than the consequence, the intention is more important than the true or false would have appeared to Carlyle perfectly irrelevant.
effect. Purity of heart, integrity, devotion, dedication - all these He says, in the course of the same essays, 'Dante's sublime
things which we ourselves admire without much difficulty, which Catholicism [... ] has to be torn asunder by a Luther; Shakespeare's
have entered into the very texture of our normal moral attitudes, noble feudalism[ ... ] has to end in a French Revolution.' Why do
became more or less commonplace, first among minorities; then they have to do this? Because it does not matter whether Dante's
gradually they spread outwards. sublime Catholicism is or is not true. The point is that it is a great
Let me give an example of what I mean by this shift. Take movement, it has lasted its time, and now something equally
Voltaire's play on Muhammad. Voltaire was not particularly powerful, equally earnest, equally sincere, equally deep, equally
interested in Muhammad, and the play was really intended, no earth-shaking must take its place. The importance of the French
doubt, as an attack upon the Church. Nevertheless Muhammad Revolution is that it made a great dent upon the consciences of
emerges as a superstitious, cruel and fanatical monster, who mankind; that the men who made the French Revolution were
crushes all efforts at freedom, at justice, at reason, and is there- deeply in earnest, and not simply smiling hypocrites, as Carlyle
fore to be denounced as an enemy of all that Voltaire held thought Voltaire to be. This is an attitude which is, I will not say
most important: toleration, justice, truth, civilisation. Then brand new, because it is too dangerous to say that, but at any rate
consider what, very much later, Carlyle has to say. Muhammad is sufficiently new to be worthy of attention, and whatever it was
described by Carlyle - who is a highly characteristic, if somewhat that caused it, occurred, it seems to me, somewhere between the
exaggerated, representative of the Romantic movement - in a years 1760 and 1830. lt began in Germany, and grew apace.
book called On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, Let us consider another example of the sort of thing I mean
in the course of which a great many heroes are enumerated and - the attitude towards tragedy. Previous generations assumed
analysed. Muhammad is described as 'a fiery mass of Life cast up that tragedy was always due to some kind of error. Someone
from the great bosom of Nature herself'. He is a man of blazing got something wrong, someone made a mistake. Either it was a
sincerity and power, and therefore to be admired; what he is moral error, or it was an intellectual error. It might have been
compared to, what is not liked, is the eighteenth century, which is avoidable, or it might have been unavoidable. For the Greeks,
warped and useless, which to Carlyle, as he puts it, is a 'withered, tragedy was error which the Gods sent upon you, which no man
.r4 • TheRoots ofRomanticism In Searchofa Definition • IS

subject to them could perhaps have avoided; but, in principle, if Robespierre was perfectly right in putting him to death. There is
these men had been omniscient, they would not have committed a collision here of what Hegel afterwards called 'good with good'.
those grave errors which they did commit, and therefore would It is due not to error, but to some kind of conflict of an unavoid-
not have brought misfortunes upon themselves. If Oedipus had able kind, of loose elements wandering about the earth, of values
known that Laius was his father, he would not have murdered which cannot be reconciled. What matters is that people should
him. This is true even of the tragedies of Shakespeare, to a certain dedicate themselves to these values with all that is in them. If
degree. If Othello had known that Desdemona was innocent, they do that, they are suitable heroes for tragedy. If they do not
none of the denouement of that particular tragedy could have do so, then they are philistines, then they are members of the
occurred. Therefore tragedy is founded upon the inevitable, or bourgeoisie, then they are no good and not worth writing about.
perhaps avoidable, lack of something in men - knowledge, skill, The figure who dominates the nineteenth century as an image
moral courage, ability to live, to do the right thing when you see is the tousled figure of Beethoven in his garret. Beethoven is a
it, or whatever it may be. Better men - morally stronger, intel- man who does what is in him. He is poor, he is ignorant, he is
lectually more adept, above all omniscient persons, who perhaps boorish. His manners are bad, he knows little, and he is perhaps
also had enough power - could always avoid that which in fact is not a very interesting figure, apart from the inspiration which
the substance of tragedy. drives him forward. But he has not sold out. He sits in his garret
This is not so for the early nineteenth century, or even for and he creates. He creates in accordance with the light which is
the late eighteenth. If you read Schiller's tragedy The Robbers, within him, and that is all that a man should do; that is what
to which I shall return again, you will find that Karl Moor, the makes a man a hero. Even if he is not a genius like Beethoven,
hero-villain, is a man who avenges himself upon a detestable even if, like the hero of Balzac's Le Chef d'oeuvreinconnu, 'The
society by becoming a brigand and committing a number of Unknown Masterpiece', he is mad, and covers his canvas with
atrocious murders. He is punished for it, in the end, but if you paints, so that in the end there is nothing intelligible at all, just
ask 'Who is to blame? Is it the side from which he comes? Are its a fearful confusion of unintelligible and irrational paint - even
values totally corrupt, or totally insane? Which of the two sides is then this figure is worthy of more than pity, he is a man who has
right?' there is no answer to be obtained in that tragedy, and the dedicated himself to an ideal, who has thrown away the world,
very question would have appeared to Schiller shallow and blind. who represents the most heroic, the most self-sacrificing, the
Here there is a collision, perhaps an unavoidable collision, be- most splendid qualities which a human being can have. Gautier,
tween sets of values which are incompatible. Previous generations in the famous preface to MademoiselledeMaupin in 1835,defend-
supposed that all good things could be reconciled. This is true ing the notion of art for art's sake, says, addressing the critics in
no longer. If you read Biichner's tragedy The Death of Danton, general, and the public too, 'No, imbeciles! No! Fools and cretins
in which Robespierre finally causes the deaths of Danton and that you are, a book will not make a plate of soup; a novel is not
Desmoulins in the course of the Revolution, and you ask 'Was a pair of boots; a sonnet is not a syringe; a drama is not a railway
Robespierre wrong to do this?', the answer is no; the tragedy [... ]no, two hundred thousand times, no.' Gautier's point is that
is such that Danton, although he was a sincere revolutionary the old defence of art (quite apart from the particular school of
who committed certain errors, did not deserve to die, and yet social utility which he is attacking- Saint-Simon, the Utilitarians
I6 • 'IheRootsof Romanticism In Searchof a Definition • I7

and the socialists), the notion that the purpose of art is to give
pleasure to a large number of persons, or even to a small number
of carefully trained cognoscenti, is not valid. The purpose of art is
to produce beauty, and if the artist alone perceives that his object
is beautiful, that is a sufficient end in life.
Clearly something occurred to have shifted consciousness to
this degree, away from the notion that there are universal truths,
universal canons of art, that all human activities were meant to
terminate in getting things right, and that the criteria of getting
things right were public, were demonstrable, that all intelligent
men by applying their intellects would discover them - away
from that to a wholly different attitude towards life, and towards
action. Something clearly occurred. When we ask what, we are
told that there was a great turning towards emotionalism, that
there was a sudden interest in the primitive and the remote -
the remote in time, and the remote in place - that there was
an outbreak of craving for the infinite. Something is said about
'emotion recollected in tranquillity'; something is said - but it
~ not clear what this has to do with any of the things which I
have just mentioned - about Scott's novels, Schubert's songs,
Delacroix, the rise of State-worship, and German propaganda
in favour of economic self-sufficiency; also about superhuman
qualities, admiration of wild genius, outlaws, heroes, aestheti-
cism, self-destruction.
What have all these things in common? If we try to discover,
a somewhat startling prospect greets our view. Let me offer some
definitions of Romanticism which I have culled from the writ- Portrait ofFredericChopin by Eugene Delacroix

ings of some of the most eminent persons who have written on

the subject; these show that the subject is by no means easy. what he actually says, in the book on Racine and Shakespeare,
Stendhal says that the Romantic is the modern and interest- is what I have just enunciated. But his contemporary Goethe
ing, classicism is the old and the dull. This is not perhaps quite as says that Romanticism is disease, it is the weak, the sickly, the
simple as it sounds: what he means is that Romanticism is a mat- battle-cry of a school of wild poets and Catholic reactionaries;
ter of understanding the forces which move in your own life, as whereas classicism is strong, fresh, gay, sound, like Homer and
opposed to some escape towards something obsolete. However, the Song of the Niebelungs. Nietzsche says it is not a disease but
IS • 1he Roots of Romanticism In Search of a Definition • I9

a therapy, a cure for a disease. Sismondi, a Swiss critic of con- individuality at the expense of a larger world, it is the opposite
siderable imagination, though not perhaps altogether friendly to of self-transcendence, it is sheer self-assertion; and the baron
Romanticism, in spite of being a friend of Mme de Stael, says Seilliere says yes, and egomania and primitivism; and Irving
that Romanticism is a union of love, religion and chivalry. But Babbitt echoes this.
Friedrich von Gentz, who was Metternich's chief agent at this Friedrich Schlegel's brother August Wilhelm Schlegel and
time, and a precise contemporary of Sismondi, says that it is one Mme de Stael agree that Romanticism comes from the Romance
of the heads of a three-headed Hydra, the other two heads being nations, or at least the Romance languages, that it really comes
reform and revolution; it is in fact a lefi:-wing menace, a menace from a modification of the verses of the Proven~al troubadours;
to religion, to tradition and to the past which must be stamped but Renan says it is Celtic. Gaston Paris says it is Breton; Seilliere
out. The young French Romantics, 'les jeunes-France', echo this says it comes from a mixture of Plato and pseudo-Dionysius the
by saying 'Le romantisme c' est la Revolution.' Revolution against Areopagite. Joseph Nadler, a learned German critic, says that
what? Apparently against everything. Romanticism is really the homesickness of those Germans who
Heine says Romanticism is the passion-flower sprung from lived between the Elbe and the Niemen - their homesickness for
the blood of Christ, a re-awakening of the poetry of the sleep- the old Central Germany from which they once came, the day-
walking Middle Ages, dreaming spires that look at you with the dreams of exiles and colonists. Eichendorff says it is Protestant
deep dolorous eyes of grinning spectres. Marxists would add nostalgia for the Catholic Church. But Chateaubriand, who did
that it was indeed an escape from the horrors of the Industrial not live between the Elbe and the Niemen, and therefore did
Revolution, and Ruskin would agree, saying it was a contrast of not experience these emotions, says it is the secret and inexpress-
the beautiful past with the frightful and the monotonous present; ible delight of a soul playing with itself: 'I speak everlastingly of
this is a modification of Heine's view, but not all that different myself.' Joseph Aynard says it is the will to love something, an
from it. But Taine says that Romanticism is a bourgeois revolt attitude or an emotion towards others, and not towards oneself,
against the aristocracy afi:er r789; Romanticism is the expression the very opposite of the will to power. Middleton Murry says
of the energy and force of the new arrivistes - the exact opposite. Shakespeare was essentially a Romantic writer, and adds that
It is the expression of the pushing, vigorous powers of the new all great writers since Rousseau have been Romantic. But the
bourgeoisie against the old, decent, conservative values of society eminent Marxist critic Georg Lukacs says no great writers are
and history. It is the expression not of weakness, nor of despair, Romantic, least of all Scott, Hugo and Stendhal.
but of brutal optimism. If we consider these quotations from men who afi:eralldeserve
Friedrich Schlegel, the greatest harbinger, the greatest herald to be read, who are in other respects profound and brilliant
and prophet of Romanticism that ever lived, says there is in man writers on many subjects, it is clear that there is some difficulty
a terrible unsatisfied desire to soar into infinity, a feverish longing in discovering the common element in all these generalisations.
to break through the narrow bonds of individuality. Sentiments That is why Northrop Frye was so very wise to warn against it.
not altogether unlike this can Le found in Coleridge and indeed All these competing definitions have never, so far as I know,
in Shelley too. But Ferdinand Brunetiere, towards the end really been the subject of a protest by anyone; they have never
of the century, says that it is literary egotism, it is stressing of incurred that degree of critical wrath which might have been
20 • TheRootsofRomanticism In Searchof a Definition • 2I

unleashed against anyone who had really produced definitions it is sweet melancholy and bitter melancholy, solitude, the suf-
or generalisations which were universally regarded as absurd and ferings of exile, the sense of alienation, roaming in remote places,
irrelevant. especially the East, and in remote times, especially the Middle
The next step is to see what characteristics have been called Ages. But also it is happy co-operation in a common creative
Romantic by writers on this subject, by critics. A very peculiar effort, the sense of forming part of a Church, a class, a party,
result emerges. There is such variety among the examples I have a tradition, a great and all-containing symmetrical hierarchy,
accumulated that the difficulty of the subject which I was unwise knights and retainers, the ranks of the Church, organic social
enough to choose seems even more extreme. ties, mystic unity, one faith, one land, one blood, 'la terre et les
Romanticism is the primitive, the untutored, it is youth, the morts', 1 as Barres said, the great society of the dead and the liv-
exuberant sense of life of the natural man, but it is also pallor, ing and the yet unborn. It is the T oryism of Scott and Southey
fever, disease, decadence, the maladie du siecle, La Belle Dame and Wordsworth, and it is the radicalism of Shelley, Buchner
Sans Merci, the Dance of Death, indeed Death itself It is Shelley's and Stendhal. It is Chateaubriand's aesthetic medievalism, and
dome of many-coloured glass, and it is also his white radiance it is Michelet's loathing of the Middle Ages. It is Carlyle's wor-
of eternity. It is the confused teeming fullness and richness of ship of authority, and Hugo's hatred of authority. It is extreme
life - Fulle des Lebens - inexhaustible multiplicity, turbulence, nature mysticism, and extreme anti-naturalist aestheticism. It
violence, conflict, chaos, but also it is peace, oneness with the great is energy, force, will, life, etalage du moi;2 it is also self-torture,
'I Am', harmony with the natural order, the music of the spheres, self-annihilation, suicide. It is the primitive, the unsophisticated,
dissolution in the eternal all-containing spirit. It is the strange, the bosom of nature, green fields, cow-bells, murmuring brooks,
the exotic, the grotesque, the mysterious, the supernatural, ruins, the infinite blue sky. No less, however, it is also dandyism, the
moonlight, enchanted castles, hunting horns, elves, giants, grif- desire to dress up, red waistcoats, green wigs, blue hair, which
fins, falling water, the old mill on the Floss, darkness and the the followers of people like Gerard de Nerval wore in Paris at
powers of darkness, phantoms, vampires, nameless terror, the a certain period. It is the lobster which Nerval led about on a
irrational, the unutterable. Also it is the familiar, the sense of one's string in the streets of Paris. It is wild exhibitionism, eccentricity,
unique tradition, joy in the smiling aspect of everyday nature, it is the battle of Ernani, it is ennui, it is taedium vitae,3 it is the
and the accustomed sights and sounds of contented, simple, rural death of Sardanopolis, whether painted by Delacroix, or written
folk - the sane and happy wisdom of rosy-cheeked sons of the about by Berlioz or Byron. It is the convulsion of great empires,
soil. It is the ancient, the historic, it is Gothic cathedrals, mists of wars, slaughter and the crashing of worlds. It is the Romantic
antiquity, ancient roots and the old order with its unanalysable hero - the rebel, l'homme fatal, 4 the damned soul, the Corsairs,
qualities, its profound but inexpressible loyalties, the impalpable, Manfreds, Giaours, Laras, Cains, all the population of Byron's
the imponderable. Also it is the pursuit of novelty, revolutionary heroic poems. It is Melmoth, it is Jean Sbogar, all the outcasts
change, concern with the fleeting present, desire to live in the and Ishmaels as well as the golden-hearted courtesans and the
moment, rejection of knowledge, past' and future, the pastoral
idyll of happy innocence, joy in the passing instant, a sense of 1
'The land and the dead'. 2
'Displayof myself'.
timelessness. It is nostalgia, it is reverie, it is intoxicating dreams, 3
'Weariness oflife'. 4
'1he deadly man'.
22 • TheRoots ofRomanticism In Searchof a Definition • 23

social salvation. It is strength and weakness, individualism and

collectivism, purity and corruption, revolution and reaction,
peace and war, love of life and love of death.
It is perhaps not very surprising that, faced with this, A. 0.
Lovejoy, who is certainly the most scrupulous and one of the
most illuminating scholars who ever dealt with the history of the
ideas of the last two centuries, approached a condition nearing
despair. He unravelled as many strands of Romantic thought as
he was able to, and not only found that some of them contradict
the others, which is patently true, and that some are totally irrele-
vant to the others, but he went further. He took two specimens
of what nobody would deny to be Romanticism, for example,
primitivism and eccentricity - dandyism - and asked what they
had in common. Primitivism, which began in English verse and
to some extent in English prose at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, celebrates the noble savage, the simple life, the irregular
patterns of spontaneous action, as against the conupt sophistica-
tion and Alexandrine verse of a highly sophisticated society. It
is an attempt to demonstrate that there is a natural law which
• can be discovered best in the untutored heart of the uncorrupted
native, or the uncorrupted child. What, asks Lovejoy quite
HectorBerlioz by Emile Signal
intelligibly, has this in common with red waistcoats, blue hair,
green wigs, absinthe, death, suicide and the general eccentricity
noble-hearted convicts of nineteenth-century fiction. It is drink- of the followers of Nerval and Gautier? He concludes by saying
ing out of the human skull, it is Berlioz who said he wanted to that he really does not see what there is in common, and one
climb Vesuvius in order to commune with a kindred soul. It is can sympathise with him. One might say, perhaps, that there
Satanic revels, cynical irony, diabolical laughter, black heroes, is an air of revolt in both, that both have revolted against some
but also Blake's vision of God and his angels, the great Christian kind of civilisation, one in order to go to some Robinson Crusoe
society, the eternal order, and 'the starry heavens' which can island, there to commune with nature and live among un-
scarce 'express the infinite thoughts and emotions that fill the corrupted simple people, and the other in pursuit of some kind
soul of a Christian'. It is, in short, unity and multiplicity. It is of violent aestheticism and dandyism. But mere revolt, mere
fidelity to the particular, in the paintings of nature for example, denunciation of conuption cannot be Romantic. We do not
and also mysterious tantalising vagueness of outline. lt 1 is beauty regard the Hebrew prophets or Savonarola or even Methodist
and ugliness. It is art for art's sake, and art as an instrument of preachers as particularly Romantic. 1his is too wide of the mark.
24 • TheRoots ofRomanticism In Searchofa Definition • 25

One does therefore have a certain sympathy with Lovejoy's people who, faced with this plethora of evidence which I have
despair. attempted to collect, may feel some sympathy for the late Sir
Let me quote a passage which Lovejoy's disciple George Boas Arthur Quiller-Couch, who said with typical British breeziness,
wrote apropos of this: 'The whole pother about [the difference between classicism and
Romanticism] amounts to nothing that need trouble a healthy
[A]fi:erthe discrimination of the Romanticisms made by Lovejoy,
man.'
there ought to be no further discussion of what Romanticism
I cannot deny that I do not share this point of view. It appears
really was. There happen to have been a variety of aesthetic doc-
to me to be excessively defeatist. Therefore I shall do my best to
trines, some of which were logically related to others and some of
explain what in my view the Romantic movement fundamentally
which were not, all called by the same name. But that fact does
came to. The only sane and sensible way of approaching it, at least
not imply they all had a common essence, any more than the fact
the only way that I have ever found to be at all helpful, is by slow
that hundreds of people are called John Smith means that they
and patient historical method; by looking at the beginning of the
are all of the same parentage. This is perhaps the most common
eighteenth century and considering what the situation was then,
and misleading error arising from the confusion of ideas and
and then considering what the factors were which undermined
words. One could speak for hours about it alone and perhaps
it, one by one, and what the particular combination or conflu-
should.
ence of factors was which, by the later part of the century, caused
I should like to relieve your fears immediately by saying that what appears to me to be the greatest transformation ofW estern
I do not propose to do this. But at the same time I think that consciousness, certainly in our time.
both Lovejoy and Boas, eminent scholars though they are, and
great though their contribution has been towards illumination
of thought, are in this instance mistaken. There was a Romantic
movement; it did have something which was central to it; it did
create a great revolution in consciousness; and it is important to
discover what this is.
One can of course give up the whole game. One can say,
like Valery, that words like Romanticism and classicism, words
like humanism and naturalism, are not names with which one
can operate at all. 'One cannot get drunk, one cannot quench
one's thirst, with labels on bottles.' There is much to be said
for this point of view. At the same time, unless we do use some
generalisations it is impossible to trace the course of human
history. Therefore, difficult as it may be, it is important to find
out what it was that caused this enormous revolution in human
I

consciousness which occurred in those centuries. There are

IS4 • TheRoots ofRomanticism Referencesto LectureI • IS5

Wokler (some of whom are no longer with us); and others Page Reference
to whom I apologise for not keeping a better record of their
assistance.
Lecture 1

CONVENTIONS Northrop Frye points out

Northrop Frye, 'The Drunken Boat: The Revolutionary
References to multi-volume works are given in the form 'iv 56', Element in Romanticism', in Northrop Frye (ed.),
i.e. volume 4, page 56. Where line numbers are printed, these are Romanticism Reconsidered: Selected Papers from the
given after the page number in the form 'iv 56. 7',i.e. volume 4 , English Institute (New York and London, 1963), 1-2.5
page 56, line 7. at 1.

4 'When Israel went out of Egypt'

Psalm 114:1, 3-4, 7.

'Jovis omnia plena'

Virgil, Eclogue 3. 60; c£ Aratus, Phainomena 2.-4.

6 The baron Seilliere

Ernest Seilliere, Les Origines romanesques de la morale et
de la politique romantiques (Paris, 192.0), esp. section 2.
• of the introduction (49 ff.),and chapter 1.

7 plaisir de vivre
[F. P. G.] Guizot, Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de
mon temps, vol. 1 (Paris, 1858), 6: 'M. Talleyrand me
a
disait un jour: Qui n' pas vecu dans les annees voisines
de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c'est que le plaisir de vivre.'

12. 'a fiery mass of Life'

Carlyle,'The Hero asProphet': Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes,
Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, ed. Michael K.
Goldberg and others (Berkeley etc., 1993), 40.

a 'withered,[ ... ] second-hand century'

Carlyle, 'The Hero as Man of Letters': ibid. 161.
It6 • Ihe Roots of Romanticism References to Lecture I • I t7

13 'Dante's sublime Catholicism' Georg Lukacs says

Carlyle, 'The Hero as Priest': ibid. 102.. Georg Lukacs, The Historical Novel (1937), trans.
Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (London, 1962.), esp.
IS 'good with good'
chapter I, section 3 (63-88), 'The Classical Historical
See Hegel's Vorfesungen uber die Aesthetik, in Georg
Novel in Struggle with Romanticism'.
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Samtfiche Werke, ed. Hermann
Glockner (Stuttgart, 192.7-51), vols xii-xiv passim, e.g. 2.I 'la terre et les morts'
xii 2.98, xiv 52.9, 554; G. W. F. Hegel,Aesthetics: Lectures This is a recurrent nationalist leitmotiv used by Barres
on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1975), 2.2.0, (and by later writers following his lead). A prominent
n96, 12.16; not an exact quotation. occurrence is in the title of a lecture written for (but
not delivered to) La Patrie Fran'raise: Maurice Barres,
'No, imbeciles!'
La Terre et Les morts (sur queffes reafites fonder fa
Preface to Theophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin
conscienceftanraise) ([Ligue de] La Patrie Fran~aise,
(1835): p. 19 in the edition published in Paris in 1880.
Troisieme Conference) (Paris, [1899]). The Ligue de la
16 'emotion recollected in tranquillity' Patrie Franpise was a short-lived extra-parliamentary
William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, 2nd. ed. conservative association set up in December 1898, in the
(London, 1800 ), preface, xxxiii. wake of the Dreyfus affair, as a rival to the 'unpatriotic'
dreyfusard Ligue des Droits de l'Homme.
Stendhal says
Stendhal, Racine et Shakespeare (Paris, 182.3), beginning the dead and the living and the yet unborn
of chapter 3. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790): The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke,
18 'Le romantisme c'est la Revolution'
ed. Paul Langford (Oxford, 1981- ), vol. 8, The French
Cited by e.g. Louis Dumur, 'Les Detracteurs de Jean-
Revolution, ed. L. G. Mitchell (1989), 147. Burke here
Jacques', Mercure de France 67 (May-June 1907),
describes society as 'a partnership not only between
577-600 at 583.
those who are living, but between those who are living,
'I speak everlastingly of myself' those who are dead, and those who are to be born'.
Fran'rois-Auguste Chateaubriand, Itineraire de Paris a
2.2. 'the starry heavens'
Jerusalem, preface to the first edition: i 71. 2.5in the edi-
J. L. Spalding, 'Religion and Art', in his Essays and
tion by Emile Malakis (Baltimore and London, 1946).
Reviews (New York, 1877), 32.8.
Joseph Aynard says
A. 0. Lovejoy
Joseph Aynard, 'Comment definir le romantisme?',
Arthur 0. Lovejoy, 'The Meaning of Romanticism for
Revue de fitterature comparee 5 (192.5), 641-58.
the Historian ofldeas',Journaf of the History of Ideas 2.
(1941), 2.57-78.
1KC • 1he Rootso/Romanticism Referencesto Lecture 2 • 189

24 '[A]fter the discrimination' Winckelmanns Sdmtliche Werke, ed. Joseph Eiselein

George Boas, 'Some Problems of Intellectual History', (Donaueschingen, 1825-9 ), i 30.
in Johns Hopkins History ofldeas Club (G [eorge] Boas
35 'philosophy teaching by examples'
and others), Studies in Intellectual History ([Baltimore],
[Henry St John, Viscount] Bolingbroke, Letters on the
1953), 3-21 at 5.
Study and Use of History (1779), letter 2: 1he Works of
'One cannot get drunk' Lord Bolingbroke (London, 1844), ii 177. Bolingbroke
Paul Valery, Cahiers, ed. Judith Robinson (Paris, says that he thinks he read the remark in Dionysius of
1973-4), ii 1220-1 (from a notebook dated 1931-2). Halicarnassus, and he is right (see Ars rhetorica 11. 2),
except that the Ars rhetorica is no longer attributed to
25 'The whole pother'
Dionysius. Pseudo-Dionysius attributes his version -
Arthur Quiller-Couch, 'On the Terms Classical
'History is philosophy from examples' - to Thucydides,
and Romantic', Studies in Literature [first series]
but it is in fact a creative paraphrase of what Thucydides
(Cambridge, 1918), 94.
says at 1. 22. 3.

37 when Montezuma said to Cortes

LECTURE 2 Montesquieu,De !'espritdes Lois(1758), book 24, chapter
24.
32 'A work of morality'
45 'Whoso wishes to grasp God'
IJ [Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle], 'Preface sur l'utilite M Aug. Gottlieb Spangenbergs Apologetische Schluj-
des mathematiques et de la physique' (1699), in CEuvres Schrift [... ] (Leipzig and Gorlitz, 1752 [photographi-
de Fontenelle (Paris, 1790-2), vi 67. cally reprinted as Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf,
Erg,:inzungsbdnde zu den Hauptschriften, ed. Erich
'nature reduced to method'
Beyreuther and Gerhard Meyer (Hildesheim etc.,
Rene Rapin, Les Reflexions sur la poetique de ce temps et
1964-85), vol. 3]), 181.
sur !es ouvragesdes poetes anciens et modernes (1674-5),
ed. E.T. Dubois (Geneva, 1970), preface, 9. reason is a whore
See Dr Martin Luther's sdmmtliche Werke, ed. Joh.
'Those RULES of old'
Georg Plochmann and Johann Konrad Irmischer
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), lines
(Erlangen etc., 1826-57), xvi 142,144, xxix 241.
88-9.
51 Mendelssohn treats beauty
34 'noble simplicity' and 'calm grandeur'
Goethe, letter of 14 July 1770 to Hetzler the younger:
'edle Einfalt', 'stille Groge': Winckelmann, Gedanken
Goethes Werke (Weimar, 1887-1919, 1990), part 4
uber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in
( GoethesBriefe), i 238. 19 ff.
der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755): Johann