Romanticism General Feats

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Romanticism

Author(s): Edwin Berry BurgumSource: The Kenyon Review, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Autumn, 1941), pp. 479-490Published by: Kenyon CollegeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4332291 .

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ROMANTICISMBy EDWIN BERRYBURGUMHEwho seeks to defineRomanticisms enteringa hazardous

occupationwhich has claimed many victims. It would befoolhardy to desire to multiply the difficulties. I wish to state atthe outset, therefore, that I am not concernedwith that Romanti-cism which is taken for the eternal opposite to the principle ofClassicism. The thesis that literary expressionoscillates betweenthe two contradictory imits of Romanticism and Classicism, inmuch the same way as the human society or the conduct of theindividualmay be presumed to oscillate between the two oppositepoles of Good and Evil, is an intriguing point of view that willhave to be left to another occasion. For the present, I am con-tent with the more limited problemof defining the Romanticismof what is generally called the Romantic Period in EuropeanLit-erature,that centurywhich maybe roughlydescribed as stretchingfor fifty yearson either side of the year 1800.Certainly a comprehensive definition of this Romanticism,with some sharpnessto it, is desirable. For in the past our com-prehensive definitions have not been sharp, and our sharp oneshave been provincial. The general definition generally agreedupon is that Romanticismcomprisesthe myriad escapesfrom Neo-classicism.Unless Romantic literature s much less significant thanhas been habitually assumed,such a negative statementonly con-ceals the bankruptcyof the effort. The sharp definitions, on theother hand, by appearing to contradict one another, prove theirinadequacy. Brunetiere, for instance, called Romanticism thediscoveryof the ego. Others have said that it was the discovery


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480 KENYON EVIEWof nature; still others, the return to medievalism. Watts-Duntonbelieved it the rediscovery of wonder, and an American clergy-man-criticof the transcendentalperiod praised it as the literatureof aspiration. More recently,Professor Babbitthas been disgustedby its approvalof the irrational; Mario Praz accuses it of havingbeen the hot-bed of decadence; whereas critics of sociologicalinterest deplore its stimulus to escape from reality. We need notbecome alarmed if differences in critical standards lurk amongthese variations of descriptive effort. The descriptions are allcorrect when applied to individual authors. Byron and Hugo areclearly egoistic. Chateaubriandand Wordsworth are absorbedbydescriptionof the scenery. Scott in England and Tieck in Ger-many represent a medieval revival. But there is aspiration, thehope for a betterworld, in Shelley and in Hugo also, while in thelaterworkof Chateaubriand nd Shelley many persons have foundan escape from reality into a world beyond our time and space.

When certain tendencies are recognized, however, this appar-ent disordercan be reduced. If medievalism be extended to in-clude the earlierperiod of the dark ages, to include the non-clas-sical past generally, and indeed the orient and the classical pastitself interpretednon-classically, hen "medievalism"becomestheearliest tendency,which survivedchiefly in Germany,to a certainextent in England, and, except for the romancesof Dumas, hardlyat all in France. Furthermore,t is important to note that, of allthe manifestations of Romanticism,this was the most nebulousin content and the most remote from practicalconcerns. It as-sumed that the values of heroism, adventure,freedomof the idealin a word, existed in almost any type of society that was not inthe traditionof classicism,that was neither one's own societynorthat of the immediately precedingneo-classicalperiod.As for the second tendency,which would make Romanticismstress individualism,the expansion of the ego, though it was gen-erally characteristicn a varietyof relationshipsto what we havecalled the early "medievalism,"continentalwriters, like Brandes,


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482 KENYON EVEWnated in three differentcountries:medievalismin Germany,indi-vidualismin France,and naturism n England. In taking the nextstep, to bringthe three togetherinto one, we must pay our respectto another generally acceptedstatement about Romanticism.Weare willing to agree with Professor Babbitt's assertion that theimmediate ideological stimulus to internationalRomanticismwasthe writing of Rousseau. During the French Revolution, Rous-seau's ideas were convenientlycompressed nto the symbolicformof the well-known slogan: liberte, e'galite, raternite. These threeterms obviouslydo not correspondto the three we have previous-ly used. They isolate one aspectof Romanticism, he political; butit was the most importantaspectin contemporaryopinion, and weshould expect it to furnish the clue to our definition.The implications of the phrase, liberty, fraternity, equality,appear, it must be recognized, in uncrystallizedform throughoutearly Romantic literature.The phrase itself, in fact, is merely thesharp antithesis to neo-classicalprinciples: liberty is the oppositeto the classicalsubmissionof the individualto the eternal orderofthe universe; equality, a denial of the aristocratichierarchyofsocial classes and abstractvalues; and fraternity, a rejection offeudal disdain for democracyand the common man. The earlyrobber literature, though deficient as successful aesthetic expres-sion, has immense historical importancesince, by inference andnegatively, it anticipatesthe conscious and positive statementofaims in the lay trinityof the FrenchRevolution. If the attainmentof the slogan represents a revolt against Neo-classicism, it at-tempts, on the positive side, to define a democracyto take itsplace. But the aspect of revolt, despite the positive nature of theslogan, remained in one form or another the more immediatelyattractive.It remainedeasier to definemen's objectionsto the pastthan their hopes for the future.

We are ready, then, to accept the historic fact of the FrenchRevolution in the way in which it has usually been accepted, asextremely important for our definition. But this fact, again, is


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ROMANTICISM 483useful to the literary historian only in a negative way. It canhardly explain why, for instance, if the English reject the slogan,they promote instead the naturism of Wordsworth. To reach thispositive explanation, we must go behind the French Revolutionitself, and investigate the socio-economicchanges of which it wasonly the most startling and belated expression. Only then doesit become clear why the trinityof liberty,equality, fraternity, ntowhich the general Europeanspirit of revolt crystallized,was pre-mature for Germany, essential for France, and dangerous forEngland; and was thereforeneglected and discarded n Germany,extolled in France, and both opposed and discardedin England.The literary distinctions we have been making correspond tonational distinctionsin historicaldevelopment.They relate to theprogress of commercialexpansion with the aid of the industrialrevolution,and to the socio-politicaldominanceof the middle classthat accompanied t. We shall define Romanticismas the culturalmanifestation of these material changes. The fact that there wasno industrialrevolution in Germanybut a persistenceof feudalismuntil the unification late in the 19th Centuryexplains both theunrealisticexcess of revolt in early German Romantic literature,like Schiller's Robbers,and its later dissipation into the vaguefantasticworld of a vanishedmedievalism.Butmoreimportantforour immediate purpose is the fact that the industrial revolutioncame first to England and proceededthere with such a minimumof shock that the word "revolution"seems quite out of place.In fact we must go back still further, and recognize that theimportantrevolution in England, the "great revolution of 1688,"came after the civil wars of the mid-17thCentury;and that it, too,was accomplishedwith a minimum of bloodshed and disorder.The prevailingpsychologicaltone of English literatureand of theEnglish personality since the days of Elizabeth reflect a stabili-zation of the more robust impetuosityof the Renaissanceunderthe smooth and rapid evolution of her commercial ascendancy.Her form of government was then determined (once and for all,


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484 KENYON EVIEWBurke would have said) by the Bill of Rights and the establish-ment of a two-party system with a constitutionalmonarch.Striv-ings towards a bourgeois republic or dictatorship (or what youwill) under Cromwell were found unnecessary. The mercantileclass, which already controlledthe high seas, found it was simplerto buy off the aristocracy: o content it with the pretense of po-litical authorityand with actual authorityonly in cultural affairs.The hollow ring of Neo-classicism in England, its almost per-verse obsession with satirizing itself, with making a comedy ofits supposed ideals in The Rape of the Lock, its inability to getbeyond the negativism of what it so shrewdly called the mock-epic, contrast with the positive and monotonousseriousnessof thereally feudal French society of the time, and prove that the ap-parentlydominant culture is in Englandin processof losing touchwith reality. The English aristocracyhad retained the glory butnot the power. With the industrial revolution a little later itwas to lose the glory,also, and the history of this loss is the riseof Romanticism. Liberty,under the guise of religious freedom,had been the watchword of the Puritansand the Civil War. Nolonger needed after the Bill of Rights, it gives way to the super-ficial tolerance of latitudinarianism;but it revives with the in-dustrial revolution. Dominantly it revives in the direct form ofpolitical liberty and reaches its highest expression in the workof Edmund Burke. But it has not been explicitly enough empha-sized that the doctrineof competition and the free market whichAdam Smith universalized into an economic system to take theplace of the earlier mercantilism s only the economicexpressionof the concept. If the middle class is now frankly emphasizingpolitical and economic liberty, the earlier notion of religious lib-ertyhad already reappeared,chiefly among the lower classes now,as Methodism. When the French Revolution broke, however,the now openly dominant English middle class, suddenly facedwith a foreign hazard, unconsciously reacted to the emergingnative hazard also. They embracedMethodism, and, under the


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ROMANTICISM 485broadername of evangelicalism,ransformedt from a spontan-eous populardesirefor self-improvementnto a sanctificationfsacrifice ndhard abor. The transformationf pre-Romanticisminto the full-blownRomanticmovement of Wordsworth andShelleyis the consequence f these reactionsn moremundanespheres. Romanticism, hichhad previously een a confusionofanti-classicalendencies,now becomesa movement or the stab-ilizationof Englishsocietyalonglinesthathavealreadybeenset.Oncemore it must be noted that the English pre-Romanticliterature, hough nfluenced y the internationalmovement,hadalwaysrecoiled rom the radicalismf its continental xpression.Therehad neverbeen,sincethe medievalRobinHood ballads,any Englishliterature ympatheticowardrobbersand outcasts.The long picaresqueradition,unlikeits continental ounterpart,had neversidedwith the rascal,butin the novelsof BunyanandDefoe, for instance,hadshown hat his was the roadto ruin, hathappiness amefromconformity o social laws and a properre-spect for the right use of money. If storiesof Newgate toldwhathappened o thenative thief, Gothicromancen the novelsof Mrs. Radcliffepresentedhis continental ousinas a foreignmenacesupported y the CatholicChurchand the Italiannobil-ity. The mostradicalof the earlyEnglishRomanticswas not anEnglishmant all, buta Scot. Burns ervidly, mpishly,defiantlysympathized ith the rascalaboutto be hanged,with the under-privileged,with the manwho is at odds with society. His doc-trinethat a man'sa manfor all that, that all men arebrothersunder heskinandpovertynocrime, rystallizedcotch eaction othegrowing nsignificancef Edinburghn politicsandcommerceafter the union of 1707. In Englandhis closestcounterpart asa Christian antheistby the name of Blakewhose poemsof fra-ternityandequality ayunprinted ntilthe Victorian eriod. Pre-Romanticism,t is true,bringsa changeof literary heme. Thecommonman becomes he objectof attention. But, savein onescene,Thomsonfindsno reasonfor pityingthe farmerand he


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486 KENYON EVIEWcertainly does not inflate him into heroic proportions;he is con-tent to describewith quiet reservethe satisfactionsof country ife.There is no more bitterness of revolt in The Seasons than inWhittier's Snowbound. When the common man becomes theobject of sympathy, as in Gray's Elegy, the poet to our surprisestates with prophetic melancholy that the poor man's rights andhopes are doomed to disappointment. English Pre-Romanticpoetry is gloomy with premonition of impending change in aworld of unexpected hazards.

Strangelyenough, it might seem, the optimisticview is largelya phenomenon of the literatureafter the FrenchRevolution. WhenEnglishmen grew really frightened, their literature eaped to pro-vide a more therapeutic tone. It now ignores the more specifictopics of its melancholyconcern. It lifts its eyes from the miser-ies of the poor. It abandons its growing consciousness of classdistinctions, and sees a general improvementin store for every-body. It takesa cosmic view of progress, starting,let us say, withErasmus Darwin and culminatingwithin our period in the proseof Godwin and the early poetry of Shelley. But progress, how-ever cosmic, looked too much like revolt. It dropped out of thepicturewith the reputationof Godwin, only to ariseonce more inthe less excitablemetaphorsof the Victorianperiod. Contempla-tion of nature proved less vertiginous,and Shelley, who could notachieve the requisitecalm, could at least, in Arnold's phrase, turnto chasing rainbows. The industrialclass, shudderingat the men-tion of the FrenchRevolution, disliked even the verbalization ofthe progresstheirown machineswere making, and wished only tobe left in peace to run them.The situation in England, then, was the opposite to that inFrance. And the differencebetween the two literatures lows fromthis fact, the difference between a literature of nature and onecelebrating liberty, fraternity,equality. The political revolutionthat swept away the feudalism of the Frenchmonarchywas a be-lated result of the same pressureswhich had extorted the Bill of


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ROMANTICISM 487Rights from the monarch a century before in England. But thetiming makes an enormous difference in these matters; it is al-ways new water that passes under the old bridge of general state-ment. In a France which must overtake an alreadyindustrializedEngland, not only was the change more abrupt,but it could nottake place without the active cooperationof the lower classes andwithout their consciously expecting to share its benefits. Hence amore inclusive watchword than the libertyof free worship of theEnglish Civil Wars was necessary. In liberty, fraternity, equalitywas symbolized the fact that the proletariat felt itself on a parwith the bourgeoisie in the establishmentof parliamentary ormsand national prosperity; and the bourgeoisie, by accepting thisbattle-cry,revealed its need for the voluntary support of themasses. The English mercantileclass a century earlier could com-promise with its feudal enemy on non-essential issues. But thestarved French bourgeoisie was forced to compromise with itsproletarian ally on the essential. If the Terror was a reflectionof the tendencyof the Revolution to go beyond bourgeois needsand transfer power to even poorer classes, the reaction to it putthe new commercial element firmlyin control. The rise of Na-poleon was not so much the evidence of a bourgeois excess in thedirectionof despotismas it was a countenancingof the dissipationof the energy of the masses even at the priceof economic advance.This stage is analogous in opposite fashion to the English com-promise of the Restoration. The English had fooled the aristoc-racy by leaving them cultural prestige but only the shadow ofactual power. The French now proceeded to distract the massesand the masses proceeded to deceive themselves through theprestige of Napoleon. The little corporalwho became an emper-or not only killed off in his wars the necessary number of thosewho were clamoring for fraternity and equality; he sought toestablisha new interpretationof the whole trinity. Fraternityandequalitynow expressedthemselvesthrough co6perativesubmissionto the libertyof the great man who has once been small; the only


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488 KENYON EVIEWliberty the soldier asks is to obey his command heroically. ButNapoleon's slogans failed with his practicalfailure, and shatteredthe trinityinto the countlessgleaming fragmentsof individualism,as Brunetierehas said. The memory of Napoleon sets up extremevariations of aggressive competitive egoism which quite swallow(in the love life, for example, if not in the novels of GeorgeSand) the older celebration of fraternity and equality. But anhistoric fact can never be completely erased, so long as the socialcompulsionswhich engenderedit persist. Buildings continuedtobear the once magnetic words of revolutionarydays. The needsof the proletariatcould not be entirelyneglected, and the sloganof cooperationremained to clarify more widely among the Frenchthan in any other country the existence of competition among theclasses.The unconscious aim of English Romanticism, on the otherhand, had been a guarantee that this demoralizing slogan nevergot into Englishcirculation. It had not been needed at the earlierperiod when the English middle classes established themselveswithout any conspicuousneed for the avowed co6perationof thelower classes, which still obeyed their betterswithout much ques-tion. Therefore, the dominant class saw no reason now to importfrom abroad an embarrassment o its power. It remainedquitesatisfied with the statement of Burke. Hence the somersaultsofthe Romantics from their earlierhopeful reflection of the FrenchRevolution into whatevervarietyof contradictorydoctrineseemed,by guaranteeingtheir individualism,still to guaranteetheir indi-vidual integrity. The later Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, Cole-ridge, howeverdifferent,are all alike in their silence on the themesof fraternityand equality and in their eloquence in inflating lib-ertyinto a harmlessimpracticalambiguity. Only Byronremainedconscious of the dilemma,which tormented him in "The Isles ofGreece," where he had fled the moral censureof his countrymen.In Wordsworth, the most candid of the lot, the word is virtuallydiscarded. Peasants,like nuns, fret not within their freeholds, or


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ROMANTICISM 489so he said; and set a good example to the disgruntled towns-people.

At the same time, one should not picturethe middle classes ofthe period in colors too similar to the villains of 19th Centurymelodrama. They were industrious men who honestly believedthat the prosperityof the country was knit up with their own.They were the victims of their own ambiguities,and felt, as Car-lyle demanded, that they were clothing the backs of all mankindas well as amassing the fortunes their energies deserved. Theyshared the cheering belief in progress, and if they confused theirown progresswith that of mankind, it was that they assumed asfirmlyas any aristocracy he existence of permanentlimitations tothe legitimate demands of the masses of men. Competition ap-plied to the individual and not to the class, if indeed it was notlimited to individuals within the middle classes, and all working-class resistance to the employer was in their eyes simply wrongand unprogressive. The differing slogans of the Romanticmove-ment, whether in Franceor in England, were thereforecompletelysincere,however practicallymisleading. Sincethey worked withinbourgeois ranks, they were taken for universals. But they wereworking at the same time, though in opposite ways, within theranks of the laboring classes in both countries. The English con-ception of libertyas the orderlylife of the peasant under the oaktree permittedthe ambiguityto becomehopelessly confusing, afterthe defeat of Chartism,under the increased stresses of the Vic-torian period. But the more comprehensive French trinity hadbeen imbeddedin the imaginationof the Frenchworking class: sothat, later on, when the intellectuals decided it was delusive, thelower classes were beginning to define its validity with greaterparticularity. The cynicismof Flaubert, the perversity of Baude-laire, in general the pessimistic strain that dominated the bestFrench literature as the 19th Centurygrew older, represents thebourgeois rejectionof its old slogan; whereas the optimistic con-clusion to Zola's Germinal shows a friend of the working class


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490 KENYON EVIEWaccepting as true the very slogan which the class that originatedit was in process of discardingas error. But in England Tenny-son, who continuesthe English traditionof liberty in nature, andthe Romantic quest for a universal that transcends he limitationsof class, can only flounder in abstractionslike his faint trust inthe larger hope and the higher pantheism. And poetry loses thesharp images, the meaty nut of meaning to crack, that Shakespeareand even Wordsworth in his fashion could once attain.

Naturally in such a sketch I have no time to distinguish in-teresting variationson these themesin individualwriters. Nor canI relate these social influencesto markedchanges in literary tech-niques. But it must be added, as a necessaryaestheticgeneraliza-tion which I have by inference employed, that these social influ-ences have seldom been directlyreflectedin literature. What artdirectlyreflectsis the actual psychologicalorganizationof men asit shows itself in daily life. It reflects economic influencesonlyas these have transformedstyles in ideas and practiceof living.It gives the results, and leaves the causes pretty much to be in-ferred. Hence the economic causes appear in literatureonly asthey have been changed or distortedinto the discrepancy hat hasalways existed between the real motives of men's actions andmen's consciousness of these motives. Romantic literature, inparticular, s interestingbecause antagonismsbetween the middleand lower classes which could not be frankly faced led to suchstartlingperversions n the literaryexpressionof these basiccausesas we have analysed. But I do not know what other means ofdefinition than these basic social causes I have used can bring asimilar consistencyinto the definition of Romantic literature.

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Romanticism General Feats