Defiant

If I were to give a short list of recommended reading on the topic of the Romantic, then it would be in no particular order: The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand, Classic, Romantic, and Modern by Jacques Barzun, and Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet.

One common thread that runs through all three books is the hostility displayed by the Twentieth Century academics, artists, and intellectuals towards the Nineteenth Century. Both Barzun and Sweet use the analogy of a child’s hostility towards their parents and both point the book Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey as the first volley as he and his fellow members of the Bloomsbury Group set the tone for the coming century by devaluing the last.

Have you ever arrived late to a party and everyone there is well into the party mood and all the frivolity seems foolish to you until you get to that mental state as well? Romanticism is like that. If you do not believe in it, then it all seems foolish to you. Herein lies a key division between the Romantic 19^th Century and the so-called Modern 20^th Century.

The so-called Moderns cannot comprehend the attitudes and accomplishments of the Romantic so they want to expose the truth of them, tear them down, ridicule them, and then elevate themselves in the process. Here’s an example.

According to Bloomsbury Group member Virginia Woolf, the modern world began in the spring of 1908 when Lytton Strachey noticed a stain on Vanesa Stephen’s dress and inquired, “Semen?”. With the publication and popularity of Sigmund Freud’s theories, which revolved around sex, we see the beginnings of what Barzun recognises (in 1941!) as our zeitgeist’s obsession with sex as a symptom of our rampant self-conscious egotism. It was Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who created modern advertising, and we all know that sex sells.

To a person who is obsessed with sex anyone who is not must seem sexually repressed, and that is exactly how the Bloomsbury Group and countless writers, academics, and even historians and filmmakers have painted the Romantic Victorians.

The Romantics had lots of sex alright, but it was not an obsession for them. It was the Moderns who coined the phrase “sex life”, whereas the Romantics did not feel the need the set one aspect of life apart and distinct from the rest of life. As Barzun puts it, food is an important part of life too, but we don’t go around asking people how their food life is going or criticise Charles Dickens because his novels are not food-filled.

We see this pattern across the board in the criticisms and faulty perceptions of the Romantics coming from the Moderns. The Romantics respected property rights, so they are materialistic and did not care about the poor. Whereas, we Moderns have created government social programs. Gee, aren’t we superior. Well, no. When the welfare state came into full force in Britain in the late 1940’s only 4% of the population required benefits. Today, it is nearly a quarter of the population.

Both Barzun and Rand see the central pillar of the Romantic to be individualism and both emphasize the role played by the faculties of volition and energy. They also agree that the man of will and energy is to be praised, but if those faculties are used to oppress the individualism of others then it is to be condemned. Barzun calls this “false romanticism” and cites Napoleon and Hitler as examples.

The Moderns on the other hand are driven by their ego. Where the Romantic promotes self-awareness and self-improvement derived from a desire to be a better person, the Modern is self-obsessed and self-conscious and seeks self-help driven by self-loathing. The ego is constantly looking for social validation. It’s hyper-sensitive to what others are doing so they can fit in or rebel and what others are thinking about them.

The Romantic accepts that greatness and failure go hand in hand and like other apparent opposites he seeks equilibrium. In politics, this is the balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of society. The Moderns on the other hand demand consistency.

Last week a random on Facebook left a comment condemning Thomas Jefferson and it seemed this is because he was a rapist. I assume her logic was that he had children by his slave Sally Hemings and as a slave she could not refuse his sexual advances and therefore he was a rapist and we should discount anything he wrote because as a rapist he is obviously an evil man.

This typifies the Modern perspective. We must tear down the great. We must find that fissure in the rock and explode it. Like Strachey had done, we must find any flaw, any inconsistency, any action that does not fit our moral precepts, find the true story, and expose the fraud. We must destroy the fallacy that men can be great.

As you judge so shall ye be judged. The Romantic extolled the men of will and energy so their heroes were inventors, industrialists, politicians, scientist, and of course traditional heroes of fiction. They accepted the equilibrium of greatness and weakness. They accepted the whole of man and judged him on balance.

The Modern ego cannot tolerate this. The result of the destruction of man is desolation. There is no enlightenment, no deeper meaning, and no self-righteous justification. All that remains is the fear and self-loathing that has become more and more rampant as this age has progressed. Our epitaph may read “Man stopped believing in Man”.

Ayn Rand noted in The Romantic Manifesto that the character of James Bond in the novels is a Romantic hero, but the Moderns do not believe in heroes. They are a joke. As a result the films became increasingly disconnected from Romantic Realism and devolved in camp silliness. Likewise, compare the Romantic Batman trilogy of Christopher Nolan to the camp versions of Joel Schumacher.

That said, pop culture is in many ways the last refuge of the Romantic. The academic and intellectual elite, be they actually so or simply in their own minds, still denounce the Romantic. Just look at how the art community in Britain attacked the Romantic paintings of Jack Vettriano which the consumers adored, meanwhile the annual Turner Prize for art went to Tracy Emin and her filthy bed complete with skid-marked underpants.

Matthew Sweet points out that where modern interior design is constantly looking for the new and innovative the mass market still prefers pseudo, neo-Victorian “chintz”. In this particular chapter of Inventing the Victorians, he takes yet another shot at Virginia Woolf demonstrating how her concept of Victorian décor, which she spread through her writings, was completely false and founded on nothing more than her personal speculations filtered through her prejudices. Nonetheless, it created the false modern preconceived notion of drab and dreary Victorian décor.

In politics, those who promote the Romantic values of self-determination, personal responsibility, and accountability are branded as cold, heartless, and ignorant by the intellectual “elite” of the left who are promoting programs for the poor that will ensure greater power to themselves and promote dependency. One accusation is that the promoters of individualism want to return us to the dark days of Victoriana. Again painting the Romantics in a negative light when the economic report cards show the Victorians as getting high marks in most departments and we are failing.

Because the Romantics are not sexually obsessed like the Moderns, they are accused of being sexually repressed. Because they are not cynics, they are accused of being fanciful idealists. Because they promote individual action and responsibility, they are accused of being anti-society. These are but a few of the constant assaults on Romanticism.

I believe that Romanticism is man’s natural state, but I, and you my dear reader, have been socially conditioned for this Modern society. The sins of our fathers that we bear come not from the Nineteenth Century, but from the self-doubts, fears, cynicism, and egoic motivations of the Twentieth Century. I see it as a virus I have contracted that is eating my Romantic soul. I too find myself lacking the will and energy that defines Romanticism and I still carrying the burdens of my personal perceived failures that manifest as a self-defeating attitude.

But I stand defiant. When I self-examine I see the Romantic qualities that I promote and I see the Modern qualities that I denounce. For those who, like me, believe in the Romantic it becomes a constant war with both our inner programming and our outer programmers to maintain our faith. It is a faith in the self and by extension humanity despite the seemingly contrary evidence promoted that we are all just petty and vile creatures.

According to all three authors, Barzun, Rand, and Sweet, the Romantic Era ended with World War I. I do not see it that way. The Great War was a blow, to be sure, but the final battle was the advent of the Great Depression in 1929. But that was not the end. Romanticism persists and we see examples of it throughout the Twentieth Century, mostly in popular culture.

The fifth branch of philosophy is Aesthetics and it acts as a summary and manifestation of the other four branches. We can say in art what it takes chapters to say in prose and we imbibe those ideas with greater emotion than they possess on their own.

Much of what is written by me and from the authors mentioned here can be seen in the art still existent. One such example is the song and lyrics below which serves to summarise and fully express this aspect of the Romantic.