Romanticism

What do you think about when you hear the word Romanticism? Love maybe? Emotions? Joy and envy? Correct!

Because they're exactly what it's all about. Emotions! We divide our history into periods of time, or eras. We do that in order to sort and understand our own development better. It's almost like chapters in a book.

Romanticism is one of those chapters. The Romantic era spans from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th. But why do we call this era Romanticism? The word Romanticism comes from an old french word, Romanz. It means a tale written in a simple common language.

You see, the Romantics held popular art and literature very highly. They thought of them as being closer to nature and therefore more true. The Romantics also longed for places far away and unknown: exotic. But why was it so important to emphasise human feelings in this era? Because the Romantic era was a kind of protest movement, protesting against the period before it.

The Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment people wanted to explain and understand the world. They used reason, invented and discovered things, and learned how nature works. But after a while it started to get boring to be learned and enlightened, and to always have a rational explanation for everything. There was a longing to let go and to be unreasonable for a while.

To experience, and to feel. Suddenly, imagination and inner experiences were more important, and people didn't have the same need to explain things. Take the attitude towards nature, for example. The people during the Romantic era thought of nature as a mystery, and they had no need to explain or reveal the secrets of nature, in the same way that scientists had during the Enlightenment. Instead they wanted to experience nature and its mysteries.

The Romantics perceived a human as a creative being, and talented artists were considered geniuses. The reverence for geniuses and love of nature, mixed with raging passion were also the foundation of the German Romantic movement “Sturm und Drang”. Storm and stress. Young writers wrote about strong feelings. One of the most important was Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote “The Sorrows of Young Werther”.

Poor Werther really suffers. He falls in love with Lotte, but since she's already engaged, he chooses to end his own life. Poetry became popular, and people both wrote, and read poems during the Romantic period. The poems described how nature was animated, and very much alive. It also became high fashion to write horror stories.

A very famous one of these is the story of Frankenstein's Monster, by Mary Shelley. It's about a scientist, Dr. Frankenstein, who wants to create life, in the form of a human, that he puts together from dead body parts. The human that Dr. Frankenstein creates is large, ugly, and horrific.

People who see him get scared and treat him like a monster. Abandoned, hunted, and perplexed, the monster eventually turns on his creator, seeking revenge against Dr. Frankenstein. Mary Shelley's story is a kind of critique of the ideas of the Enlightenment. The scientist wishes to create a man but this turns into a monster that takes revenge on its maker.

So the idea of man as a machine leads to something harmful. The Romantics were convinced that society would improve if everyone just dared to use their emotions, and act better towards their fellows. Their idea was that society would develop with the healing help of emotional power. What do you think? Do we need more feelings, or more enlightenment and explanations to make our world today develop into a better place?