Discuss the relationship between Romanticism and politics in the early 19th century.
The Europe that emerged after the Napoleonic wars was an unsettled one. The French and Industrial revolutions had caused profound changes in men’s outlook, and had broadened the political horizon. The ancien regime would never again be seen as the only possible form of government. A new economy and society was in the process of being created.
The words that emerged or took on their modern meaning during this period are illustrative of the multiplicity of concepts that were put forward to fill the ideological void – ‘middle class’, socialism’, ‘industry’, ‘liberal’ and so on. This was a period in which many nascent ideologies jostled for space. Although the orchestrators of the ‘Concert of Europe’ strove to re-establish order and stability, a single way of thinking could no longer prevail. A large fund of ideas had been created, to be drawn upon as required – and not only by the rulers of men. This was an age that saw the expansion of political participation, and the emergence of public opinion. The rapid growth of population and spread of industrialisation (albeit unevenly), gave rise to new groups who clamoured to be heard.
The settlements of 1815 were made with a view to preventing a further outbreak of revolution. The aim of the victorious allies was to preserve the political division of Europe into dynastic states. The European map was redrawn, with no concern for the aspirations of the people or the numerous petty princes displaced by Napoleon, but out of a concern with balancing the powers of Russia, Britain, France, Austria and Prussia. The old institutions of monarchy, aristocracy and church were seen as most suitable for the preservation of order. According to Friedrich von Gentz, Metternich’s aide and secretary at the Congress of Vienna,” in an age of decay, the sole function of a statesman is to prop up moldering institutions.” The old methods of control were to be employed – the forces of continuity would attempt to keep the forces of change at bay. A constant struggle between these two, between ‘reaction and revolution’, was to shape Europe over the course of the century.
This period has been baldly characterised as eighteenth versus nineteenth centuries, ancien regime versus industrialism, aristocracy versus middle class, and Enlightenment versus Romanticism. This seems to be a drastic simplification, if not downright misunderstanding of the constantly shifting balance between an order based on dynastic control, landed elitism, and hierarchical society on one hand, and the notion of government and society as interdependent and enmeshed on the other. This was a notion quite incompatible with the old order, and one that David Thomson regards as common to the movements of liberalism, nationalism, democracy and socialism.
The new philosophies of conservatism, while deriving the source of royal, aristocratic and ecclesiastical power variously from God, from nature, and from history, were grounded in a denial of the doctrines that held that sovereign power lay with the people, and that reason alone could build a new society – a repudiation, in other words, of the ideas that inspired the French revolutionaries. The unpopularity of the Napoleonic Empire gave rise to a hatred of all things French, including the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment.
The essence of Romanticism is hard to capture. It is a sweeping but indispensable term dealing with the profound shift in Western attitudes to art and human creativity that took place in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its chief emphasis was on freedom of individual self-expression, with spontaneity and originality replacing the decorous imitation of classical models favoured in the 18th century. As a political influence it was closely bound to the so-called ‘revolutionary’ forces like nationalism (revolutionary in their potential challenge to the old order) as well as conservative ones. In fact, as Arnold Hauser points out, the characteristic feature of the Romantic movement was not that it stood for a revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary, a progressive or a reactionary ideology, but that it reached both positions by a ‘fanciful, irrational and undialectical’ route.
According to George Mosse, the Enlightenment was not sufficiently aware of man’s need for a faith. The Industrial Revolution, which created a radical break with past modes of life, with its attendant urbanisation and resultant social transformations, led to a spiritual void, a feeling of alienation, of helpless and vulnerability. The sense of living in a world at risk was widespread. This helps explain both the religious revivals of the early 19th century, as well as the spread of romantic worldviews. Romanticism itself was foreshadowed by the ‘pre-Romanticism’ of Rousseau, Giambattista Vico, and the German ‘Sturm und Drang’ movement, all of which stressed the primacy of feeling over reason. The political upheaval and violence of the Jacobins too led to revulsion against the principles of the Enlightenment. The post-Napoleonic generation was a disillusioned one. Consequently, the movements of Pietism and Methodism gained momentum. Pietistic thought influenced Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Kant, and Novalis. Chateaubriand’s thought too became coloured by ardent Christian faith after his disillusionment with the French revolution.
Romanticism and Industrialism had to be reconciled – in practice, very few wanted to retreat into a more primitive, pre-industrial age. Technology and the factory came to be regarded as superficial – nature and the nation were seen as timeless and real. This way of thinking, according to Mosse, was to colour the doctrines of Fascism and National Socialism.
The Romantic focus on nature and its beauty led to a kind of idealisation of those who lived closest to it. This reflects the disenchantment with industrial urbanism. The cult of the Middle Ages, starting as a literary movement, became an idealised program for the future. The paternalism of the medieval lord of the manor coloured the perceived relationship between ruler and ruled in certain strands of 19th century political thought (as in Disraeli’s social reforms, for instance). Romanticism, as linked to conservatism, tended towards ideas of government outside parliament.
In France, during the first years of Bourbon Restoration, Romanticism was closely tied to monarchism and the Catholic Church – not surprisingly, as the revolution had stood for the rationalism and scepticism abhorred by the romantics. But the restored regime proved hostile to Romantic thought. The French Academy favoured a return to pre-Revolutionary classicism, and issued a proclamation against the ‘ romantic sect’. This led to precisely those revolutionary implications, which were most feared – opposition to the political (as well as literary) order. The voices of Hugo and Lamennais were raised in favour of liberalism (though De Maistre and De Bonald continued to be rigidly conservative).
In Germany (and elsewhere) Romanticism came to be closely tied up with nationalism. It began as a literary movement – the collection of folk ballads, which were seen as a means of historical self-identification for a nation. The ideas of Johan Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) went a long way towards inspiring cultural nationalism in Europe. He rejected the absolute criteria of progress as put forward by the Enlightenment. He Propounded the idea of the ‘Volk’ – the community bound by ties of common knowledge, historical memory, habit and tradition. Herder gave nationalism an aesthetic, historical and linguistic dimension, which made the nation an organism separate from any temporary form of political organisation. Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) equated national consciousness with folk spirit. This German search for a distinct national identity arose partly from a reaction against the Napoleonic Empire, and the resultant desire to be rid of French cultural, linguistic and ideological hegemony.
A recurring dilemma was the need to reconcile the Romantic desire for personal freedom with the fear of isolation. Johan Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) concluded that self-realisation was possible only through unity and integration with the nation. The Romantic approach to individualism was thus paradoxical.
Romanticism has been called the swan song of the European aristocracy. This implies that it was the ideology (and a concrete one, at that) of the newly emergent industrial middle class. Hauser appears to think so. ‘A new style’, he says ‘can make its way only with difficulty if it does not address itself to a new public. Romanticism was essentially a middle class movement.’ This is problematic, as no group of ideas can be exclusively claimed by a single class. Most Romantics – poets, artists and writers -came from the uppermost social strata. The idealised view of ‘the masses’ or the ‘volk’ implies a distance from them. Romanticism was essentially an upper class trend.
Industrialism has long been associated with liberalism – a relationship best summed up as ‘laissez faire’ – the idea that an economy would prosper most if left alone. This trend could easily be accommodated with prevalent individualism. The spearhead of the liberal attack against feudal rights and clerical power (the ‘forces of continuity’) were, says Thomson, the middle classes. The dislocation and confusion which followed the Napoleonic wars convinced many businessmen that the royal and aristocratic control of the state was the cause of depression and instability. Liberalism involved an attack upon inequality and arbitrary power – thus it followed in the rational footsteps of the Enlightenment. Like liberals, the advocates of democracy desired equality before law and of political opportunity. Unlike most liberals, they were willing to secure these at the cost of economic leveling. It is for this reason that democracy was regarded as ‘revolutionary’ and as a threat to the old order.
As a political trend, Romanticism was most clearly manifested as idealism (whether reactionary or revolutionary). It challenged the individualism of the liberal credo by reminding men of deeper irrational forces, which determined fate. In an age of political, social and economic upheaval, Romanticism was a cast of mind, seeking refuge in emotions, imagination and nature.
It is interesting to note that while the continent of Europe was in a state of unrest, her influence around the globe was expanding. Imperialist rule in Asia and Africa was strengthening. Ironically, the primitivism of the Romantics, and the idea of cultures as unique and equal had no place in colonial policies. Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’, whose dignity and freedom was favourably contrasted with the disorientation of the overcultivated citizen, remained a mere ideal for urban Europe. That the natives of the colonies, with their peculiar languages and culture, constituted as valid a ‘volk’ as the Germans or the Slavs, never occurred to the colonial administrators, and every attempt was made to Westernise the colonies. Politics won, in the end, over Romanticism.
Bibliography
George L Mosse : The Culture of Western Europe
Eric Hobsbawm : The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848
Isaiah Berlin : Against the Current
Frederick B Artz : Reaction and Revolution,1814-1832
Arnold Hauser : The Social History of Art, Volume 3
H G Schenk : The Mind of the European Romantics
David Thomson : Europe since Napoleon
Note: this essay was written in December 2002, and was given a grade of 7/10