Modernism, Postmodernism, and Digitality
The Romantic
A New Narrative
In 1774, the very young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe(1749-1832) published an epistolary novel called Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, or in English, The Sorrows of Young Werther. It was an immediate success and catapulted him to the front ranks of novelists. It has been said that Goethe shot is hero to save himself, but the epistolary novel was very much info at that time and the question is what makes it stand out from the others? It is not that one of the main character’s dies because this is a common trope of the epistolary novel, for example, Hyperion also has a main character dying. The novel Les Liaisons dangereuses goes over the top with its extravagance of having the means to characters destroy each other. It is what is being rebelled against that makes the novel special. In Hyperion it is the sense that a revolution is not something which a single man should evolve with if the love of his life slips out. In Les Liaisons dangereuses it is the world of court which is so destructive. In all of these novels it is something outside which drives a main character to the edge. Whereas, in Werther it is from the inside, where the dwelling sadness comes, which drives the plot and the end the suicide.
But if Goethe it was a young man at the beginning of a movement, long before this there stands the figure of Rousseau (1712-1776). While Goethe was firmly in the Romantic period, Rousseau clearly was out of place and is thought to be in the Enlightenment, but the is out of step with the main figures such as Voltaire (1694-1778). He was at first a composer and his compositions are very much of the standard of the time, but his reputation relies on his philosophical works and his novel Julie. And said to be a figure who announces the Romantic and when taking a look at when his books were published, one can see that is alignment is to the Romantic sense rather than to the Enlightenment. Rousseau the composer writes baroque opera but the writer is writing at the beginning of the Romantic era the same way Goethe was and came to not dissimilar conclusions: be good comes from the internal even if it is corrupted once it has begun.
For example, in the beginning of the work the idea that this is not merely that this is an epistolary novel, a direct searching for a new philosophical way of living one’s life:
Il faut vous fuir, mademoiselle, je le sens bien :j'aurais dû beaucoup moins attendre ; ou plutôt il fallait ne vous voir jamais. Mais que faire aujourd'hui ? comment m'y prendre ? Vous m'avez promis de l'amitié ; voyez mes perplexités, et conseillez-moi.
(I must escape, Mademoiselle, I feel it: I should not have waited nearly so long, or rather I should never see you. But what is to be done? How do I go about it? You promised me friendship; see my perplexities, and counsel me.)
The text is about escape, but the subtext is about how the individual creates the good in and of himself.
When was Romantic period? Barzun defined it this way:
Romanticism as a European phenomenon, then, comes of age between 1780 and 1830, and remains undisputed master of the field until about 1850. This what I find it convenient to regard as the first phase. By the letter date, 1850, some of the greatest names in Romanticism are among the dead: Burke; Burns; Byron; Shelley; Blake; Keats; Scott; Wordsworth; Coleridge; Hazlitt; Pushkin; Lermenotov; Espronceda; Goya; Büchner; Beddoes; Chateaubriand; Leopardi; Beethoven; Chopin; Mendelson; Schubert; Schumann; Bellini; Bonngton; Géricault; Balzac; Stendhal; Gérard de Nerval; Goethe; Schiller; Hegel; Schelling; Schleiemacher; Hoffman; Kleist; Hölderlin; Novalis; Wackenroder; and the Brother Schlegel.
It is a stellar list from a premier academic of the 20th century, but there are problems with this list. One is that several key works were already put out, including Die Leiden des jungen Werther, the other is that it is heavy on the artistic side. What advances in the sciences does Barzun think are part of the movement, if any at all? This is not to take away from the enormous advance in Romanticism that Barzun had made in his lifetime, but that makes the lacunae that much more obvious. It also does not take into account the forays into Romanticism by other figures such as Haydn and Mozart. The “Sturm and Drang” ( a term which was retroactively stuck on) symphonies are by Haydn, not Beethoven, and the opera Die Zauberflöte was by Mozart and it has more than just trappings of the Romanticist movement. And remember Mozart was exposed to Goethe, for example the setting of Das Veilchen. The earliest part of a movement, whether Romanticism or otherwise, is a bit loose but Romantic stirrings are visible in encompasses Mozart.
Since the authors were dead, Ralph Waldo Emerson would not be on the list but is essay “nature” clearly is in the Romantic period. The fact that it has Romantic tropes is clear from the very first words and through the entirety of the essay. Indeed, nature is one of the Romantic tropes which is seen in Beethoven’s sixth Symphony, Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) work such as Emilias Kilde, Abtei im Eichwald, Zwei Männer in Betrachtung des Mondes, Das Eismeer, and of course, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer. It is with this last painting, entitled in English, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, that we see there is a parallel between the visual arts and the philosophical reasoning that the capital “N” nature is a primary focus.
But this is not just Nature in depiction but in mathematics, science, industry, and even politics. Afterall, even less than wonderful activities such as wage and chattel slavery need to be accounted for, and importantly, taxed.
Another omission is Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) he was a figure between Kant and Hegeland was both concerned with philosophers and with the general public. He was also dismissed for atheism by the University of Jena. It is with Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (Foundations of the Science of Knowledge) that it is clear that he is taking steps towards a Romantic view of knowledge. It may be that some people would wish to ignore the place of God in the Enlightenment, but the fact that philosophers such as Fichte were dismissed chose that it is a presence that cannot be denied.
This means that a movement does not occur only in the arts but in the sciences as well. When looked over in the Romantic period it is clear that the principal of uniformitarianism is one of the principles of the Romantic idea of sciences. While it was discovered by James Hutton (1726-1797) it did not gain popularity until Charles Lyle in his book Principles of Geology, published in 1830. This move from what has been called “catastrophism” remade the bedrock of geology. This is often seen as influencing Charles Darwin who conceived of evolution based on geologic time. Underneath this idea was that a God creating the Earth and heavens could not have happened in the stroke of an instance, for example the commonly quoted 4004 BCE. This means that once people had the notion that the Earth had in in existence four some undetermined period Of time then the courses need not have been catastrophic to have made the world what it was particularly the stratification of the ages of earth.
In mathematics the name Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857) comes to the fore as someone who developed a number of areas but particularly analysis which continued the calculus, but one key point of analysis is its Infinitesimal, the idea that there is a number that is closer to zero but smaller than any real number. This would much later be used in the surreal number system by John Conway (1937-2020). This meant that along with Euler’s notion of a function that calculus came on firmer footing than before. More on Cauchy later.
This means that in addition to the arts there is a parallel movement in the sciences and both can be seeing as a mirror image.
The Distinction between the Enlightenment and the Romantic
What is the distinction between the Enlightenment and the Romantic? In the Modern form of the Enlightenment, it is about rationality and reason, but during the period the primary motivator of truth is God, either Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox. It was Voltaire who wrote, in Letter 104: “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.” ( “If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.”) it is clear that Voltiare had a complex relationship with God, but he realized that at least the appearance of believing in God was important to his age. The Enlightenment still believed in God the father, particularly in the belief of the European masses. In Rousseau’s idea “God makes all things good; man meddles with them, and they become evil.”i This shift from a constructive God to a “hand off” God was not a long-term idea in the masses but remained true for many of the elites.
What changed with the Romantic was not the belief in God, but the way of believing in him in practice. Instead of everyone believing in God, as a material being, many believed that God was an internal such as the belief in deism, which ultimately believed that God was the first mover but then left the universe to run by Newtonian mechanics. Because there were tremendous gaps in the assemblage of knowledge this belief was not as far-fetched as it first appeared. Remember that the strong force was not discovered for many decades and that meant that things such as the sun did not have a good explanation except by the course of gravity, and there were many calculations as to how long that would last. And they disagreed with biological time.
The Enlightenment order was imposed by humanity, the Romantic it imposed by Nature. This that one way to skirt this was to look inside and plumb the depths of the internal imagination. We can take a look at Byron for an example:
There shall they rot—Ambition's honoured fools!
Yes, Honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!
Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools,
The broken tools, that tyrants cast away
By myriads, when they dare to pave their way
With human hearts—to what?—a dream alone.
Can despots compass aught that hails their sway?
Or call with truth one span of earth their own,
Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone?ii
First Byron hackles the “honoured fools” with their “wraps their clay” as “Sophistry” of “tyrants,” and then proclaims that the “human hearts” will “dream alone” of the day when tyrants “crumble bone by bone.” This is a far cry from the divine despot of the Enlightenment, who is honored by God and takes from God his acumen. The Romantic has turned on the monarch. This squares the circle in the great revolutions which start the Romantic period: The American, the French, and the Latin American all claim that the people not be monarch is the central well of authority. While the American revolution in particular is called a product of the Enlightenment, it is also the product of the Romantic in that the people are the source of authority. This is why the importance of “the pursuit of happiness” replaces “property” in the declaration of independence and, while not law according to the supreme court, preamble of the U.S. Constitution starts with “We, the people.”
And that was because the understanding of electricity was not present to stretch cable across the oceans. However, what made the Romantic not have the Modern laws was the inability to transmit information quickly and concisely. The self alone cannot divine all of the principles of either Modern science or the intricacies of the humanities. There needed to be communication between selves, which the Romantic was still fumbling towards. The idea that information could be encoded was not needed but the mechanisms, which is why telegraphy by 1837 it upon a dot and a dash - a threefold division with the space as the third - which was then standardized in 1844 with Morse Code. But this is a more complex phenomenon then is realized, and we will return to it when we move our attention to the Neoclassical period.
In this way, the Romantic was trying to reach beyond being alignment terms of both its philosophical grasp and its technical grasp. One of the key avenue was discovery of electromagnetism as a single force, and that it could be translated over long distances. Until that time signally by cowards with flags was the best way to get information without actually delivering it. Which was both limited in its area and only a trifle faster then Orris bound delivery. But with electromagnetism being rapidly discovered it became clear to many that cables with copper were a groundbreaking delivery mechanism. And that would change the very nature of communication. Because at that point information was liberated from the speed of travel.
One good example is the corruption of Mount Tambora. High above the savanah and streams and waterfalls of the island of Sumbawa, in the Lesser Sunda Islands, stood a towering peak that is now known as Mt. Tambora. On April 5th, 1815 the mountain erupted in a large eruption that was heard at least 1300 kilometers away and it would continue, picking on the 10th. The corruption was one of the largest, in not the largest, in the Holocene early to be the volcanic explicity index (VEI) of 7 with between 37 and 45 kilometers of dense magma.iii The corruption spewed plumes of smoke, fire, and rock.
What was happening would lead to the year without a summer in 1816. It has been termed and corruption which to history by William and Nicholas Klingman. But what is important here is that beyond the range of the explosions, which was enormous, to spread back by “wooden ships and iron men." the telegraph was in the future and was new signaling apparatus in such a remote part of the world. there were other eruptions over the next three years cooling down the temperature. In Brian Fagan opinion:
The cold years of 1812 to 1820 coincided with a poor grade and the harvest, foods scarcities, in rapidly rising commodity prices in societies that were unsettled by the changing economic conditions had the end of the Napoleonic wars. Western commodity markets spun in confusion as agricultural productivity fell rapidly. Real incomes declined.iv
The connection between the eruptions, both Mt. Tambura and others, and the cold weather and poor harvests which accompanied it was not recognized because there was no centralized point that could connect all of the points together. The Romantic turned from an inwardly dark time to and outwardly dark time where the forces of nature seemed to confirm the inward sense of an apocalypse. It seemed as if nature, itself, was confirming the tenor of such novels as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: the world was saying that the imagination that man was as God was inevitably corrupt. From a distance we can see what Fagan sees as a downturn in the Little Ice Age.
This points out a distinction that we must incorporate into our theory: namely the difference between internally driven circumstance and externally driven circumstance. We can take Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage as an example of internally driven circumstance: each one of the books was published from an internally driven mind seeing externally driven circumstance whereas the Little Ice Age was formed out of externally driven circumstance which influenced the internally driven. Of course, these each effect the others, but the externally driven circumstance does not care about the internally driven circumstance because its events are driven by other things, such as magma underneath the surface or the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Even when internally driven ideas can affect the externally driven, the externally driven do not care about the logic of internally driven circumstance but only by the effects that they produce. It does not matter why you emit CO2 into the atmosphere it only matters that you do.
This leads to another point: while artistry is internally driven and is made based on intrinsically derived organization and the materials that the person can obtain, it influences later generations so that what me be a small movement at the present time may become a much larger movement with the passage of time and the internally driven ideas. For example, in the Romantic: Schubert, Austen, and Keats were a blip at their moment in time but, often rather quickly, they became visible as Beacon Hill and Boston becomes visible from Cambridge.
One might think that artistry has two influence others by time but that larger and more important things are visible almost immediately. However, when we look more closely we see that while artistry and industry grow in importance, government and military affairs shrink. A good example is the campaigns of Napoleon: they were visible immediately and at a large scale but other campaigns which conquered more territory but with lesser importance are forgotten. An example is the campaign for Tibet or for Siberia. They both conquered a tremendous amount of land but had few people, were conquered quickly and with relatively little manpower and equipment, and were forgotten by the majority of people. This means that while the results are often taken for granted the actions, in a systemic point of view, do not influence other later individuals in the same way. This means that there can be an increase in visibility or a decrease in visibility based on other means than land area or political leadership.
This becomes important when thinking about Napoleon, because the logical systems in conflict were the Romantic and the Enlightenment. Napoleon used all in his conquest and rulership of the first French Empire: he was among the first who praised Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, but looking at his battles one finds a line between Frederick II and himself because the weapons did not catch up with the Romantic period until the Needle Gun of Prussia, the Minnie Ball, and the canons of the Crimean war. The reason that this is so that a single individual, Romantic in his stature, can shoot down enemy’s from a great distance by himself, which is the same kind of manner which propels the hero of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.v This means that Napoleon uses all the age of Enlightenment and the Romantic age in crafting is greatest triumphs and in doing into is greatest defeats. In fact, on St. Helena he compared Washington to himself and made comments that the French people wanted a Washington rather than a Napoleon. The difference between Washington and Napoleon is found in portraits.vi Looking through the code Napoleon one sees the Enlightenment throughout the document: each unit is structured from a source and then lists the codification of the law in the specific circumstance. Thus, title III is on “Contracts or Conventional Obligations in General” and each section is devoted to the specific contract.vii
And the rules are dictated by the “First Counsel” - that is Napoleon - throughout the realm.viii This is much the same than for example the heraldry of England which promulgates that the King is the sole descent of all symbols. But it is as a first counsel not a king, that is Napoleon to rise is consent from the governed which is related to the Glorious Revolution. This means even at the beginning of the Romantic period, the idea that there is a source beyond the person is already engraved in even the legal code of a new state. It also means that previous events are taken as precedent - to support the logical system as it is evolving. This means that the code is “for the future only” and does not apply to the past.ix
This means that Austerlitz and the other great victories and tragic defeats, is an Enlightenment victory, but that its concept is Romantic: the idea is that being too weak to defend the Army must attack. This was true not only of Napoleon but is antagonist Wellington, who said that Waterloo was a close battle. Each opponent new that the history of Europe would be decided on that field, but Wellington choose to defend on a high hilltop and let Napoleon attack. That the concept was on the French side Romantic comes from the idea of coming back from exile, which is captured in by Byron:
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O'er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!x
One can see that Lord Byron wants to be as Napoleon is, a monumental figure that “The beings of the mind are not of clay;/Essentially immortal” even if it kills him.xi Which is what Greece was: a Waterloo with even military garb.
Thus, the tactics is of the preceding period, but the concept is extremely up-to-date. This is most apparent by the defeat at Waterloo, because the idea of coming back from exile reeks of the This means that there is a pattern: the conscious reasoning is of the logical system but the tactics, which are defined by the relentless repetition of handling, are much older, and we should look back as to when they were invented and codified. The discipline is first from above, then is codified, and only when codified can be challenged. This means that in warfare and in other repetitive activities the early part of a logical system will be conceived in that logical system but operationally from the earlier system: that means that the American Civil War and the Wars of German Unification are in fact Romantic, and one can see this in the way troops are trained for years before they are sent into battle.
This is a clue as to when two logical systems bump and grind against each other: the higher consumption is based on the influence that the individuals see, hear, and read but there actions are often based on repetition, and that repetition is based on the materials which come down to them often based on the purchasing decisions of someone else.
This means that the logical system differences are only one piece of the whole: the conscious logical decision, fought in oratory, reading material, and symbol is only one aspect of the totality of logical systems because repetition is part of the process by which one absorbs the paradigm even if there is no logical system to support it. This means that logical systems will be merged especially at the ends. So, Napoleon is both an Enlightenment figure and a Romantic figure, but he was out of step with his Romantic persona and thus went from hero to tyrant. Which meant that the third Symphony of Beethoven had his name scratched out and replaced with the generic “Heroic Symphony” which it is still called today, and which has as its second movement the death of the person but still has two movements which describe the impact that he makes. This means that the logical system has influences from other works by other individuals and therefore can be thought of as an extension of ideas which weave through the artifacts which they produce.
However, because of the influence that great figures have, the other great figures notice and reproduce in there on work the shadows of others: Beethoven looked at Goethe, Byron looked Napoleon or antithetical the way Schoenberg and Stravinsky leveled caustic criticism at the way be other did things, even though Stravinsky finally became enamored of Schoenberg’s 12-Tone thesis in the end and produce works in his own mode.
The importance of a worked is not proportional to its popularity but an inner structure which other artists can sense even if they dislike what they see. Which leave us with Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
i Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile; or, On Education, trans. Barbara Foxley (1911; repr., Sioux Falls, SD: Nu Visions Publications, 2007), 11.
ii Byron. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. 1905. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA. LXII, 10-11.
iii Kandlbauer, J.; Sparks, R. S. J. 2014. "New estimates of the 1815 Tambora eruption volume". Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. 286: 93–100. Bibcode:2014JVGR..286...93K. doi:10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2014.08.020. ISSN 0377-0273, 93.
iv Fagan, Brian M. 2002. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850. New York, NY, Basic Books, 179.
v And is parodied in turn in the next logical system by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky.
vi An example is https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/images-of-liberty-and-power-george-washington-napoleon which shows the difference between Washington has a Romantic leader and Napoleon as an Enlightenment leader. Note the differences in both macro effect and micro detail: for example in Washington the sword is pointed down but with the Napolean the sword is parallel and still pretty to be used, and also note that the symbol of the United States has no personal feature but the seal of Napolean has a large “N” on it. These details are noted by the page author as well so they are very visible as well as other touches such as the covering of the floor.
vii [Spence, George, Translator]. 1824.The Code Napoleon; Or, the French Civil Code. Literally Translated from the Original and Official Edition, Published at Paris, in 1804, by a Barrister of the Inner Temple. London: Printed for Charles Hunter, Law Bookseller. Called Code Napoloen. x.
viii Code Napoleon, 1.
ix Code Napoleon. 2.
x Byron, 1828. Childe Harold Pilgrimage, Canto IV, Verse 1.
xi Byron, 1828. Childe Harold Pilgrimage, Canto IV, Verse V.