Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

327 Pages·2001·1.92 MB·English

by  Michael Löwy

Romanticism Against the
Tide of Modernity
MICHAEL LÖWY
ROBERT SAYRE
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
romanticism

against the tide of modernity
post-contemporary interventions

series editors

stanley fish and fredric jameson
Romanticism

Against the Tide

of Modernity

.

MICHAEL LÖWY AND ROBERT SAYRE
Translated by Catherine Porter
duke university press
durham / london
2001
∫2001 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $
Typeset in Carter and Cone Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear
on the last printed page of this book.
Contents
.

1. Redefining Romanticism 1

The Romantic Enigma, or ‘‘Tumultuous Colors’’ 1

The Concept of Romanticism 14

The Romantic Critique of Modernity 29

The Genesis of the Phenomenon 43

2. Romanticism: Political

and Social Diversity 57

Outline of a Typology 57

Hypotheses for a Sociology of Romanticism 83

3. Excursus: Marxism and Romanticism 88

Karl Marx 88

Rosa Luxemburg 99

György Lukács 104

4. Visages of Romanticism in the

Nineteenth Century 117

Romanticism and the French Revolution:

The Young Coleridge 117

Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution:

The Social Critique of John Ruskin 127

5. Visages of Romanticism in the Twentieth Century 147

Romanticism and Religion: The Mystical

Socialism of Charles Péguy 156
vi
Romanticism and Utopia: Ernst Bloch’s Daydream 169

Romanticism as a Feminist Vision: The Quest

of Christa Wolf 187

6. The Fire Is Still Burning: From Surrealism to the

Present Day and Beyond 214

Surrealism 214

May 1968 219

Contemporary Mass Culture 225

The New Social Movements 229

The New Religious Movements 230

The Contemporary Romantic Critique of

Civilization 232

What Future for Romanticism? 249

Notes 257

Works Cited 291

Index 311
romanticism

against the tide of modernity
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1

Redefining Romanticism
.

the romantic enigma, or ‘‘tumultuous colors’’
What is Romanticism? Apparently an undecipherable enigma, the Roman-
tic phenomenon seems to defy analysis, not only because its exuberant
diversity resists any attempt to reduce it to a common denominator but also
and especially because of its fabulously contradictory character, its nature as
coincidentia oppositorum: simultaneously (or alternately) revolutionary and
counterrevolutionary, individualistic and communitarian, cosmopolitan
and nationalistic, realist and fantastic, retrograde and utopian, rebellious
and melancholic, democratic and aristocratic, activist and contemplative,
republican and monarchist, red and white, mystical and sensual. These
contradictions permeate not only the Romantic phenomenon as a whole
but also the life and work of individual authors, and sometimes even indi-
vidual texts. Some critics seem inclined to see contradiction, dissonance,
and internal conflict as the only unifying element of Romanticism.∞ How-
ever, it is di≈cult to take that thesis as anything but an avowal of confusion.
All these complications are compounded because since the nineteenth
century we have been in the habit of using the term ‘‘Romantic’’ to desig-
nate not only novelists, poets, and artists but also political ideologues (po-
litical Romanticism has been the object of numerous studies), philoso-
phers, theologians, historians, economists, and others. In what sense do
such diverse phenomena, located in such disparate spheres of cultural life,
derive from a single concept?
The easiest solution seems to be to eliminate the term itself. The best-