Romanticism in France Essay Example For Students

Romanticism in France Essay In France, romanticism is ï ¬ rst of all a revolt against a ï ¬ rmly entrenched classicism. In this respect, French romanticism is markedly diï ¬â€šerent from romanticism in England, Germany, or Spain, where classicism had been less in accord with the national temper and had not risen to the glorious heights of the century of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. It is not surprising therefore that classicism, having produced so rich a literature of profound psychological insight, should have prolonged its dominance in France, to aconsidcrable degree,even into the early years of the nineteenth century. It is signiï ¬ cant too that in France, romanticism established itself ï ¬ rst in prose with Rousseau and his successors, then in poetry with Lamartine, and only at last in drama with the ï ¬ nal triumph of Hugo’s Hemam’ in 1830. This sequence corresponds to the degree of resistance in these three literary forms. The victory over the codiï ¬ ed rules of classic tra gedy could come in France only after a long ï ¬ ght extending over more than a hundred years. This explains why so much of French debate about the theories of romanticism turns about the drama. Jacques-Louis David, Marat Assassinated, 1793, oil on canvas, 165 x 64.96 cm (Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium) The history of this battle of old and new tendencies through the eighteenth century has been many times recounted. Foreign inï ¬â€šuences, Shakespeare, Ossian, Goethe’s Werlher, and others, play their part. There are critics who, resenting the triumph of romanticism, see in it a movement alien to the French spirit, an unfortunate apostasy from classicism due to the bancful inï ¬â€šuence of the literatures of England and Germany. This, however, is an emotional reaction, not a sound historical viewpoint. In refutation of such an interpretation, it may be pointed out that the eighteenth century in France early saw a resurgence of feeling in opposition to that rather perfect equilibrium between reason and sentiment which has been called classicism.‘ Already at the end of the seventeenth century, quietistic mysticism, the â€Å"torrents of tears† in Fà ©nelon’s Tà ©lemaque (1699), are indications of a new orientation. Even before the Abbà © Prà ©vost, in a number of ways a forerunner of romanticism, had come in contact with England at the end of 1728, he had published the first volumes of his sentimental novel, the Mà ©mozres d’un 110mm: tie quaIilà ©. His next work of ï ¬ ction, Clà ©veland (1731—39), drew more tears of sympathy from Rousseau, as the Confessions‘ tell us, than even the lat- ter’s own poignant sufferings. Prà ©vost himself lived in some measure the experiences of Des Grieux and of Manon Lescaut before he published in 1731 his masterpiece, which is one of the few French novels of the eighteenth century to live with a full life today. The †weepy comedies† of La Chausst‘e are another important indication of tendencies changing from within. Even before foreign inï ¬â€šuences began to make themselves deeply felt, it appears, then, that the current in France was already setting in a new direction. Moreover, it is now clear to historians of litera- ture that the seeds of inï ¬â€šuence, foreign or domestic, do not take root and grow until the soil is prepared to receive them. The French found stimulus in foreign works, in many ways so strikingly diï ¬ erent from their own; but they took from them only what was increasingly in accord with the gradually changing taste of the time. French romanticism still remained French: it did not become English or German. The inï ¬â€šuence of Rousseau’s personality as manifested in the posthumousCon/essians published on the eve of the French Revolution, the great vogue of the Nowell: Heloise (1761), are well known. Rousseau offers a natural background to the wave of autobiographical and subjective literature which characterizes in France, as in other countries of Europe, the ï ¬ rst half of the nineteenth century. His contribution and that of his successor and disciple, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, to the development of a more colorful, more personal prose style need not he insisted upon. It is clear that much of what we now call romanticism is already in being, without the name, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Thà ©odore Gà ©ricault, Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, also known as The Hyena of the Salpà ªtrià ¨re, c. 1819-20, 72 x 58 cm (Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lyon) But what of the origin of this word romantic, which had hardly yet ac quired literary existence? The word is found in the last quarter of the seventeenth century in France with the meaning of â€Å"romanesque† in a derogatory sense.7 In 1745 the Abbe‘ Leblanc quotes the English word romantic, applies it to the new style of English garden, and translates it as â€Å"about the same as picturesque. Rousseau, in his Rà ©verier du Pra‘ mensur solitaire (written in 1777), describes the banks of Lake Bienne as â€Å"wilder and more romantic than those of Lake Geneva.† The word came to him apparently from an English correspondent, Davenport.† Admitted to the Academy Dictionary in 1798, the word romantic is there deï ¬ ned as applying â€Å"ordinarily to places and landscapes which recall to the imagination the descriptions of poems and novels.’†Ã‚ ° It was only a step to reverse this application and employ the word to indicate poems, novels, works of art which evoke the type of picturesque or solitary scene generally thought of as romantic.â€Å" But it was Germany, as it seems, which caused this word, introduced into France from England, to be used particularly in opposition to clarric. With such a meaning the word appears, for example, in Mme de Staels hook, De l’Allemagm, published after (leIay by the censor in 1813.12 During the next ï ¬ fteen years, deï ¬ nitions of romant icism abound in France. Meanwhile, however, the French Revolution had come and gone. The work of Rousseau, thediscussion of the Hamlet monologue with its theme of suicide, the vogue of Goethe’s Wmlm from 1776 on, the popularity of Young’s melancholy Night Thoughts, all show that it was not the great political upheaval of 1789 alone which produced that ma! du rià ©cle, which is so important a characteristic of Chateaubriand and of his romantic successors. Literary as well as political change was already in the air. Temporarily, indeed, the Revolution seems to have checked the (levelopment of romanticism. With the decline of Revolutionary ardor, Napoleon had fought his way to power and laid his iron hand upon thought and literature under the Empire. Although in earlier years he had paced up and down in his tent enthusiastically declaiming Ossian, later he threw his support to classic taste, which was already evident in much of the oratory of the Revolution. The heroic characters of Corneille appealed to Bonaparte as the apotheosis of the dangerous love of glory which he wished to inspire in, or impose upon, his French subjects.â€Å" The censorship ruled out free speech or discouraged startling innovations. Moreover, many a young man of potential genius left his bones on the battleï ¬ elds of Europe. â€Å"For nineteen years, as Dumas said, â€Å"the enemy’s cannon mowed down the ranks of the generation of men from ï ¬ fteen to thirty-six years of age.†Ã¢â‚¬Å" Of those who survived, how many must have used up all their energies in political or military activity! But the Revolution had also a positive inï ¬â€šuence in sweeping away the dead wood of the past. The Salon: which had scorned Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul at Virginie (1787) could not prevent its popularity with the general public. They had lost their dominance of literary taste. Moreover, during the revolutionary years of turmoil, the conservative inï ¬â€šuence of the schools was temporarily suspended. A new public had been created by the Revolution, 3. public tired of the old forms of classic tragedy based upon the three unities, a public which preferred the rapid action, the sharp contrasts, and the new subjects of the melodrama of the boulevards, a public gradually preparing itself unconsciously for the Romantic theater of a Hugo or a Dumas. Eugà ¨ne Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, oil on canvas, 2.6 x 3.25m, 1830 (Musà ©e du Louvre, Paris) It is at this time, when the way had been so well prepared, that Chateaubriand’s Atala (1801) came suddenly before a public eager to receive it. This idyl of primitivism gave to Rousseau’s â€Å"noble savages† a charm with which even he, working through imagination alone, had not been able to invest them. Moreover, all the color of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre passes into Chateaubriand’s brief novel, plus some of his own. Compare And Contrast Realism And Romanticism EssayAs for Italy, Mme de Stael, not only the literary critic, but also the author of the novel Corinne, au l’Ilalie (1807), had done much to promote the vogue of the country across the Alps. Venice will soon become the city par excellence of romantic lovers, like George Sand and Alfred de Musset. The Italian Renaissance particularly will offer a colorful setting for play and story. To Stendhal, Italy will appear the very incarnation of romantic energy. Under the force of inï ¬â€šuences at home and abroad, Hugo moves out of his neutrality. The romantic Ce‘nacle takes form about him as the strong, energetic chief for whom the new movement has been waiting. He publishes in 1827 the important romantic manifesto, the Prà ©face to Cromwell. Like Mme de Stael, Hugo too seeks a national drama. This new drama will be inspired with the dualism found in Christianity.â€Å" Hence  Hugo’s celebrated theory of the Sublime and the Grotesque. Classic unity of tone is to give place to the mà ©lange des genres, thc sharp contrasts seen in life itself, the saints and gargoyles of the medieval cathedral. â€Å"All in Nature is in Art,† says Hugo.† The triumph of Hugo’s colorful, romantic play, Hemam, follows on February 25, 1830. The story of that battle between classicists and ro- manticists has been too many times narrated to be told again here. It is sufï ¬ cient to remind ourselves that there were still ardent classicists in France and that the victory of romanticism was by no means assured. The ï ¬ ght was hot. But, with the increasing popularity of Hemam, it became evident that classic tragedy was at length dead. The great tragedies of Corneille and of Racine still live with a life of their own. But the power of the classic rules to impose their form upon all drama was gone forever. †Romanticism,† said Hugo, â€Å"is Liberalism in literature.† Let the nineteenth century, he had already written two years before, become identiï ¬ ed with â€Å"Liberty in Art.â€Å" Here again is one of the outstanding accomplishments of romanticism in France. It is deï ¬ nitelyamovemcnt of liberation in literature. But the greatest literary achievements of French romanticism are to be found neither on the stage nor in such colorful evocations of the past as Hugo’s historical novel, No!re »Dame dz Paris (1831). Most romantic novels and plays of the period are psychologically false, built to formula, rather than in accordance with the complex truths of human character. It is in lyric poetry that French romanticism, like that of other nations, found its most enduring triumphs. Here depth of personal feeling, power of expression, the reviviï ¬ cation of the language, all united to produce the great poetry of Lamartine, Vigny, Hugo, and Musset. It is not without signiï ¬ cance that, to the French, Hugo is primarily, not a dramatist, not a novelist, but a poet. In poetry, his inï ¬ nite variety of expression and subject, his extraordinary mastery of language, the rich ï ¬â€šow of his striking ï ¬ gures of speech, his remarkable ability to run the gamut from the most biting invective or the heights of epic grandeur to the depths of tenderness and sentiment or the whimsical indulgent love of agrandfather for the vagaries of childhood, these unique qualities made him, in spite of defects, the dominant French literary genius of his century. There is no time to speak of the thoughtful, courageous pessimism of Vigny, of the Winsome, tragic charm of Musset. It is sufï ¬ cient to remind ourselves of the lasting contributions made by romantic poetry to the rich pageant of French literature. Brieï ¬â€šy, and with many necessary omissions, we have followed the de- velopment of French romanticism to the moment of its triumph. To what conclusions may we come? It is noteworthy that romanticism in France looks out upon the external world and at the same time inward upon man’s human and mystical longings. 0n the one hand, as never before to the same degree, is the emphasis upon local color, †la couleur locale,† the sensitiveness to visual detail, to the sense impressions of sound, and, to a lesser extent than later in the century, to those of odor and perfume. In this respect, the romanticists descend no doubt from Locke and the French †sensationalists† like Condillac, but in description Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint—Pierre, and Chateaubriand have deï ¬ nitely shown the way. On the other hand, reacting against the rationalistic scepticism of the †ideologues† of the eighteenth century, the romanticists are deeply conscious of the mystery of human life. The â€Å"frisson mà ©taphysique† is frequently present in their work. A religion of feeling, if not of doctrine, is strongly evident among the typical romantics as it had been before them with Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. In this respect, eighteenth-century deism continues its inï ¬â€šuence, but made more attractive by the color and emotion with which the great romantic writers were able to invest it. If romanticism is in some respects to be regarded as a return to admiration ot‘ the Middle Ages, it is also a natural continuation of the freedom and exuberance of the Renaissance. Rousseau was a profound admirer of Montaigne, and Sainte-Beuve found in sixteenth-century French poetry the ancestry of his contemporaries, the great romantic poets of the nineteenth.‘ The individualism of the Renaissance reappears in the French romantic movement. Yet classic order and logic persist also in French romanticism. The sense for balanced form and composition still remains strong. In this respect, there is less of subtle mystery, less wayward caprice in literary style and structure, during the French movement, than in England or Germany.â€Å" French romanticism, though varied, remains clear. The French of this period do not warmly welcome the metaphysical complexities of German romantic theory. The fantastic takes no deep hold upon the writers of outstanding genius. The great French romantics have no cult of obscurity, no great liking for the supernatural, no search or   the â€Å"Blue Flower.â€Å" The classicism against which romanticism was so deï ¬ nitely a reaction still continued to exert a potent inï ¬â€šuence in France. What of the results ofromanticism? Above all, romanticism established the right of a new literature to come into being. This in itself was a great achievement. It is henceforth to be admitted that literature must change with the times. New schools, even those directly opposed to romanti cism, owe it, then, a great debt. A cosmopolitan appreciation of exotic and foreign literatures, breadth of literary taste, are also anatural consequence. Moreover, romanticism does not end with the fall of Hugo’s Bmgnn-es in 1843. There is romantic â€Å"mal du sià ¨cle in the tortured soul of Baudelaire, romantic color and yearning held in reluctant check in Flaubert. Zola‘s magniï ¬ cent crowd scenes evoke the epic grandeur of similar scenes in Hugo’s Noire—Dame de Paris. In fact, it is generally agreed that many of Zola’s most striking qualities, particularly his power to seize the imagination with a kind of poetic vision of reality, his vivid personiï ¬ cat ion of inanimate objects, are essentially romantic. Moreover, il realism is a reaction against romanticism, it is also a direct out—growth of it. The romantic local color of a Chateaubriand or of a Hugo needs only to become more accurate and to deal with contemporary settings in order to give rise to the realistic descriptions of a Balzac. At the end of the nineteenth century, symbolist poetry in France goes at length beyond romantic eloquenceâ€Å"5 to express more fully the mysticism and the sometimes obscure music which French romanticism, still inherently logical, as we have seen, under the long dominance of the Classic tradition, hinted at but did not completely accept, as it was more instinctively accepted in England and Germany.â€Å" In this respect, the symbolists are a continuation and a natural culmination of the romantic movement. In the face of a certain number of violent enemies of romanticism, who have looked at it unhistorically’7 and too often have concentrated attention upon the â€Å"lunatic fringe† of eccentric and secondary ï ¬ gures, we need only to imagine French literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries without a preceding romantic movement, in order to see how inï ¬ nitely poorer modern literature would thus have been, less  olorful, less concerned with emotion, less sensitive to all the deep mystery and complexity of human life.