Romanticism
The beauty of a word is the multitude of meaning a single combination of letters can encompass. Beyond the literal, definitive meaning, words embody and take on feelings. The feeling a word possesses elevates the word from the page, to the mind of a reader, and ends up resonating in the heart of that reader. Words are also varied; one word can have multiple uses, formally and recreationally. Romance, is a word as complex as the notion it was created to convey. Looking specifically at romance in three contexts, primarily on the Romanticism movement in art during the nineteenth century, part of its complexities can start to be unraveled. In the nineteenth century romance seems to take on a different meaning in terms of paintings and in literature. This is also very different from what romance has come to mean to us in the context of stories and the twenty-first century. By exploring the artists and writers interpretation of romance and the way in which people viewed romance two centuries ago creates and interesting parallel to modern interpretation. William Blake is particularly intriguing because he was both writer and artist and is remembered today as a prominent figure in the Romantic Movement.
The romanticism movement in painting on a basic level was societies’ response to the revolutions happening in France and America and the involvement of other European nations in those conflicts. The Romantics turned away from logic and reason and delved into the arms of emotion and feeling. Romantics focused on living and the beauty and real emotions of life. The art was rooted in the revival of Gothic styles and the medieval romance tales. A generalization of the art being produced is the use of deep rich colors and seemed to center more on the darker side of passionate romance than anything light or frivolous. Sublime was a heartstring of the Romantic Movement and was about beauty in gaining pleasure from the horrible. The sublime as portrayed in art was viewing something terrifying but it was invigorating and beautiful because the viewer was at a distance from it that kept them safe. To nineteenth century patrons this was romantic. Romantic art embraced the emotions of horror, terror, and awe. A rebellion against the industrial revolution, romantics wanted to explore nature and the authenticity of human emotion. William Blake serves as a perfect example and a leader in the romantic movement. His poems and drawings and paintings all show the exploration into romantic thought. His poem collections Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience express the mood of the era, that as a child a person is innocent and uncorrupted but that society, age, and industry ruins that purity. Nature was to be emulated and glorified while the industrial and city life was dull and destructive. Along with the poems, Blake included exquisite illustrations and page designs that captured the beauty and essence of his words. Art has the ability to convey an entire story without words, while stories paint entire picture without using paint. It is in this way that Romanticism was able to spread so far and incorporate so many different elements; artists were driving at the same outcome from a variety of approaches.
Frye talks about the context of romance in chapter two and he opens the chapter by addressing Aristotle’s two principles, that art imitates nature and the distinction between form and content. Frye describes how it is different in literature because “the art is the form, and the nature which art imitates is the content, so in literature art imitates nature by containing it internally” (pg35). This is a complexly simple idea, for art to exist it has to be formed, to be formed it must contained content, to have content there must be inspiration, and inspiration comes from what is around us, and that is nature. The romantic movement was a revival of medieval romances and showed how the perpetuation of ideas occurs. An idea worth having, and preserving comes out of something else and may lie dormant for a period of time but people with naturally circle back to it and revive it, maybe with a new take or a fresh spin but originality is dead, everything is perpetually moving in a circular plain rejecting what has become normal and mundane and reverting to what has come before for vivacity and new introspection. Later in the chapter Frye addresses this idea and how “many works of literature, ends in much the same place that it begins” (pg51). Art is meant to express an idea, tell a story, and most importantly to entertain. Romantic artists, writers and painters, all wanted to escape the social upheaval and destruction of nature that was going on around them. They turned to nature and the simplistic and realistic beauty that it encompasses, and through that their art was able to create an alternative reality to that which was their day to day lives.
The artists of the Romantic movement, whatever their medium be it words or canvas, progressed the idea of romance from what it was viewed as in the Medieval times they adapted it from and pushed it one step closer to the ideas of romance that are held today. Romance has now been pushed into movies and music and floods main stream society much in the same way that it did in paintings, poems, and music in the nineteenth century. It is as though we are currently in another regression into romance, society had become so industrialized and fraught with conflict and war that people were seeking the escape that romantic art provides. Movies and book series featuring fantasy love relationships that could never really work seem to captivate society. Adapting written stories into big screen blockbusters has become commonplace. If a person’s love life is not going the way they foresaw it there are endless romantic comedies to make a person feel simultaneously worse and better about their own situation. Everything is an adaptation, made to fit the void that general society is feeling. Frye discusses that vision is what creates the human and that “man lives in two worlds, the world of nature and the world of art that he is trying to build out of nature...the focus of this vision is indicated by the polarizing in romance between the world we want and the world we don’t want” (58). It is all a duality, what a person can create can only be fantasy. But the purpose is that it is the closest to the life in envisioned and lived in the mind of the artist.
The individual is really what matters; each person’s perspective is different. That is why a word can have so many different meanings and feelings attached to it because no two people are the same. People do crave similar fulfillment and that is what allows art to be so all encompassing. Art, written and otherwise, shows people that there are others out in the world feeling the way they do, and that is really what romance is. Romance is the emotional connection to other people. Art is the universal language for people to relate to one another. Nature allows for similarities in people and art is the portal that it can and must be expressed.
