Romanticism

romantisme

Worked through in 29 videos · 54 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani distinguishes two senses of Romanticism. In the strict sense, it is a dated movement, from 1820 or 1821 to 1853. In the broad sense, he takes it in the Hegelian sense of the modern: it is the first expression of modernity, which we never leave, so that nothing is more Romantic than the critique of Romanticism1 2. Since the Revolution, neoclassicisms and returns of the original Romanticism have alternated. He regards Romanticism as ambivalent, like civil society: it can feed the worst reaction as well as what is most innovative3 4. He places the first occurrence of the word in Rousseau, with reference to English-style gardens as opposed to the geometric French garden5. He contrasts German Romanticism, which came earlier and is closer to Baudelaire and the avant-gardes, with French Romanticism, a prisoner of the alexandrine6. He points out several of its features: night, escape, the self of feeling, and melancholy turned into voluptuousness.

Summary produced automatically from 54 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Series · 29 Sept 2023Kleist, “On the Marionette Theatre”

3:48German Romantics are closer to Baudelaire, Rimbaud and the avant-gardes than to French Romantics.
26:02In Musset, the comic shows that Romanticism is passing the torch.

Series · 27 Jul 2022Nietzsche: no pity for Wagner

16:44Nothing is more romantic than fleeing one's own modernity to take refuge in a niche of the past; authentic music prevents this deadly regression.

Cycle 10 · 23 Jun 2022#15 Nietzsche: philosophical or musical relevance? Answers to questions

1:02:28First cultural expression of modernity, its emergence is traumatic: it is the threat of the emergence of the absolute.
1:42:51In the strict sense, a movement from 1820 to 1853; in the broad sense, it is identified with modernity, from which one does not escape, even by thundering against it.

Series · 1 Jun 2022Polymorphously perverse Mozart

13:06The voluptuousness of melancholy in Mozart already anticipates the romantic period.

Series · 20 May 2022Who is hiding beneath the surfaces? Aesthetics and politics

4:19A movement that embraces every discipline; like civil society, it stands in the middle, and is therefore ambivalent.
43:19French romanticism, imprisoned in the alexandrine, is too often thought set to verse; German romanticism wins out aesthetically.

Series · 4 Oct 2021#4 Nomad and sedentary: the case of Nerval

33:45In the 1850s, literature abandons romanticism for realism and the Parnassians; Nerval's return to the past is out of step with his time.
1:25:39With romanticism, the bad season becomes the favored one: breathing in the autumn decay with happiness.

Series · 7 Feb 2021#14 Mozart once more

49:51The rejection of romanticism is romantic: it is the romantic Mendelssohn who resurrects Bach.

Series · 11 Jan 2021#8 Happiness and unhappiness in music

26:14After the failure of 1848, part of the French intelligentsia leaves romanticism for art for art's sake.
1:49:58Becomes an anti-value after 1950: the rust of the great romantic conductors would supposedly need to be "stripped."
1:53:46Returns to the public with the crisis and mass unemployment.

Series · 11 Dec 2020#5 Happiness versus the death drive in music

51:54The first expression of modernity, neither reactionary nor progressive but ambivalent: it can produce the worst reaction as well as the most innovative.

Cycle 7 · 26 Apr 2020#6 Harnessed to confinitude

5:29In the broad sense, it expresses modernity down to us, including reactions against it: nothing is more romantic than the critique of romanticism.
1:39:16It can feed the worst reaction or side with radical change.

Cycle 7 · 11 Apr 2020#4 Harnessed to confinitude

33:37The Frühromantik, the very first romanticism, is the first to receive modernity full in the face, before degenerating and becoming reactionary.
52:18He distinguishes romanticism in the strict sense, from Lamartine to the Burgraves, from romanticism in the broad sense in which we still stand; what is proper to romanticism is to hate romanticism.

Cycle 7 · 4 Apr 2020#3 Harnessed to confinitude

22:32In the strict sense, a movement from 1821 to 1853; in the broad sense, the first incarnation of modernity, which later movements exasperate or curb.

Cycle 7 · 27 Mar 2020#1 Harnessed to confinitude

14:44Out of fashion by the middle of the century, it gives rise to realism in the novel and to the Parnasse in poetry; the greatest romanticism is Nordic.
25:09Romanticism is enchanted; the school after 1848 is that of disenchantment.

Series · 23 Mar 2020Introduction to the upcoming workshops

10:28Around 1850 romanticism hands over to the Parnasse and to realism, before the Baudelairean revolution of modernity.
54:50A warm romanticism neglecting form is opposed to a cold but well-wrought Parnasse; Baudelaire achieves the synthesis.

Cycle 6 · 19 Feb 2020#6.5 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

48:37First expression of modernity, alternating with formalism since the Revolution; it extends to law, history, the military.
53:23It turns melancholy into a pleasure: the mal du siècle, followed by the century of Evil.

Cycle 5.2 · 26 May 2019#5.7 Nature or landscape?

5:28Taken in the Hegelian sense of modern, one has never left it; nothing is more romantic than wanting to flee it, like the concern for historical truth.
17:24Romanticism is first of all Nordic: light comes from the North, along with England's industrial revolution.

Cycle 5.2 · 26 Mar 2019#5.5 Nature or landscape?

1:12:42Since early romanticism, neoclassicisms and returns of original romanticism have alternated throughout art history.
1:22:08Romanticism rehabilitates the self of feeling; realism speaks of the object; modernity imposes the impression.

Cycle 5.2 · 4 Feb 2019#5.4 Nature or landscape?

1:08:35Romanticism is us: fed up with the city and order, we escape into nature, into the night.
1:31:30The word romantic appears in Rousseau to designate the English manner of making gardens.

Cycle 5.2 · 25 Jan 2019#5.4 Introduction: nature or landscape?

13:15The romantic landscape is nocturnal. It takes us out of the human world and prevents us from seeing details.
22:06Escape is a key word of romanticism: far from the city, from man, and from history.

Talks · 2 Jul 2018Tribute to Domenico Losurdo

1:42:36Intuition and immediate knowledge of the absolute would oppress the concept: a work of restoration of lost substantiality.
2:04:39Three phases: Fichte's revolutionary subjectivity, hypochondria, restoration; Hegel is respectful but critical toward the first.

Cycle 4 · 15 Mar 2018#4.6 Angélique (by Nerval)

19:34The praise of transience, the melancholy of autumn, had never been seen before romanticism.
29:48Romantic first designates the English manner of making gardens; first occurrence in Rousseau.
56:17Romanticism is an interiorization and a musicalization of the plastic arts relative to classicism.

Cycle 4 · 18 Oct 2017#4.1 Angélique (by Nerval)

24:48After the literature of action comes the literature of escape; the German romantics are the champions of escapism, dream, and madness.
51:09The rehabilitation of the Middle Ages is a typical theme of romanticism.
1:32:30In Rousseau, first occurrence of the word: the English manner of gardens opposed to the French manner, geometric and classical.

Cycle 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.2 From Ulysses to Daedalus

54:46The first explosion of modernity, beyond the arts: one can make romantic and modern equivalent.
1:35:22It dares to speak of the self, but only the self of feeling and consciousness, not of the body.

Cycle 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus

25:25It returns in a spiral, each time deeper, up to surrealism, against neo-classical attempts to curb it.
48:43Romantic indetermination is already present in Christian infinitization.

Talks · 19 Jun 2016At the bistro (part 2)

11:13The German romantic night is intuition, dream, the oneiric; Rousseau achieves a synthesis of it with the Enlightenment.
14:49Irony, the Heine-like side, signals the terminal phase of a romantic cycle.
32:09French romanticism is strangled by classical form; German romanticism, earlier, already expresses modernity.

Talks · 18 Jun 2016At the bistro (part 1)

46:25First ideology, in the Marxian sense, of the middle classes; in Hegel, romantic art is that of the modern Christian world.
57:38It is the romantics who rehabilitate the baroque repertoire.

Cycle 2 · 18 Feb 2016#2.3 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

1:48:34Romanticism destroys the classical beautiful form; it is identical to modernity, so that nothing is more romantic than being anti-romantic.

Series · 23 Sept 2014#3 The myth of the noble savage in Rousseau

33:54Rousseau is not a precursor of romanticism: he anticipates beyond it, toward symbolism and impressionism, through sensations more than feelings.

Series · 20 Sept 2014#1 Presentation: the EU, Clouscard, Rousseau

3:39The nascent anthropological revolution at the time of Rousseau, which we have not left behind.