Individual in front of the world and aesthetic freedom (French Romanticism)
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Interestingly, several of the writers of both German and English romanticism (e.g., Hölderlin and Wordsworth, respectively) were greatly attracted and influenced by the French Revolution, although they were later disappointed by it.
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In the first place, we should recognize the impact that medieval literature had, with its romances, court stories and chivalry novels, which had occupied a capital role in French literature. Think of the relevance of a Chrétien de Troyes, with the incorporation of the universe of legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, of Celtic or Breton origin. The interest in the songs of troubadours, the adventures of the knights and polite love was resumed at the end of the 18th century, creating an atmosphere conducive to romanticism, which made the Christian Middle Ages its main reference.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the manifestation of the individual
The internal origins of French romanticism can be found in the Encyclopaedism, paradoxically, since, to a large extent, romanticism is a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment. But they are found in one of the most subjective thinkers and writers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), very controversial in his ideas of defence of individual rights and freedoms (remember his famous phrase: "Man is born free and yet wherever he goes he is chained"). Some scholars describe it as "pre-Romantic", and emphasize its exaltation of nature, the spirit of introspection and intimate feeling, expressed particularly in his epistolary novel Julia, or the new Heloise (1761), his philosophical novel Emilio, or Education (1762) and The Confessions (1770), where his contemplative tendency, libertarian attitude and autobiographical will are manifested.
We read at the beginning of The Confessions:
I undertake a task that has never had an example and that will certainly not have imitators. I want to show my fellow men a man with all the truth of nature, and this man will be me.
I only. I know men and feel what is within myself. I am not made like any of those I have seen, and I even dare to believe that I am not like any of those who exist. If I am not worth more than others, at least I am different from them. If nature has done good or bad by breaking the mold in which it has emptied me, it can only be judged after it has read me.
However, despite this direct source, plus the influences of German writers (Goethe, Schiller) and certain Englishmen (especially the so-called "cemetery poets" such as Gray and Young), French romanticism will manifest itself once the heyday of the French Revolution has passed, in the early years of the nineteenth century, and will develop from its third decade onwards.
The first clear representatives of romanticism in France will be Chateaubriand and Madame de Stäel, considered its founders.
François-René de Chateaubriand: between Christianity and exoticism
Although Christian religious sentiment had been called into question by the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the secular pursuits of the French Revolution, it will be reborn in a way with romanticism. François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) is his most important promoter with his work The Genius of Christianity(1802), an edition in which his novels Atala and René are inserted, both with some autobiographical trait -one counterpart of the other- composed of exotic adventure and amorous drama. The reestablishment of the Christian religion together with the gloating in exoticism, the product of his travels as an exile in North America, Germany and the East, will play a preponderant role in the spirit of French romanticism. It will be the confluence of a charm for the historically distant (the medieval, the beauty of the ruins) and the sentimental relationship with Nature, crossed by that spirit of rescue of Christianity.
In his Memorias de ultratumba (1850, posthumous publication), which gathers together personal evocations, the word modernidad ("modernité") appears for the first time, a term that will coin a cardinal sense in the understanding of the times, and whose mood he will define as "uncertainty of passions".
Let us quote the Viscount of Chateaubriand, from his Genius of Christianity:
I am nothing; I am nothing more than a simple loner; I have heard the wise often argue about the Being first, and I have not understood them; but I have always noticed that it is in view of the great scenes of Nature that this unknown Being manifests itself to the heart of man.
Madame de Stäel: between aesthetic universality and feminism
Anne-Louise Germaine Necker, known as Madame de Stäel (1766-1817), is considered one of the introducers of romanticism in France, more than for her works of creation, her writings of reflection and philosophical-political criticism. He promoted the ideal of aesthetic universality, thus confronting the classicist canons prevailing in the eighteenth century, which carried a lot of weight in France. He had published De la literatura considerada en sus relaciones con las instituciones sociales (1800), a text in which he defends the merit of other literatures outside those of his country and his time, tending to privilege that of Saxon roots. There is also his novel Corina(1807), recognized for its cosmopolitan setting with the presentation of Italian landscapes and the manifestation of his feminist perspective, as he had already done in Delfina (1802). But her impetus for literary renewal was reflected in her work of cultural criticism De la Alemania (1810), written in exile imposed by Bonaparte, in which she valued the contribution of German romantics in the new way of conceiving literature.
Let's see a quote from this central book of his production:
(...) I consider classical poetry to be that of the ancients, and romantic poetry that of those who somehow follow chivalric traditions. This division is also related to the two eras of the world: the one before the establishment of Christianity and the one that followed it.
One can notice how the author announces the understanding that a new generation has of the transcendental historical moment it is living, expressed with the term romantique or romantisme, "a name that combines the present with its autochthonous origin, with the Christian Middle Ages, and at the same time departs from classical Antiquity as an unrecoverable past" (Jauss).
The development and apotheosis of French romanticism, which took place between 1820 and 1850, has conspicuous names: Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), whose Poetic Meditations; Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), narrator, playwright and poet of extensive work, where are recognized, for example, his poems of the four Nights and his novel The confession of a son of the century; Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), poet, novel and critic (which we will deal with when we speak of a later literary movement); Alejandro Dumas, father (1802-1870), playwright and prolific novelist, author of the famous The Count of Montecristo.
Among the most culminating are Victor Hugo and Gérard de Nerval, who have perhaps exerted the greatest influence on later modern literature.
Victor Hugo: the lyrical and the grotesque
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is undoubtedly the giant figure of French romanticism. His prolific literary production includes poetry, novel, essay and drama. Of the former, books can be named as The Orientals (1829), * The Autumn Leaves* (1831), * The Inner Voices* (1837) and Contemplations (1856). Of the latter, a poem:
Happy is he who deals with eternal destiny
and, traveler who departs with the lights of dawn,
wakes up, even the swarming soul of dreams
and already at dawn he prays and reads. The day is born
slowly, as you go through the pages,
and dawns in the sky and in his mind at the same time.
Clearly distinguishes in that pale light
what exists in his bedroom, what exists in itself;
everything sleeps in the house, he supposes to be alone
and yet sealing his lips with a finger,
on his back, and at the same time he gets drunk with ecstasy.
over the book the angels bow smiling.
In his novel, two very well known angels stand out: Our Lady of Paris(1831) and The Miserable (1862), novels that have exerted an enormous influence on later literature, and have been versioned several times in theatre, cinema and television.
It was in the theatre where Victor Hugo consolidated his modern aesthetic position. It is worth mentioning two that constituted pillars in his proposal of literary renovation and transgression: Cromwell (1827) and Hernani (1830). For the first Hugo wrote a preface where the main philosophical, aesthetic and literary approaches of his proposal are brought together. We will cite some fragments:
The modern muse will see everything from a higher and wider point of view; she will understand that everything in creation is not humanly beautiful, that the ugly exists next to it, that the deformed is close to the graceful, that the grotesque is the reverse of the sublime, that evil is confused with good and shadow with light.
In the thought of the modern, on the contrary, the grotesque plays a very important role. It mixes in everything; on the one hand it creates the deformed and the horrible, and on the other it creates the comical and the humorous.
Reality results from the combination of the two types, the sublime and the grotesque, which are found in drama, as they are found in life and in creation. True poetry, complete poetry consists of the harmony of opposites. (...) everything that exists in nature is within art.
Gérard de Nerval: poetry of melancholy and madness
Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855) has been considered by critics to be the purest and most brilliant of the French Romantic poets, and the most modern (Pujol). His literary work ˗nada abundant, but intensa˗ of great transcendence in itself, came to influence later movements and the literary avant-garde of the twentieth century, such as surrealism. His fundamental books are The Enlightened (1852), The Chimeras (1854), The daughters of fire (1854) and Aurelia or The Dream and Life (1855). His friend the poet Gautier went so far as to say of him: "he liked to wrap himself in mystery", "he seemed to indulge in absent himself, (...), in disconcerting the reader". He was touched by his impossible love for the actress Jenny Colon, by poverty, by his search for remoteness on journeys, he would have a crisis of dementia, which would end in suicide.
Perhaps the most characteristic poem of his vision (the most widespread and cryptic) is "El desdichado" (title written in Spanish in the original). Many interpretations, even psychoanalytic, have been attempted on him, such as Kristeva's one. I transcribe it in its entirety below:
I am the dark one, the widower, the heartbroken one,
The Prince of Aquitaine of the abolished tower,
My only star is dead, and my constellated lute
He wears the black sun of Melancholy.
In the night of the tomb, you who comforted me,
Give me back the Pausilipo and the sea of Italy,
The flower that so pleased my desolate love,
And the vine where the rose branch is allied.
Am I Love or am I Febo? Lusignan or Biron?
My forehead is still red from the queen's kiss;
I slept in the grotto where the mermaid swims...
And twice triumphant I crossed the Acheron;
Modulating one after the other in the lyre of Orpheus
The sighs of the saint and the cries of the fairy.
Bibliographic references
Jauss, Hans Robert (2000). *Literature as provocation. Spain: Peninsula.
Kristeva, Julia (1997). Black sun. Depression and melancholy. Venezuela: Monte Ávila Editores.
French Romantic poets. Anthology. (1999). Introduction by Carlos Pujol. Spain: Planeta.
Riquer, Martin de and Valverde, José M. (1979). History of Universal Literature (Volume III). Spain: Planeta.
With this delivery, which I hope will have some benefit for you, dear readers, I close the cycle related to romanticism in its origins and pillars of literary modernity. I will then continue with those movements and personalities that provide the later foundations of modern literature. I thank you for your attention, and
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