From Romantic Movement to Postmodern Style:
A Reflection on Our Fin-de-Siècle Art of Literature
Chung-hsuan Tung
Abstract
The history of Western literature is a dualistic history. It begins with two separate traditions: Hellenism and Hebraism. The spirits or values these two traditions represent seldom blend equally at any supposed period of the history. The Classical period and the Modernist movement are dominated by Hellenistic qualities whereas the Romantic period and the Postmodern movement are dominated by Hebraic spirits. In fact, the Postmodern style seems to be the result of pushing the Romantic movement, with its Hebraic/Dionysian tendencies, to an extreme. Many Postmodern characteristics can be traced back logically to Romantic attributes. This logical inference can be confirmed through factual evidence. After considering the seven factors—world, medium, language, author, reader, work, and theme—involved in literature as a means of communication, we cannot but admit that the Romantic spirit of loving freedom, change and difference has really brought about the Postmodern style, the fin-de-siècle trend of worshiping Chaos, of anti-form, anti-art, anti-literature. But this, we can predict, is likewise only a phase of the changing history. When the Hellenistic/Apollonian values become dominant again, the golden age of art may return with a new vigor.
Key words and phrases:
Dualism, Hellenism, Hebraism, Apollonian, Dionysian, Romantic movement, Postmodernism, fin-de-siècle
I.A Dualistic History
The recorded history of Western literature has been generally assumed to begin with two separate traditions: Hellenism and Hebraism. This assumption is a dualism by nature, as it reduces all possible sources to two elements. This dualism, furthermore, implies the co-existence of two mutually opposing cultures: the Greek and the Judaic. Various differences between the two cultures have been pointed out. The Greek culture is said, for instance, to be secular, aesthetic and hedonistic while the Judaic culture is religious, ethic, and ascetic. But the differences are capable of being reduced to two contrasting terms indicating not only the characteristics of human societies but also the psychic components of human beings. Matthew Arnold in his Culture and Anarchy, for instance, attributes “spontaneity of consciousness” to Hellenism and “strictness of conscience” to Hebraism (chapters IV & V).
Reduction entails oversimplification, no doubt. But it also brings about clarity. All dualistic thinkers, including Arnold, seek to clarify matters by reducing all structural elements to two ultimate ones. Thus history is for them but a matter of changing the dominant, to use a later Russian Formalist idea, between the competing two. The nineteenth-century England, for instance, was for Arnold dominated by the strict moral code of Hebraism. Hence his call for more Hellenism.
Hellenism is sometimes equated to Classicism. Therefore, one can thus talk of Western history:
The reintroduction of Classical learning through the Moslem
conquests in Spain is a partial explanation of the ensuing Renaissance
when Classicism seemed to be dominant. The Reformation is
explainable as a resurgence of Hebraic religious feeling. The
Neo-Classic Age and the following period of the Enlightenment
were inspired by Classical models, but the theories of the
Romantic Movement and of many of the nineteenth century German
philosophers emphasize the intuitive approach to knowledge upon
which Hebraism was built. (Horton & Hopper 4)
The quotation above embeds, in fact, another popular set of dualistic terms: Classicism vs. Romanticism. Here Romanticism is obviously linked to Hebraism while Classicism is associated with Hellenism. But, as we know, the Classic/Romantic dualism is popular only after the so-called Romantic Movement.
II. The Classic/Romantic Contrast
Western historians often regard the Romantic Movement as a reaction to Neoclassicism, and set the period of its triumph within the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But to replace the old binary opposition (Hellenism/Hebraism) with the new one (Classicism/Romanticism) is to further complicate the dualistic contrasts. Now it suggests not simply the contrasts between secularity and religiosity, aesthetics and ethics, or hedonism and asceticism. It also suggests many other contrasts, and some of the contrasts may not accord with the discriminations that go with the dichotomy of Hellenism vs. Hebraism.
One scholar, for instance, lists ten contrasting items between Romanticism and Classicism as follows:
ROMANTICISM versus CLASSICISM
1. emotional appeal instead of appeal to reason
2. the subjective point the objective point
of view instead of of view
3. an individual a normal and typical
approach instead of approach
4. dissatisfaction suspicion and horror
with the known instead of of the unconventional
and unknown
5. experimentation clear and ordered ex-
with musicality and instead of pression and form, a
color in expression belief in beauty of
measured precision
6. emphasis on feelings emphasis on content
and emotional instead of and idea
reactions
7. emphasis on the emphasis on the
immeasurable and instead of measurable and the
undetermined determined
8. importance of par- importance of uni-
ticular and indivi- instead of versal thoughts
dual thought and ideas
9. love of external love of man’s accom-
nature in its wild instead of plishments in taming
and primitive state and controlling the
wild and rebellious
in nature
10. rejection of tradi- acceptance of tradition
tion (except from instead of (of earlier classical
earlier romantic periods--particularly
periods—in parti- those of ancient Greek
cular primitive folk and Roman cultures)
cultures, Renaissance
developments or
idealized historical
associations)
Then he adds: “this list of contrasting qualities might be continued indefinitely, but a list of any length would show the same general desire of the romantic to escape from reality which seems to oppress his aesthetic expression, and to experiment with an ideal more satisfying to the individual, and the contrasting fear of the classic to depart from known and tried norms of form and theme established by settled and prosperous aristocratic groups” (Smith 40).
Indeed, we can gather from numerous literary dictionaries, handbooks, encyclopedias, etc., enough definitions, explanations, and commentaries to explicate the Classic/Romantic dichotomy and can be justified in further asserting that Neoclassicism stresses the general, the urbane, the sensual, the keen and sober while Romanticism stresses the particular, the rustic, the visionary, the dreamy and frenzied; that while Neoclassicism values sense, wit, intellect, decorum, restraint, laws, civilization, tight close form, etc., Romanticism values feeling, imagination, inspiration, sincerity, freedom, caprices, primitivism, loose open form, etc.; that whereas Neoclassicism is head, bright, Apollonian, mimetic, mechanic, static, satiric, and commentary, Romanticism is heart, melancholy, Dionysian, expressive, organic, dynamic, lyric, and prophetic; and finally even that the one is an artificer, a mirror, and a believer in stability and the sinful nature of man while the other is a creator, a lamp, and a believer in mutability and the natural goodness of man.
Yet, as a movement against Neoclassicism, Romanticism has now accumulated so many attributes that it becomes impractical to define it as a critical term.1 Thus, A. O. Lovejoy suggests that the term Romanticism has come to mean nothing at all since it means so many things while Water Raleigh and Arthur Quiller-Couch suggest abandoning the terms “romantic” and “classic” altogether.
III. The Modernist /Postmodernist Dichotomy
After the Romantic Period, Western literature is said to enter the period of Realism and Naturalism. But the slogans “Realism” and “Naturalism” indicate mainly a new methodology of treating art materials. Aiming at a truthful representation of contemporary life and manners, Realism or Naturalism is observational and objective in method, thus more affiliated to Classicism than to Romanticism. Indeed, “truth, contemporaneity, and objectivity were the obvious counterparts of romantic imagination, of romantic historicism and its glorification of the past, and of romantic subjectivity, the exaltation of the ego and the individual” (Mack, et. al., 878). However, the contrast between Romanticism and Realism/Naturalism is not so keenly felt and widely discussed as that between Classicism and Romanticism.
After Realism/Naturalism, Western literature is sometimes said to turn to Symbolism, which is in a way a Romantic revival, as it emphasizes again the power of vision or imagination in its effort to use an image or a cluster of images to suggest (“symbolize”) another plane of reality (“the essence of things”) that cannot be expressed in more direct and rational terms. Yet, the contrast between Symbolism and Realism/Naturalism is also not so widely discussed as that between Classicism and Romanticism. In fact, Symbolism is sometimes regarded as a trend liable to be merged into the so-called Modernism.
“Modernism” is the usual term for the change in attitudes and artistic strategy occurring at the beginning of the twentieth century. “Modernism is an attempt to construct a new view of the world and of human nature through the self-conscious manipulation of form” (Mack 1383). In its broadest sense, Modernism embraces a great number of movements.2 Taken more narrowly, however, Modernism refers to “ a group of Anglo-American writers (many associated with the Imagists, 1908-1917) who favored clear, precise images and ‘common speech’ and thought of the work as an art object produced by consummate craft rather than as a statement of emotion” (Mack 1383). Therefore, Modernism seems to be closer to Classicism than to Romanticism in essence.
But the trouble is: as Modernism continues to develop, it takes in so wide a variety of trends that people begin to find it inadequate to talk of “varieties of Modernism.” In actuality people has found it incumbent on them to discriminate the Postmodernist from the Modernist. In recent years, as we know, many critics have engaged themselves in the hot dispute on whether Postmodernism is a continuity of or a break with Modernism. But before the problem is settled, the Modernist/Postmodernist contrast is already keenly felt and widely discussed.
In his The Dismemberment of Orpheus, Ihab Hassan gives us a table showing the “schematic differences” between Modernism and Postmodernism, thus:
Modernism Postmodernism
Romanticism/Symbolism Pataphysics/Dadaism
Form (conjunctive, closed) Anti-form (disjunctive, open)
Purpose Play
Design Chance
Hierarchy Anarchy
Mastery/Logos Exhaustion/Silence
Art Object/Finished Work Process/Performance/Happening
Distance Participation
Creation/Totalization Decreation/Deconstruction
Synthesis Antithesis
Presence Absence
Centering Dispersal
Genre/Boundary Text/Intertext
Semantics Rhetoric
Paradigm Syntagm
Hypotaxis Parataxis
Metaphor Metonymy
Selection Combination
Root/Depth Rhizome/Surface
Interpretation/Reading Against Interpretation/Misreading
Signified Signifier
Lisible(Readerly) Scriptible (Writerly)
Narrative/Grande Histoire Anti-narrative/Petite Histoire
Master Code Idiolect
Symptom Desire
Type Mutant
Genital/Phallic Polymorphous/Androgynous
Paranoia Schizophrenia
Origin/Cause Difference-Différance/Trace
God the Father The Holy Ghost
Metaphysics Irony
Determinacy Indeterminacy
Transcendence Immanence
(267-8)3
This table tells us that the Modernist/Postmodernist dichotomy is even more complicated than the Classic/Romantic dichotomy, although Hassan’s further explanations try to convince us that all the schematic differences can be reduced to the last two listed items: the contrast of determinacy vs. indeterminacy and that of transcendence vs. immanence.
Hassan admits that the dichotomies his table represents “remain insecure, equivocal” (269). For me the first item in his table is already very puzzling. Why should he let Romanticism/Symbolism be incorporated into Modernism? And why should he think of Romanticism/Symbolism as the counterpart of Pataphysics/Dadaism? But I am not here to puzzle over Hassan’s schematic table. My business is to argue that the Modernist/Postmodernist dichotomy is essentially related to the Classic/Romantic contrast, which in turn is derived from the Hellenistic/Hebraic dualism.
IV. From Romantic Movement to Postmodern Style
Hassan once said: “Orpheus, that supreme maker, was the victim of an inexorable clash between the Dionysian principle, represented by the Maenads, and the Apollonian ideal which he, as poet, venerated. Orpheus is dismembered; but his head continues to sing, and where his limbs are buried by the Muses, the nightingales warble sweeter than anywhere else in the world. The myth of Orpheus may be a parable of the artist at certain times. The powers of Dionysos, which civilization must repress, threaten at these times to erupt with a vengeance. In the process energy may overwhelm order; language may turn into a howl, a cackle, a terrible silence; form may be mangled as ruthlessly as the poor body of Orpheus was ” (ThePostmodern Turn, 13). These statements prove that Hassan is also a dualistic thinker. His Apollonian/Dionysian clash reminds us naturally of Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apollonian (the rational form and repose) and the Dionysiac (the irrational energy and ecstasy). This clash, moreover, can be connected with Freud’s division of the conscious/unconscious human psyche, as it talks of the repression of civilization and the process of energy overwhelming order. But it is likewise justifiable to associate this clash with the Hellenistic/Hebraic dualism and the Classic/Romantic contrast as it is basically a clash between the aesthetic/hedonistic and the ethic/ascetic tendencies; and between the cult of reason /sense/ rationality and the cult of instinct/feeling/sentimentality.
In truth, Hassan’s Apollonian/Dionysian clash also typifies the Modernist/Postmodernist conflict. In Hassan’s mind, the Postmodern times are those when Orpheus is dismembered, form is mangled, and language turns into a howl, a cackle, a terrible silence, or those when Dionysos triumphs over Apollo. So they are akin to the Romantic period when emotional appeal predominates over the Classical appeal to reason or intellect. For me, in fact, the Postmodern style is no other than the result of pushing the Romantic Movement to its extreme. This postulate of mine can be verified through logical thinking and factual studies.
Our logical thinking can be plied on the spiritual shifts from Romanticism to Postmodernism. First, we all assume that love of freedom is a Romantic spirit. This spirit makes all Romantic heroes hate any restraint and seem rebellious at times. Now, we may ask: if one exercises one’s freedom to an extreme, what is the result? Will freedom become waywardness? Indeed, the negating or subverting waywardness we find in the Postmodern style can be looked upon as the consequence of seeking extreme freedom.
Second, we all know Romanticism values spontaneity. Romantic artists wish to refrain from artifice. They hope poetry can come to them “as naturally as the leaves to a tree.”4 Now, what is the result of total spontaneity, of sheer natural impulse? Isn’t it the same as the preclusion of any definite aim, reason or pattern, the same as simply letting things occur; the same as, in another word, letting randomness prevail--an apparent characteristic of Postmodern art?
Third, how about the Romantic emotionality? If one completely lets loose one’s temper or emotions, will not one bring about perversity or absurdity, another apparent characteristic of the Postmodern style?
Fourth, we may think of Romantics’ focus on change. What will be one’s world view if one comes to recognize the truth that “Naught may endure but Mutability”?5Will it not approximate the Postmodernists’ doctrine of indeterminacy?
Fifth, if we turn to Romantics’ individualism, we will find it makes their works highly autobiographical, confessional, and subjective. In effect, their subjectivity often tinges their worlds so much so that it seems their mind has the capacity “to generate itself in the world, to act upon both self and world, and so become more and more, im-mediately, its own environment” (Bertens 29)6--that is, their mind seems to have reached the Postmodern state of “immanence.”
Sixth, the democratic spirit of Romanticism naturally leads to the preference for rusticity and the commonplace. This preference, then, helps to level all artistic genres, making all hierarchical thinkings impossible and establishing the pop culture with its decenteredness, its emphasis on the marginal and the under-privileged, and its aim at mere popularity, which the Postmodern age typifies.
Seventh, we know Romantics tend to rely on their imagination or vision for their creative power. Now, let us imagine what may happen if one is entirely preoccupied with one’s imaginings or visions? Will not one probably be living in a dreamy, unreal, even nightmarish world, a world fraught with nonreferential, Postmodern images?
Eighth, we know Romantics have a predilection for the loose, open form. Now, what form is the most loose and open? Isn’t it a form without any shapes or bounds, an amorphous, boundless anti-form which some Postmodern works often assume?
Ninth, Romanticism extols originality. But can anybody or anything be truly original if to be so is to be entirely different from anybody or anything else, to be derived from nobody or nothing, and to have no trace at all of ever imitating anybody or anything? A truly insightful Romantic, in seeking originality, will soon find that no originality is ever possible. He will even come to the desperate conclusion that we are all too belated, we can no longer be the fountainhead, we can only imitate, revise, or parody--an understanding typical of the Postmodern mentality.