The problem with the Romantics

A star dying for us to exist is beautiful enough

Imlisanen Jamir

Radicalism, individualism, liberty of the human soul (if there is such a thing) and a general revolt against the aristocratic norms of enlightened Europe. The human spirit and its link to nature with all its grotesque beauty is put forth here. The freedom of the individual and particularly that of the artist is propounded. Humanity seemed to have taken a tremendous leap towards freethinking and liberty. 

The unsophisticated common man, with all his cognitive and perceptive faculties is taken into consideration by the artist. The beauty of the natural world is understood through a painful yet harmonious and delightful process. Aristocratic reason is abandoned and the long human journey to the transcendent and the numinous, as Rudolf Otto puts it; is undertaken. This journey would finally lead to an end, which "Reason" would conform to. An end that unravels the musical violence, pain and beauty in nature, man and finally in the human experience. This could not be an unfair summation of the Romantics. Does such a movement not sound invigorating and liberating at the same time? It might at the first glance.

John Keats once wrote a poem attacking Issac Newton for his gravitational theory. Keats proclaimed that it had unwoven the rainbow or had taken the magic out of the rainbow. Of course, Keats was wrong, as it was actually Theodoric of Frieberg who discovered that rainbows were prismatic. However the general disdain for objective reason in the romantics is showcased here. This disdain is not undesirable at the very least. On one hand it questions the very faculty of reason as we know it. It also focuses on that wonderful transcendent quality that always seems to grip humanity every single time "Boring Reason and Rationality" take over. Now, all of the above points are fine.

It is all well and good to question logic and reason. But the danger arises when one begins to abandon rationality as an entity in itself. Of course the romantics disapproved of didactic and dictatorial norms by which to govern and understand existence. But the Romantic process mentioned in the previous paragraph has the tendency to lead to this very dictatorial notion of the universe. To abandon rationality is to abandon the innate human curiosity for a truth lying in the open. It was this very abandonment of rationality that caused the genocide of tens of thousands of Muslims in the crusades, the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis, the burning of about eight million women as witches throughout medieval Europe. It brings into question the liberating trait of the Romantic Movement; does it not?

Getting back to the premise of Keats accusation; without Newton or Theodoric, we would not have any idea about the beauty and variety of the spectrum, and the various ways in which it can be replicated. Hence, far from unweaving the rainbow, they make the rainbow absolutely real to everybody. Real not in terms of a materialistic understanding but in terms of an existential yet appreciative understanding of nature and hence humanity. 

There is no denying the fact that there is an innate human need for the transcendent or the ecstatic. However, this need does not require an absolute abandonment of rationality. This recourse to poetry, music, love etc; which cannot be quantified but are essential; does not require a bohemian repulsion of reason. There is plenty of transcendental beauty and violence in the rational world. For instance, we are all made of stardust. Ponder upon the ‘fact’ that a star had to die for me to write this piece and for you to read it. A reality that is backed by science, reason and rationality. Is that not beauty enough? 

 



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