French romance
French Romanticism refers to the romantic epoch in French literature and art from the second half of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th century .
Conceptual classification
In addition to the literary movement, “French Romanticism” also means worldview, epoch, school and style. It includes all genres and arts. The chronological classification is between 1750 and 1850.
The current meaning of the word "romantic" differs considerably from that used back then. In English, “romantic” means something like “in the Roman manner”, which in turn referred to “romance”, a literary genre of the Middle Ages that was written in the Romance vernacular instead of Latin and told of heroes and feelings. The German Romantics also associated “romantic” with “medieval” and “Christian”. In France, the Romanticism movement was slow to establish itself compared to its neighboring countries (for reasons which will be explained below).
Romance is generally understood to mean a turn to sensitivity, nature, feeling, the fantastic, dream, the unconscious, sublimates , the past and the exotic. The broad spectrum of these elements illustrates the universal poetic and liberal orientation of romanticism: it wants to include all aspects of human nature and rejects both the exclusion of subjectivity through the Enlightenment, the regularity of the classical period and the relativization of the individual through the revolution.
General
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At the dawn of the 19th century , a new literary generation took the stage and insisted on the renewal of literature. The French Revolution had called the position of the individual in society into question, the previous political and religious order had been destroyed, and the Revolution and Terreur had left traumatic traces. The shackles of the ancien régimes meant liberation as well as isolation and despair for the individual. Traditional normative bodies such as the church had lost their influence, so that writers increasingly saw it as their task to realize a literature that corresponded to the conditions of post-revolutionary society and to break with the still dominant rules of the classical period . A new sensitivity had already arisen in the Enlightenment , which was due to the changed situation of the individual in society. In particular, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's enthusiasm for nature, his tendency to replace reason with feeling and his poetic language gave the post-revolutionary era significant impulses. But the possibilities for artistic development under the Napoleonic regime were limited. Napoleon was well aware of the didactic and moralizing effect of literature and made the writings of the Enlightenment responsible for the revolution and its confusion. He drew the consequence of monitoring the artistic creation of the Empire and suppressing oppositional opinions through censorship. His cultural policy was aimed at bringing about a renaissance of the classical period: it promoted the kind of literature that continued old themes and forms and replaced the present.
As in Germany, there was a revolt against the imitation of antiquity, especially in the late seventeenth century. The discussion began very early in France with the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and was carried to other countries. The real breakthrough came with the plays by Denis Diderot .
Early Romanticism
Two authors who initially welcomed Napoleon's rule, but later came into conflict with him, were François-René de Chateaubriand , who was more conservative-aristocratic, and Anne Louise Germaine de Staël , who was the daughter of former Finance Minister Necker and a liberal Took the view.
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Madame de Staël published De la littérature in 1800 , in which she developed the idea that the history of a literature can only be understood in the context of its social and moral condition. According to Madame de Staël, political institutions, processes, standards of value at certain times, laws, religions, but also geographic location and climate determine the literature of a people. The French literary public was then very Franco-centric; French literature was considered to be the most perfect. Madame de Staël now asserted that French literature was only one of many and that the literatures of the north (especially the English and German) deserved priority because they were melancholy and dreamy, philosophical and liberal. She called on the French to no longer orientate themselves solely to the example of pagan, Mediterranean antiquity , but to the Christian-Germanic culture of the Middle Ages . This was seen as a monstrous provocation. Madame de Staël received very unfriendly reviews. In 1803 she was banned for conspiratorial resistance against Napoleon. She used this time for an extended stay in Germany. a. August Wilhelm Schlegel , whom she hired as private tutor and accepted into her circle of friends at Coppet Castle (Switzerland). Coppet became the center of a lively intellectual exchange, where many leading personalities met and gathered new impulses.
In 1805 Madame de Staël traveled to Italy with Schlegel, where she found inspiration for her novel Corinne (1807). In 1810 her best-known work About Germany ( De l'Allemagne ) appeared, but was immediately banned; Madame de Staël had to go into exile again. In this book she described her impressions of Germany and was enthusiastic about romantic German literature, especially its enthusiasm and seriousness. She summed up that in Germany, despite political impotence and outdated social conditions, a modern literature was created, while France froze in its imitation of classical music. The book was published in France a few years later and many young people were enthusiastic about Germany's fairytale image. Romantic acquired a new meaning and fascination: It was no longer just a synonym for “Christian” and “medieval”, but also for “Germanic”, “popular” and “modern”. De l'Allemagne was to shape the French image of Germany for decades and for a long time to hide the fact that their neighboring country was in the process of becoming a dangerous military power.
François-René de Chateaubriand
Chateaubriand's importance lies primarily in the development of poetological ideas and the enrichment of the French language through previously unknown descriptions of nature. He recognized the importance of the revolution, but saw in it a destruction of the Christian tradition. He himself felt uprooted all his life and was characterized by an inexplicable melancholy. In 1798/99, after severe strokes of fate, he renewed his Christian faith and decided to write an apology for Christianity (which certainly had reasons for his career, as he had envisaged a career as an official and it was known that Napoleon was striving for the reinstitutionalization of the church). In 1802 Le génie du christianisme was published . In this he tried to grasp the cause from the effects: from the beauty of natural phenomena he inferred the existence of God. In addition, he derived the prominent position of Christianity not from its divine origin, but from the attractiveness of the teaching. Only religion can preserve the inner balance of man and create order. The Christian religion inspires the arts through the imagery and beauty of its teaching. The novellas René and Atala were originally intended to appear in the context of this work and illustrate the theses of Génie , but were then removed and published individually. These works were extremely successful and contributed significantly to the re-Christianization.
Breakthrough of romance
After Napoleon's abdication, during the temporary freedom of expression, the public literary discussion and with it the conflict of the ideological fronts ("les deux Frances") resumed: on the one hand there were the ultras (royalists or legitimists who wanted a return of the ancien régime ) which included young aspiring poets such as Victor Hugo , Alphonse de Lamartine and Alfred de Vigny . Their opponents were the liberals like Stendhal and Prosper Mérimée , who preferred a constitutional monarchy. Ironically, it was initially the conservative royalists who firmly advocated a departure from the classic, while the classics were mostly liberals. Only after Charles X came to power (1824) did this change and the Romantics gradually united in so-called “cénacles” with a liberal outlook.
In 1820 Lamartine published his romantic poetry collection Méditations with overwhelming success , the novel poetry of which inspired young people and whose success was continued with Hugos Odes (1822). The Académie française, however, attacked the Romantics sharply, calling them “barbarians” and “ sects ”. This was followed by a literary exchange of blows, which went down in history as the bataille romantique and was mainly carried out around the theater. In 1823 and 1825 Stendhal wrote the essay Racine et Shakespeare , in which he attacked the falseness, rigidity and unnaturalness of classical theater, which he found above all to be boring. He called for a romantic drama in prose (instead of the artificial Alexandrian verse ) that should break with the classic rules of the three units and thus be able to depict contemporary conflicts and epochs. He equated romanticism with modernity and stated that all great poets were romantics in their day.
In 1827 Hugo wrote the piece Cromwell , the preface of which became a manifesto of Romanticism, as it excellently illustrated her theses. In this he also called for a modern drama by setting up the three-age theory, according to which the poetry of prehistoric times, the epic of antiquity and the drama of the modern age belong. Above all, he propagated a “mélange des genres” that combines epic, drama and lyric poetry - all aspects of human nature should be integrated, the beautiful and the ugly as well as the sublime and grotesque . He praised Christianity because it understood the duality of man, a being composed of two elements (the beautiful and the ugly). Hugo claimed complete poetic freedom for himself. The climax of the dispute between classics and romantics was the "bataille d'Hernani" on the occasion of the performance of the play Hernani by Hugo, in which supporters of his romantic cénacles fought loudly in the audience and won an overwhelming victory.
The second generation of romance
In 1830 there were further political and social upheavals due to the July Revolution ; the first-generation romantics were now established. While the position of the individual in society and the reproduction of his passionate states of mind were the focus of early Romanticism, the growing social conflicts in the course of industrialization prompted some of the romantics such as Victor Hugo and Alphonse de Lamartine to turn to social problems. The younger poets ( "second generation") such as Theophile Gautier , Paul de Musset and Charles Nodier , however, were after the seizure of the deeply disappointed them hated bourgeoisie. They demonstrated their contempt to the outside through provocative behavior, clothing, etc. The increasing commercialization of art often forced them to pursue journalistic activities in order to earn money - a circumstance which they themselves hated. In contrast to the concept of l'art social , they developed a direction of the more elitist l'art pour l'art , art for art's sake (and not out of consideration for society). Ultimately, the romantic drama failed, which became obvious after the failure of Hugos Les Burgraves (1843). On the one hand, it could not establish itself with the public, because they were bourgeois and more inclined towards classical music; on the other hand, the censorship did not allow the complete implementation of the contemporary romantic drama (Hugos Marion Delorme and Le roi s'amuse were banned).
Works
The romantic works themselves are very different; What they have in common, however, is an increased sensitivity, enthusiasm for nature, a subjectivism that focuses on the “I”, melancholy and a turn to the past.
In the early romantic period, a strong uncertainty in genre issues can still be recognized: Chateaubriand's René and Atala are difficult to classify récits between novel and novella, and the epistle novel Oberman by Étienne Pivert de Senancour , published in 1804, even denies in the foreword that it is a novel. The plot in René and Atala is not very complex, rather the emotionally excited state of the heroes is reproduced. In Oberman one can no longer speak of an action at all: the protagonist writes to a (possibly imaginary) recipient who remains just as obscure as other characters. While Oberman travels to Switzerland, he indulges in philosophical reflections, which he immortalized in his letters.
Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, the heroes of the works mentioned exemplify the typically romantic hero: both Oberman and René are haunted by a “tristesse d'une vague profonde”, an inexplicable melancholy that drives them from one place to another, makes them despair and condemned to inaction. The cause of this state of mind is the "mal du siècle", the disease of the century, triggered by the trauma of the revolution, the unresolved conflicts of society.
Chateaubriand wanted to illustrate the theses from Génie du christianisme with René and Atala : they illustrate the contrast between the modern human condition and the harmony that only the Christian faith can convey. Only submission to Christian norms can give individuals a useful place in society. Some contradictions also come to light: the Père Souel's condemnation of Renés “mal du siècle” is far too casual to appear essential, and Christianity is more of a tragedy for Atala , even if this is criticized as fanaticism. Typically romantic in René , Atala and Oberman are the enthusiastic descriptions of nature, the evocation of certain moods that underline the state of the characters' soul (for example, the church service is accompanied by the sunrise, the agony of Atala with a terrible thunderstorm, etc.).
Madame de Staël in Corinne pursues a different topic . She describes the adjustment problems of an extremely talented young woman who is superior to her environment in every respect and who, under the pressure of society, finds no way to combine her claim to artistic activity with a fulfilled love life. The main characters serve as representatives of a certain political-cultural model: Corinne stands for Catholicism , Italy and freedom, while Lord Oswald embodies the politically liberal, but spiritually repressive England. The novel not only tells the tragic love story of the two young people, but also familiarizes them with the culture, religion and morals of Italy, which are then compared with the culture of England and France through philosophical considerations. This conception consequently calls for a departure from the “roman personnel” and is told in the third person.
Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) is the best-known and perhaps most misunderstood work of French Romanticism, due to the title The Hunchback of Notre-Dame , which was later changed in other countries and which led to the concentration of attention on the figure of Quasimodo. In contrast to the romantic theater, where Hugo was unable to implement his ambitions adequately, Notre-Dame reflects the ideas of the “Préface de Cromwell” very precisely. The rejection of classical music becomes clear in the first part, when the audience prefers to watch the fool's parade rather than Gringoire's boring classical piece. The mixing of the sublime and the grotesque, the beautiful and the ugly is personified, for example, by the juxtaposition of the deformed bell ringer and the graceful Esmeralda. The cathedral, however, is the real main character of the novel: it unites all characters and forms the threshold between the end of the Middle Ages and the dawning of modern times. It is the first novel to put the masses at the center of the plot; the inhuman clergy (Claude Frollo) is symbolically punished by falling to their death. Above all, the novel is a plea for Gothic architecture, which was threatened by vandalism in the early 19th century . Due to the great success of Notre-Dame de Paris , public interest in the cathedral increased and it could be saved from deterioration.
Romance and realism
Under the influence of positivism and the advance of science, a realistic trend in literature developed parallel to romanticism from 1830, which rejected metaphysical speculation and thus also the unreal emotional world of the romantics and their subjectivism. Nevertheless, Romanticism deserves the merit of having actively dealt with the needs of its time and promoting the detachment from traditional traditions. Romanticism was thus an important stage on the way to modern literature.
literature
- Wolfram Krömer : The French Romanticism . Scientific Book Society , 1975.
- Isabelle Grob: The French Romanticism . GRIN Verlag , 2008.
- Winfried Engler : The French Romanticism . Gunter Narr Verlag , 2003.