Black romance
The black romanticism (also Schauerromantik, negative romanticism or dark romanticism) was an undercurrent that emerged within the romanticism at the end of the 18th century.
Characteristics
Black Romanticism is characterized by the fact that it particularly emphasizes irrational, melancholy traits and is also fascinated by the design of human insanity and " evil " - turning away from the enlightenment guided by reason and as a reaction to the horrors of the French Revolution . Artists and authors of the current dealt with the other side of human existence, whereby their works showed a dark and resigned or even macabre, eerily demonic to satanic character. Often a refined-decadent aestheticism in the erotic-sensitive and exaggerated- morbid served to describe extravagant, excessive behavior and fantastic, grotesque phenomena .
It found expression in literature , but also in the fine arts - the boundaries between the joy of the picturesque and the longing for death are fluid, so that the black romanticism cannot be clearly distinguished from the mainstream romanticism. The exhibition “Black Romanticism from Goya to Max Ernst” from September 2012 to January 2013 in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, on the other hand, counted in addition to the a. a. Johann Heinrich Füssli in England, Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Blechen in Germany, the Swiss Arnold Böcklin , the Norwegian Edvard Munch among the painters-representatives of the Black Romanticism - but also cinematic works like Der müde Tod ( Fritz Lang ), Nosferatu ( FW Murnau ), Dracula ( Tod Browning ) or Vampyr by Carl Theodor Dreyer , photographs (e.g. by Brassaï ), sculptures (e.g. works by Paul Dardé , Jean-Joseph Carriès , Christian Behrens ) and operas such as Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber found consideration and recognition here.
development
Late 18th century was formed in England the lurid literature ( Gothic Novel ) as its own style out. The romantic novel Nachtwachen , published by Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann in 1804 under the pseudonym »Bonaventura«, was strongly influenced by this type of English poetry . From black romanticism and horror literature, in turn, modern horror literature developed in the 19th century .
Motifs
The following main motifs of Black Romanticism are listed in the order of the approximate degree of anxiety from "light" (above) to "strong" (below).
- Longing , window motif , wanderlust , Escapism , hiking motif , Wanderlust , somnambulism
- Nature (e.g. hiking trails, mountains, caves, deep waters, dark forests, lonely clearings; but also symbolic animals, plants and natural phenomena such as fog, moonlight, thunderstorms)
- night
- Walls (e.g. castles, haunted castles, monasteries, dungeons, cellar vaults, crypts, haunted houses , artificial ruins , ruin architecture , cemeteries , false cemeteries )
- The evil
- Church , theology , religion , but also doubts about faith and philosophy
- Fantastic
- Mythical creatures (e.g. elves , fairies , ghosts , revenants , demons , shape shifters )
- doppelganger
- Femmes fatales
- Parascience , parapsychology , alchemy , magic , necromancy , occultism , satanism , witchcraft , magnetism
- Paraphilic eroticism , sadomasochism , perversion
- Drugs (e.g. alcohol , opium , morphine , mushroom extracts, animal elixirs)
- ( Night ) dream and reality
- Melancholy , depression , resignation , despair , longing for death
- Hysteria , obsession , madness
- Decay
- suicide
- death
Literary representatives and example works
- Marquis de Sade (1740-1814): Justine
- Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853): The Runenberg
- Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818): The Monk (1796)
- ETA Hoffmann (1776–1822): The Elixirs of the Devil , The Sandman
- Charles R. Maturin (1780-1824): Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
- Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859): Grimm's fairy tales
- Lord Byron (1788-1824): Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
- Mary Shelley (1797-1851): Frankenstein
- Victor Hugo (1802-1885): The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
- Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855): Aurélia
- Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849): The Fall of the House of Usher
- Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867): The flowers of evil
- Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880): The temptation of St. Anthony
- Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909): Tristram of Lyonesse
literature
- Mario Praz : love, death and the devil. The black romance . dtv, Munich 1963, ISBN 342304375X (standard work)
- Karin Gollesch: Night Pages. The "Black Romanticism" in German-speaking prose. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 2004
- André Vieregge: Night Pages. The literature of the black romanticism , dissertation, Uni Kiel 2007, also: Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2008, ISBN 9783631577004
- Frank Bruno Wild: Suicidal Metaphors. Transcendent Melancholy in the Age of Black Romanticism. Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 9783830065289
- Felix Krämer (ed.). Black romance from Goya to Max Ernst. Catalog for the exhibition at the Städel Museum Frankfurt, September 26, 2012 to January 20, 2013. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2012
