Romanticism Part One: Novels and Plays

             Romanticism is easily my favorite literary period. I feel that I need to say I mean Romanticism, the period from about the late 1700s spanning through the late 1800s (loosely speaking), and not romance literature.  Big difference.  Romance literature has the sexy men on the covers with titles like A Passionate Cowboy or The Licentious Scuba Diver or whatever.  Now, if you want to listen to me ramble about Romanticism for a little bit to gain some context, please read on.  If you want to skip ahead to the books, move past this next part.

            What struck me about Romanticism at first was how ridiculous it was.  In essence, it was a direct reaction against the Enlightenment.  To me, it seemed as though bunch of repressed artists decided they were through with logical thinking and came to the conclusion that the most logical thing that they could do was get rid of logic entirely and listen only to their emotions.  What was incredibly interesting was how it seemed as though the movement went through different phases as it progressed through Europe.  In Germany, people like Goethe or Friedrich Schlegel took what logic they had and used it to ironically defeat logic, God, and the Devil all at once.  This sentiment carried to the repressed aristocracies of England where visionaries like William Blake, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, and so many others toiled in the tumultuous despotism of their society, reaching and fighting for true love, sorrow, and passion.  Romanticism culminated to the extreme as its latecomer, Spain, grabbed hold of the genre and relinquished any semblance of withholding.  Here, we as readers were given José Zorilla’s Don Juan Tenorio, Gustav Adolfo Bécquer’s haunted organ player, and the ever elusive green-eyed woman, all bursting at the seams with desire and entirely unbridled passion.

            Romanticism is the movement that told poets, authors, and artists everywhere that that they didn’t need to listen to anyone but themselves, and in that their emotions reigned supreme.  The pinnacle of all these emotions climaxed when the people of the time redefined “the sublime.”  To them, sublime was so much more than just something pleasant or a great ska band; it was a blend of beauty, love, and, most importantly, fear, all heightened to their most masochistic.  This sentiment developed so much that in the end, it seemed that the most romantic thing one could to was to commit suicide (which A LOT of these people ended up doing).

            Now, as ridiculous as this all is, I found myself caught up in it.  All of the crazy emotions that these brilliant authors splayed onto their pages were unbelievably relatable!  I found myself nodding to the concept of true love only being possible in death.  I was surprised to find myself agreeing that love and beauty are inevitably tied up in fear and the only thing one can do about that is to stand in awe and write about it.  I loved the ideal that nature was inseparable from the human condition and in order to really understand our emotions, we must look towards the beauty of the world.  I really connected with the fact that in order to write something truly wonderful, one must stumble drunk and aimlessly through the castle-like streets of Toledo, as was obligatory for any great Spanish romantic author.

            Now, rest assured, I recognized the insanity (sometimes literally [cough*, William Blake]) with which these people lived their lives.  I was never suicidal as a result of my obsession with their works.  I never gave logic over to uninhibited passion.  And (unfortunately) I never stumbled aimlessly through the streets of Toledo (although I did have a mighty fine sangria while I was there).  While I never did these things, I think the reason that this literary period in particular affected (affects*) me so much is because I am, by nature, a particularly reserved and guarded person.  Reading breathtaking art from these people who let go any reticence that they may have ever had and just truly feeling was and is delightfully cathartic.  Their extremes help me to meet them somewhere in the middle and take the valuable lessons and morals that exist in the craziness that is Romantic Literature.  Romanticism helps me to feel.

            A quick managerial note, Romanticism is inextricably linked to poetry, so while there are incredible novels and plays, there is an abundance of poetry as well.  In light of that, this blog will be a two-parter, the first being about novels and plays, the second dealing strictly with poetry.  And without further ado, here are five works from Romanticism that everyone should read:

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

            People oftentimes say that you have to pick sides between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.  If you force me to choose, I will pick Wuthering Heights every time.  This is Gothic Romanticism at its finest.  The narrative is framed by a man named Lockwood as he makes his stay at Thrushcross Grange, one of the properties on the gloomy moors owned by the mysterious Mr. Heathcliff.  While he is staying there a woman named Nelly Dean, who has lived and served on the property for years, tells Lockwood the sorrowful tale of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.  As Nelly weaves this story, we as readers are helpless while tragedy after tragedy unfolds.  They are painfully in love with each other, but this love is adulterated by jealousy, rage, aggression, and fear which only gets worse as the story moves from the past to the present with a new generation of characters in the mix.  Bronte brilliantly tells a classic romantic story, while at the same time poking fun at the genre and transcending it altogether.  This book will make your heart break, and then it will make you think, a lot, about why your heart broke and if it’s possible to put the pieces back together. 

Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

            This is my favorite Jane Austen novel.  All of the others are wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but none of them were as singular as this one for me.  Incidentally, this was the first novel that Austen wrote, but was the last to be published shortly after her death in 1817.  As a result of this, it is experimental and innocent by nature.  The story unfolds around the young and impressionable Catherine Morland as she makes her debut into society at Bath, one of England’s resort cities.  As she meets more and more people, she is taken by the slightly older Isabella Thorpe, who shows her the enchanting world of Gothic literature.  Catherine is so enchanted by these stories that when she is invited to stay at Northager Abbey with the Tilney’s, a well-to-do family, she begins to invent all sorts of ghost and murder stories in her mind.  The father, General Tilney takes on the character of a brooding man with a bloody past while his son, Henry Tilney is ascribed the trope of the handsome hero troubled by his family’s ghosts.  As we learn about life and love through Catherine’s eyes, the lines between stories and reality are fantastically blurred and we are left wondering what is true, and what is not.

 

Don Juan Tenorio, by José Zorrilla

            The character “Don Juan” has been reproduced time and time again throughout literature.  He is a shameless hedonist who lives his life with the main goals of conquering as many women as he can and defeating as many other men as he can.  Zorrilla’s Don Juan was the premiere representation of the infamous character from the Romantic period.  Another noteworthy Romantic Don Juan is Lord Byron’s, definitely worth reading, but Zorrilla’s captures Romanticism to the extreme.  The play opens up with Don Juan and another man, Don Luis, conversing in a wine shop in Seville, Spain.  Their conversation is about how many women they have bagged and men that they have killed.  Don Juan wins unquestionably.  At this point, Don Luis makes the observation that Don Juan has never conquered a novice who is on the verge of taking her holy vows.  Don Juan steps up to the challenge, and at that point a flurry of passion, anger, and uncontrolled emotions ensues.  Through Zorrilla’s play, we see that Don Juan is the ultimate Romantic trope; a man with no concern but his immediate gratification and no fear of death except for that it will be yet another adventure.  Filled with masculine bravado of a despicable quantity, this play screams how passion is everything, but then, softly, whispers how fear and humility may be the crucial differences between faceless passion and true love.

 

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

            Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a result of a contest with her brother, Percy Bysshe Shelley, as to who could write the best ghost story.  While Percy definitely has some incredible poetry, Mary Shelley utterly destroyed him in the ghost story competition.  Everyone has heard of the tale of Frankenstein—man makes monster, monster gets out of control, terror ensues— but few people actually take the time to read the masterpiece that is the novel itself.  Using nature and setting as a guide for the major themes of human nature and how it can be tainted to evil, Mary Shelley brilliantly redefines what “sublime” really means and dictates how fear is the underlying emotion behind all of our decisions, not matter how logical we think we are.  Told with bittersweet humanity and chilling prose, the story is narrated by Dr. Frankenstein for a time, and later recounted by the monster himself, who is much more articulate than any Hollywood rendition will lead you to believe.  As readers watch the tale unfold, they will find themselves helpless before tragedy and horror that is spurred by none other than imprudent human ambition.  This will lead them to ask the difference between good and evil, beauty and fear, love and loss, and will guide them to the notion that these dichotomies are not as polarized as we often believe that they are.

 

Faust, by Goethe

            Dr. Faustus is an age old literary character, much like Don Juan.  One of his most famous representations was by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Christopher Marlowe.  Until Goethe got his hands on it, the tale was simple: Dr. Faustus desires knowledge above all else.  In his quest for knowledge, he makes a deal with the devil, in the form of Mephistopheles, who ultimately drags him to hell for being too curious.  A classic, Elizabethan finish.  Goethe takes this character and adds the charm of quintessential German Romanticism, which was all about using logic as a conduit to true expression, an impossible blend of rhetoric and emotion.  Ultimately, Goethe’s Faust makes the same deal with Mephistopheles, but with the caveat that his soul can be taken once he has stopped advancing.  In other words, he relies on his passion for new experiences to stave of his death and damnation for an indefinite eternity.  In this, he dictates who God and the Devil are, he determines how he will carry on, and the fountainhead to all of this is his insatiable desire to learn. Faust explores all sorts of knowledge, unending concepts of relationships (including trying to understand true love), and a vast discovery of what it really means to live.  Composed with unbelievable virtuoso, this is an unforgettable play about the true potential of the human spirit.