Los Amantes de Teruel | Page 8

the accumulated wisdom of mankind or to reform social, moral, or political conditions by means of ridicule, he accepted logic as his guide. The Romanticist, whose aim it was to express his individual sentiments and ideas, rebelled against the restraints of logic and common sense; his purpose was not to persuade his reader or hearer by logical reasoning, but rather to carry him off his feet by the onrush of his passions and sentiments. The Classicist mistrusted the imagination for fear that it might lead him away from common sense and moderation; the Romanticist turned to it eagerly as the most effective means of conveying to reader or hearer his ardent sentiments and vague aspirations. For the reason then that the Classicist made his appeal to the intellect, mistrusted the imagination, and usually avoided all strong passions except that of indignation, Classicism tended to become more and more prosaic. Romanticism, because of its appeal to the emotions and to the imagination, put new life and power into literature, and immeasurably widened its range. On the other hand the tendency on the part of writers of little ability and less judgment to go to absurd extremes in their efforts to express strange and original ideas and sentiments, to get as far away as possible from the logical and commonplace, led to the production of much absurd writing. This and the attempt of many of them to apply the extreme principles of Romanticism to daily life as well as to literature resulted in the derogatory sense that the word romantic came to have in its ordinary acceptation. The results of Romanticism in its exaggerated form may be seen in the satirical article written in 1837 by Mesonero Romanos, El Romanticismo y los Románticos. This article, highly recommended in this connection, may easily be found in his collected writings Obras, Madrid, 1881, or, better still, it may be studied in the excellent edition of Professor G.T. Northup, Selections from Mesonero Romanos.
3. Spiritual awakening. The latter half of the eighteenth century was a materialistic age. The realities of life were limited to such as could be understood by the five senses and the reasoning faculty. Life and literature for the Classicist meant reasoned submission to things as they were; achievement was the accepted basis of judgment for his life or literature. The Romanticist rebelled against this materialistic view of life; for him the real truths lay beyond the apparent realities; he grasped at the impalpable and infinite, and wished to have his life and literature judged by his aspirations, rather than by his achievements. Hence, too, the vague longings, the gentle melancholy or violent revolt, the spiritual uplift. The new sense of the wonder and glory of the universe, as well as the spiritual reality behind the material, has suggested as a definition of Romanticism the "Renascence of Wonder."
4. Revival of the Middle Ages and national traditions. The Romanticists were inclined to turn away from the prosaic present and to seek material for their writings in the Middle Ages, the time of unrestrained feelings and emotions, of chivalrous adventure and romance, of strong religious faith, of miracles and superstition. The historical novel, in which the powerful imagination of a Walter Scott made the past live again, became popular throughout Europe; innumerable dramas sought their plots in medieval history and legend. Spain, with her rich literature of popular ballads and drama, a storehouse of picturesque legends and traditions, attracted the attention of Romanticists everywhere, so that for Spaniards the movement came to have a patriotic significance. The best Romanticists did not limit themselves to the Middle Ages; they broadened their vision to include the whole past of the human race, whereas the Classicists, fixing their eyes steadily upon ancient Greece and Rome, whenever they were inclined to turn away from the present, ignored entirely the medieval period and the early modern.
5. Picturesqueness. Seeking to give polished expression to the probable and typical, the Classicist abhorred exaggeration and violent contrasts. The Romanticist, on the other hand, was attracted to the grotesque, mingled the ugly and the beautiful, the commonplace and the fantastic; he delighted in striking antitheses.
6. Love of inanimate nature. The Classicist, instead of going directly to Nature for individual inspiration, was content to repeat in new ways the generally accepted ideas regarding natural scenery. His interest lay almost wholly in mankind, so that inanimate Nature usually served as a merely conventional background. The Romanticist loved Nature for its own sake, and many masterpieces of lyric poetry were due to its inspiration. He loved Nature in all her aspects and moods; if these were grandiose or violent, the greater was his admiration.
7. Freedom from rule and conventionality in literary forms and technique. The foregoing characteristics, concerned mainly with the content of Romantic literature, would naturally