Richard Winkel was a genius and his wife adored him. She had devoted herself to this extraordinary composer and his sublime music for twenty wonderful years. No sacrifice was too great for her as she abandoned herself to this brilliant and world-famous figure.

She had cocooned him in a blissful state of nirvana. Nothing should irritate or fluster the Great Man as he composed those magnificent operas. Children and uninvited guests would never penetrate to Richard’s inner sanctum. Cosima was always there to protect him from philistines and waspish intruders.

Thousands of music lovers were moved to tears as they listened to Richard’s hauntingly beautiful music. Somehow the divine spoke directly through the master’s compositions and the miseries of ordinary lives were momentarily forgotten. For this was salvation of a kind; albeit ephemeral and transitory.

One fine spring day in 1871 Richard and Cosima had decided to accept an invitation to visit their old friends Cora and Friedrich Bernstein. They knew that they would always be welcome. Friedrich was a prosperous banker and his wife Cora enjoyed spending his vast wealth.

As soon as they arrived, the eccentric composer decided to climb up the front of the moneylender’s mansion! “How wonderful to see a genius at play,” they thought to themselves. As soon as this task was accomplished Richard proceeded to climb the tallest tree in the garden. How they laughed and giggled! The master then entered the house, climbed the stairs and slid down the banisters! Finally he stood on his head in the living room in comical mode. The genius was not only a composer but a clown and an acrobat. ‘Heaven sent’ was one of the many comments made by the admiring servants.

During the evening meal, Richard had promised a young scullery maid that he would meet her in a broom cupboard at nine o’clock. At five minutes before the hour he excused himself and begged permission to take an early bath. He was, he claimed, feeling exhausted and overcome by his own genius. His wife and the welcoming couple murmured agreement and heartfelt sympathy.

Now that the Exalted One had left the dining room, conversation could become rather less constrained and constricted. Richard insisted on talking without interruption and this was not always easy for his listeners.

Friedrich was the first to speak. “I am delighted to inform you all that Richard has borrowed 15,000 marks from me and he refuses to pay it back. I am privileged and honoured by this criminal negligence.”

Cora was also full of revelations. “It has been truly invigorating to have had such a passionate affair with Richard and I should like to thank both Cosima and Friedrich for permitting this happy union.”

Cosima beamed with pride. “That’s the supreme sacrifice that I make for Richard. He has condescended to spend so much time with us even though he is not of this world. I am overjoyed, dearest Friedrich, that my husband has stolen not only your wife but your money as well.”

Friedrich was in decidedly philosophical mode and he warmed to his theme. “We uncreative mortals must always obey the common currency of morality but it is the unique vocation of the Great Artist to break as many of the Ten Commandments as he possibly can during the course of his life. I know full well that Richard is enjoying an assignation with Dora, the scullery maid, at this very moment and I pray that he will be fully satisfied by this encounter.”

Cora was bursting to speak. “I am truly in raptures that our Great Composer can enjoy so many young lovely maidens at his mature age.”

Just then the door opened. Richard was looking flustered and slightly furtive.

“Congratulation on being a genius” they chorused cheerfully. “Would you like to talk at us for several more hours while we take copious notes?”

End of Parable

The French Revolution gave birth to violent ideologies that promised a golden future. Eliminate aristocrats and priests and hey presto paradise is just around the corner. Notice how secular and atheist this mindset is. We no longer need God and his gracious promise of love and forgiveness. Rational, autonomous men and women can seize the day and create paradise on earth. 

Romantic men and women were profoundly troubled and disturbed by the bloodshed and barbaric cruelty of the reign of terror. They heard many stories of butchery and decapitation and their faith in secular progress was shattered. Instead of liberte, egalite, and fraternite, a terrifying police state was born. The golden age had manifestly refused to become historical fact. Secular hope had turned into a bloodbath.

Sensitive, thoughtful people began to grasp the implications of the Enlightenment manifesto. When we reduce the whale to its mass, size and weight, we inhabit a disenchanted and denuded cosmos. Bacon’s longing to torture nature and rob her of her secrets aroused fear and foreboding in the minds of many romantics. The famous poet William Wordsworth communicated this new mindset in his poem The Tables Turned

                                                One impulse from a vernal wood
                                                May teach you more of man,
                                                Of moral evil and of good,
                                                Than all the sages can.

                                                Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
                                                Our meddling intellect
                                                Misshapes the beauteous forms of things –
                                                We murder to dissect.

                                                Enough of Science and of Art;
                                                Close up those barren leaves;
                                                Come forth, and bring with you a heart
                                                That watches and receives. 1

Rene Descartes and Condorcet would not have enjoyed this poem. Picture the two lads approaching nature with evil intent. Imagine the two philosophers threatening nature with machetes, and sharp, pointy instruments. The enemy must be disarmed, dissected and tamed. Wordsworth was having none of it. He invites us to cuddle Nature with a capital N and whisper words of love. Embrace Nature tenderly and she will pour forth her wisdom and her wit. Sharp intellects must give way to sympathetic hearts. Scientific brutality must be replaced by poetic tenderness. This is the very essence of the romantic movement.

It will be instructive to consider the kind of people that romantics abhor. Consider the following Monty Python sketch:

“June 4th, 1973 was much like any other summer’s day in Peterborough and Ralph Mellish, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on his way to work as usual when - nothing happened! Scarcely able to believe his eyes, Ralph Mellish looked down, but one glance confirmed his suspicions: behind a bush, on the side of the road, there was no severed arm, no dismembered trunk of a man in his late fifties, no head in a bag – nothing, not a sausage! For Ralph Mellish this was not to be the start of any trail of events which would not, in no time at all, involve him in neither a tangled knot of suspicion nor any web of lies, which would - had he been not uninvolved - surely have led him to no other place than the Central Criminal Court of the Old Bailey. But it was not to be!
Ralph Mellish reached his office in ...[name] Street, Peterborough, at 9.05 a.m.., exactly the same time he usually got in.

ENID: Morning, Mr. Mellish.

MELLISH: Morning, Enid.

Enid, a sharp-eyed, clever young girl, who had been with the firm for only four weeks, couldn't help noticing the complete absence of tiny, but telltale blood stains on Mr. Mellish's clothing. Nor did she notice anything strange in Mr Mellish’s behaviour that whole morning, nor the next morning nor at any time before or since the entire period she worked with that firm.

MELLISH: Have the new paper clips arrived, Enid?

ENID: Yes, they are over there, Mr Mellish.

MELLISH: Oh.” 2

Mr Mellish, the file clerk, is hopelessly unromantic. His way of life breathes drabness predictability and uniformity. He is the embodiment of the faceless bureaucrat who wastes his life counting and classifying paper clips. We have all met people like this. Further to this, romantic poets were disillusioned with the ugliness and heartlessness of the industrial system. They argued that the factory worker was in danger of being degraded to the role of a mere cog in the machine. The poet Samuel Coleridge declared:

                                    The economists who are willing to sacrifice men
                                    to the creation of a national wealth (which is natural
                                    only in statistical tables) are forgetting that even for
                                    patriotic purposes no person should be treated as a
                                    thing. 3

The Spanish writer Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella distilled this romantic rejection of unrestrained capitalism when he wrote that “In commerce, even more than war, both men and beasts are considered merely as machines, and sacrificed with even less compunction.” 4

From the romantic perspective we need to reinchant the world and bring back the magic. The scientist’s dry and sterile approach had left no room for imagination and eccentricity. Cold, impersonal science was creating a world of uniformity and conformity. Keats, the romantic poet, poured scorn on Isaac Newton for having ‘ungoddessed’ the rainbow:

                                    Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and lime,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-personed Lamia melt into a shade. 5

When Keats mentions ‘cold philosophy’ he is referring to the mechanical mindset of Galileo and Descartes. The painter Benjamin Haydon informs us that at a hard-drinking and festive dinner party Keats had agreed with the writer Charles Lamb that Newton’s Optics “had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours.” Intense dislike of simplicity and reductionism infused the romantic mindset.

It is vital to understand the revival of Neoplatonism that inspired romantic artists. The German romantic writer Novalis was passionately devoted to Plotinus and all things mystical. In particular they were mesmerised and intoxicated with the principle of plenitude. According to this cheerful principle the Cosmic Craftsman has crammed the universe with infinite diversity to the last infinitesimal fraction of an inch. Plenitude insists that the world is the better, the more things it contains. Whatever can exist, must exist. In our opening chapter we discussed Pico’s contention that the universe resembles a vast and imposing ladder. On every rung of this ladder perch a vast and diversified range of creatures.

Perhaps a rather facetious analogy might help us to understand the romantic obsession with diversity and infinitude. Picture it - Descartes and Galileo have invited you over for a meal and you turn up at their house clutching your bottle of wine. You enter their house and you find almost nothing in the modest abode. There is only a wooden table and the food is plain and simple – bangers and mash and no pudding! Rene dons a bluff northern accent and declares – “We’re simple lads, me and the Italian bloke. Nothing fancy! Keep it nice and simple.”

Now let us imagine that we have been invited to the sumptuous mansion of the young German romantic writer Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). The house is filled with every conceivable adornment. Obscure harpsichords, recoco-styled mandolins, Buddhist shrines and Aztec weapons of war assault the sense organs. Exotic paraphernalia loom large and colourful artefacts from distant lands occupy the many nooks and crannies of the extravagant house. It is impossible to inspect every room of the house because there are an infinite number of rooms and the commencement of dinner has just been announced. Friedrich is an accomplished wit, raconteur and crooner and the many varied courses go on for days. As soon as one suspects that the meal is finished and hey presto a new dainty is granted licence to pleasure the senses. For this is the romantic universe – abounding in diversity and infinity. A veritable orgy of creativity and mad revelry. Consider this purple passage of romantic musings in the work of the youthful Schiller:

            Every kind of perfection must attain existence in the fullness of
            the world……Every offspring of the brain, everything that wit
            can fashion, has an unchallengeable right of citizenship in this
            larger understanding of the creation. In the infinite chasm of nature
            no activity could be omitted, no grade of enjoyment be wanting in
            the universal happiness. 6

Romantics were in love with diversity and infinity. They focused upon the eccentric and the exotic. Mr Mellish and his preoccupation with paper clips would not be welcome in the romantic household. His commitment to uniformity and simplicity is dull and philistine. Mad, wild poets would be invited. But not Mr Mellish. But probe deeper and we discover a theme in romanticism that is seldom addressed. Romanticism presupposed a very peculiar divinity. Allow the playwright Friedrich Schiller to illumine our darkness.

            That great Householder of his world who suffers not even a
            straw to fall to the ground uselessly, who leaves no crevice
            uninhabited where life may be enjoyed, who hospitably grants
            even that little flowering of pleasure which finds its roots in
            madness…..this great Inventor could not permit even error to
            remain unutilised in his great design, could not allow this wide
            region of thought to lie empty and joyless in the mind of man…
            It is a genuine gain for the completeness of the universe, it is a
            provision of the supreme wisdom, that erring reason should people
            even the chaotic land of dreams and should cultivate even the barren
            ground of contradiction.7

How could we describe this romantic god? He is voraciously creative. He creates both sanity and madness. He is responsible for both truth and error. This divine inventor is permissive and promiscuous in all his acts of creation. Evil and ugliness are as much his work as goodness and beauty. Sordid perversions and wild, irresponsible behaviour are created by this Divine Architect. This pagan deity is addicted to creativity at all costs. He is fecund but lacking in virtue. He is obsessed with everlasting creation but amoral and oblivious to suffering and wrong-doing. He is a  charming, bohemian and rather shady deity. Gifted, dysfunctional and disturbed.

Picture now an imaginary poet writing in his squalid garret, cackling maniacally as he ponders his latest offering to this heathen god. He has abandoned conventional morality and seduces women with gay abandon. Our bohemian aesthete is consumed with artistic fervour and the ordinary affairs of life are dismissed with a contemptuous wave of the hand. Dirty clothes, empty wine bottles and half-consumed meals are omnipresent. Rats nibble on mouldy pieces of cheese. Suddenly our bohemian friend jumps up and cries – “I must consult my Shelley.” He searches for a few moments and finally he finds his copy of the master’s famous essay A Defence of Poetry. He sinks into an armchair and studies his Romantic Bible. This is what he reads:

Poetry is ever accompanied by pleasure.
A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite and the One.
A poet is a nightingale.
Poetry can make you an Achilles, Hector and Ulysses.
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world.
Poetry is indeed something divine.
Poetry ascends and brings light and fire from the eternal regions.
Poetry turns all things to loveliness.
Poetry marries eternity and change.
Poets are the sacred priests of an unapprehended inspiration. 8

For the committed, romantic believer Shelley’s famous essay on poetry can only be understood as a religious tract. Just as Trotsky urges us to find comfort, hope and redemption in the wonder working power of Science, so Shelley offers us a romantic and highly aesthetic alternative. Trotsky enjoins us to ‘trust in science’ and Percy entreats us to ‘trust in poetry’!

The romantic movement persuaded many people that Great Artists have a unique calling. They have access to a mysterious creativity that can bring salvation and healing to the ends of the world. Ordinary people can soak and marinade in great poems and find loveliness, beauty, inspiration and faint waftings of eternity. The astute reader should notice that Shelley is merely rehashing the pagan promises of Plato and Plotinus. For the traditional Neoplatonist, the philosopher is the mediator between heaven and earth. Magical, renaissance Neoplatonism replaces the philosopher with the magician and the romantic Neoplatonist banishes both philosopher and magician and declares that the Great Artist is the truly redemptive hero. The insightful writer Adrienne Chaplin offers the following analysis of the romantic mindset:

                        The artist had become transformed into the ‘stylus of
                        God’, venerated as a prophet, a higher being. Mozart,
                        for example, has been described by various scholars
                        throughout the centuries as ‘only a visitor on this earth’,
                        ‘not only reaching heaven with his works but also coming
                        from there’, ‘more than earthly’, ‘not of this world’, ‘divine’. 9

Notice that the romantic divinity is perfectly incarnated in the wild and impulsive artist. This higher being, this prophet, this exalted one is the supreme image of this heathen god. Both god and prophet are obsessed with everlasting creation. Their art needs no justification and indeed justifies any crime or cruelty.

Consider the life of Shelley. He was expelled from Oxford University for publishing an atheist pamphlet and in 1811 he married Harriet Westbrook, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a London tavern owner. Three years later he abandoned her and their two children and eloped with Mary Godwin who was later to become famous as the author of Frankenstein. In 1816Harriet drowned herself in a fit of despair. Shelley, famously, was a strong advocate of ‘open marriage’ and contended strongly that faithfulness in marriage was hostile to human happiness. In his Notes to Queen Mab he argued that “Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to believe the same creed.” We could say that Shelley, the self-proclaimed priest and high prophet of poetry is here revealing his intense commitment to human autonomy. In other words Pico in poetic form. Shelley further stated that –

                        A husband and wife ought to continue so long united
                        as they love each other: any law which should bind them
                        to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their
                        affection, would be an intolerable tyranny and most
                        unworthy of toleration. 10

Whereas Descartes and Condorcet had proclaimed the autonomy of ‘critical reason’, Shelley is here proclaiming the autonomy of ‘romantic feeling’. How dare anyone tell this Great Artist how to live! He is a law (nomos) unto himself (autos). Tellingly the lives of romantic composers, novelists, poets and painters are littered with abandoned spouses and children. The famous political philosopher Rousseau, influential disseminator of romantic ideas, abandoned all five of his children to an orphanage!
The idealization of diversity and variety can so often lead to promiscuity, cruelty and neglect. The first commandment of the romantic mindset is – ‘Follow your heart! Be yourself, which is to say, be unique!’ In other words those who are gripped by this mindset must always follow their passions and feelings wherever they might lead. And for some romantics this can only mean one thing – an early death. Shelley drowned at the age of thirty and Byron died at the age of thirty-six of a fever whilst fighting against the Ottoman empire.

This idea of the artist as antisocial, bohemian and raffish has continued to this day. Gifted, creative people are subject to a different set of values than others. It is not unusual for people to excuse the wild and irresponsible behaviour of famous musicians and artists with the assertion that their immoral conduct is a necessary feature of the ‘creative type’. It is almost as if the intrinsic vocation of the ‘artist’ is bound up with crime and vice. Worthy, decent, honest, moral people are dull and uncreative. Higher beings like Shelley and Byron are louche, decadent and immensely entertaining. Evil is a necessary feature of their genius. This is all part and parcel of romantic folklore.

Romantic preoccupation with novelty, variety and uniqueness had an intriguing and explosive impact upon the study and practice of religion. The famous German theologian Schleiermacher grasped the full implications of the romantic mindset and contended strongly that each person should have their own religion! Schleiermacher argued that uniformity in religious matters is the supreme sin. To insist on the absolute truth of atheism or Christianity is the height of folly. Rather each unique person should be allowed to select and blend any given body of religious ideas that please the palate. For example we might blend worship of the Norse god Thor with Buddhist convictions about reincarnation. Top this up with permissive sexual freedom and hey presto we have a unique religious vision which will guarantee satisfaction for Sid and Doris Bonkers who live in Bolton. Notice how this understanding of religion chimes perfectly with Shelley’s comments about marriage and creeds. Shelley demanded the chameleonic autonomy that allowed him to indulge his romantic whims and his right to choose his own creed. Romantic freedom inevitably leads to religious freedom. I will choose the god I will serve and make him in my own image. We can imagine Shelley smirking as he ponders this romantic truth.

Finally we need to examine romantic perspectives about the future. Shelley is not typical in this respect. In his essay In Defense of Poetry Shelley adopted an extremely optimistic view of the future. In this sense he had much in common with the perfectibilists we discussed in the previous chapter. Poetry will regenerate and redeem mankind and a golden future will be unleashed by following the way of imaginative, intoxicating poetic activity. In later life Shelley became far less sanguine about the human condition and abandoned the belief in the future perfection of humanity.

Many romantics had deep forebodings about the future. For example the romantic playwright Count Zygmunt Krasinski prophesied that the future would be consumed by ‘vice, gold and blood’. The French thinker Chateaubriand foresaw that one day when religion had been brushed aside as mere superstition the way would be open for every kind of crime and brutality. The Romantic preacher Lacordaire contended that  militant and highly organised atheists would one day attempt to wipe religion off the face of the earth. 11

It is not surprising that this pessimistic stance aroused nostalgic musings in the romantic breast. Many looked back with reverence to the example of the Christian Middle Ages. There can be little doubt that the root of this nostalgia embraced the feeling that modern people, gradually drifting away from Christianity, had suffered a severe and possibly irreparable loss. Somewhat morbidly the veneration of castle ruins became fashionable for those pining for the past. The writer H.G Schenk offers the following perceptive insights:

                        The very fact that a medieval building was lying in ruins
                        considerably heightened its appeal for the Romantics. The
                        Landgraf of Kassel even conceived the grotesque idea of
                        erecting an artificial ruined castle, the Lowenburg, on the
                        Wilhelmshohe outside his city. Nor was this an isolated
                        example. There was indeed a European-wide fashion of
                        building artificial ruins. 12

Those who long for former glories contrast strikingly with those who long for a golden future. Sitting among ruins we mystically embrace the past. For this is the romantic way.