Hidden Minds Read Free Page B

change?
    Romanticism was very much a reaction against the central values of the Enlightenment. Indeed, the principal themes of romanticism were established in the wake of a philosophical backlash. The Enlightenment had arisen in the capitals of Europe, where man had been defined as a social and rational animal. Subsequently the romantics exchanged the city for the countryside, society for solitude, and reason for emotion.
    The romantics venerated nature, and this is clearly evident in early eighteenth century romantic art – the most typical examples of which were produced by painters such as Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich (and his contemporaries) were preoccupied with nature’s power and majesty, and subsequently specialised in landscapes. Human beings occasionally appear, but they are usually depicted as insignificant – dwarfed by immense mountains and louring skies, huge cataracts or sheets of ice. Solitary figures look out over vast expanses of rolling mist, or huddle on beaches in moonlight. Many of the greatest triumphs of the Enlightenment were urban, architectural (Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral, for example). The raw materials of nature – slate, marble, granite – had been disciplined by mathematics and labour; however, it is difficult to imagine Friedrich’s proud rocks being shaped into Corinthian columns or decorative cornicing. For Friedrich and the romantic fraternity nature was wild and elemental. It represented something beyond the scope of reason, ratio and compasses.
    The solitary artists, rejected lovers, and lonely wayfarers in romantic landscapes also reflect the special emphasis romanticism gave to the individual. Enlightenment thinkers had wrestled with political and economic issues -analysing social structures and planning social reforms. With the advent of romanticism, the individual became the focus of interest. Writers and artists demonstrated an increasing awareness of the complexity of mental life. The struggles between different elements of society were now of less concern than the struggles arising within the individual – the conflict between head and heart, body and soul, conscious and unconscious forces.
    As romanticism gathered momentum, the faculty of reason was approached with less reverence, which permitted more serious consideration of the subjective, irrational, and visionary. Deep feelings, or passions, previously viewed with some suspicion (on account of being wrongly associated with mental illness) were increasingly perceived as desirable and enriching. Even mysticism (rejected by Enlightenment thinkers as superstitious nonsense) became more acceptable. Indeed, one of the pivotal beliefs of romanticism was that behind visible nature was a mysterious ‘fundament’ or
Grund.
Subsequently, the romantic movement’s professed love of nature concealed an ulterior motive: union with a kind of universal unconscious – the cosmic equivalent of the soul’s penetralia.
    According to romantic philosophers, the universal unconscious contained its own memories. It was a storehouse of ancient lore, symbols, and leitmotif. Because the human unconscious resonated in sympathy with its deep, immemorial voice, certain themes and images were prone to recur in myth and folklore – all issuing from the same source. Needless to say, union with the universal unconscious was accomplished most successfully when the faculty of reason was suspended. Thus, powerful emotions, mental illness, inspiration, and dreams acquired special significance. Such altered states punctured the membrane separating lacklustre reality from the numinous, allowing primordial knowledge and impressions to seep into awareness. These views are evident in works such as
The Symbolism of Dreams
(1814) by Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, who argued that dreams incorporate universal, timeless symbols that can be interpreted irrespective of their temporal and geographical provenance.
    By the early decades of the