Romanticism in the eighteen hundreds A.D., dealt with subjects that were dramatic, sentimental and nostalgic. (205) "It represented vindication of the individual and his changeable personality, of sensitivity, emotion and inner values." (206) Romantic artists and writers often escaped from reality into the world of dreams, the imagination, and the mythical past. (207) This fits with our notion of `romantic', fairly easily.
 

The content however, was often disturbing, with " a taste for the mysterious, the appalling, the sinister or the
bloodthirsty" (208). This fits less with what I would call romantic, but would explain a group of painters today who refer to themselves as the `young romantics'.

Webster's definition of romanticism does include "a predilection for melancholy" along with "an emphasis on emotions", (209) which would have to accept the ominous, the evil, and the injurious. I will have to redefine my own idea of romanticism. Previously it had only incorporated the idealistic, quixotic, and the heroic.

 

"... today in both psychology and the arts there is danger of confusing the elementary with the profound. Cultures in their late, refined stages seem to develop a weakness for primitivism, and one of the forms this inclination takes in our own case is the temptation to believe that the areas of the mind farthest away from consciousness harbour the deepest wisdom. This belief strikes me as a romantic superstition." (210)
Rudolf Arnheim


 

"... before an artist decides passively to surrender to the spontaneous impulses coming to him from below the threshold, he may wish to remember that such utterances tend to be chaotic. This is known from dreams, which are entangled compounds of many disparate mental processes; it is known from the doodles we produce when our attention is blocked or absorbed elsewhere; or from the automatic writings of the Surrealists." (211)
Rudolf Arnheim




"... the oracle, uttered in a state of possession, speaks with inarticulate tongues that need interpretation. The prophet, on the other hand, does not befog his mind with Delphic fumes, the jungle drugs of savages, or strong drink. His method of getting away from `himself' is not that of distraction but profound concentration, which requires severe discipline of all mental powers and gives shape and depth to his pronouncements." (212)
Rudolf Arnheim



205. Gina Pischel, A World History of Art, (New York, Golden Press, 1968), p. 588
206. ibid., p. 582
207. ibid., p. 588
208. ibid., p. 584
209. A Merriam-Webster, ed. H. B. Woolf, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, Mass., U.S.A., G & C. Merriam Co.,1976),p. 1004
210. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A., Cal., University of California Press, 1966), p. 289
211. ibid., p. 289
212. ibid., p. 290