The Golden Age of Romanticism Comes back, or “Physicists”and “Lyricists”are Immortal
The theater of the absurdity of life around us, though nothing new, is quite original in its own way. It has always been there in varying forms. Today, the one-sided tilt toward deifying the technical progress and everyday life is peculiarly distinctive, and is not devoid of certain charm. Human life in such a secluded world is certainly of interest as a new phase in struggle and survival. However, as history teaches us, and the reality around us suggests, on the one side is another Atlantis and on the other the world of nature. Between them is Man, who is seeking a foot-hold. We, deviating as we do from trodden paths, have to think hard and achieve still more in favor of parity between the human enclave and Nature. The quest for the golden mean is no longer a far-away goal, but an essentially necessary reality.
Under these conditions it is of paramount importance to try to overcome one-sided rationalism and to model an integral, harmonious personality. This theme has always been the uppermost during difficult, transitional moments of social life and cultural development. What has been born was a new view of the world, art, and man. A new style called Romanticism appeared. There have also been different names, each according to the particular epoch, but names did not affect the essence. Its leading features include the dominance of poetry over prose, of dreams over reality, of feeling over reason. The term Romanticism itself came into being in Europe in the late 18th-early 19th century. This ideological and artistic movement came to replace the ideology of Enlightenment, originating from disappointment in the results of the French Revolution and the progress as a whole.
Many contemporary artists can call themselves romanticists, and their own artistry romanticism. Such a master is always a transformer of the world, of the spiritual world in the first place. What exists around him does not suit him, he casts a form of his own onto the world, achieving the state of a realized dream in his work.
We disagree with a world order, they say, that is based on money-grubbing and dislike. We set against it the dream about a future without violence and lies. We want to see a different man and a different notion of his existence. The space in our works we are purging of the rubbish of time, thus preparing this space for the coming of a different quality. This expectation in the works is the leading feature of creative vision. If once we decide to believe in and work for this idea, the new will acquire visible outlines.
Now what is there in favor of a romantic work? It has no clear specific features of today. This is of no interest whatsoever. There are few, if any, people and architecture. There is still no damaging impact of man in the Earth, or if there is some of these, they are abstract images that can easily be found in nature, which is the main theme in the work of artists belonging to this school of art.
To create a new heaven and a new earth for the new man, even though in a dream only. Is this not the proper mission of an artist? But this is the dream of a paradise lost. And is not the goal of art just to lift a little the veil of mystery in order to inspire faith and hope again? This is the main idea of romanticism.
I am in all and all is in myself. This slogan of romanticism suggests a necessary synthesis, unity of the arts. This comprehensive unity manifests itself in works of the new schools where painting may sound as a sonata, architecture as sculpture and music, and music again as all together. This is the clay from which everything has been created and to which it reverts for a new transformation.
Taken historically, the Middle Ages, the gothic arts are attractive for romanticists. The Notre Dame chimerae are beautiful, and therefore harmless. The best works of other styles and epochs are romantic, including realism.
Imagination is the basis on which romantic art thrives. Imagination needs color, it will wither without it. Living color, living sound, constitute the nourishing environment of romanticism. However, even there, the feeling of an artist is the law. His inner voice is the voice of art. The artist is an interpreter of nature’s language, a mediator between the world of ghosts and man. He unites the past and the present, the present and the future, where the world is a mystical whole.
A romantic artist identifies his Ego with the whole Universe, records the sensuous tangible image of nature. Behind this all looms a symbol of the entire world, the artist’s idea.
Romanticism bears quite a definite mystical character. Dreams, the expectation of the ideal, and imagination, are its leading features, and they are always mystical. Intuition is the main link in cognition, or rather in a refeeling the world, in the search for God. New horizons open themselves on this road, horizons that can only be reached in this way, just believing in the idea, subconsciously, intuitively.
The wish to understand everything, to comprehend everything, to retranslate with a cool mind, is no inspiration for myself. The rational movement of the clever ones, whether men or women, has come to a threshold beyond which is a dead end. A different time is coming where one should learn how to rely on one’s imagination while possessing one’s human qualities and resources. Creative work is conducted not only from man to man. The idea of noninterference and peaceful coexistence is suitable, not only for one’s neighbors and states, but also for mankind and nature, mankind and God. Here it is that the methods of romanticism are the most acceptable and unerring. The pragmatic man, the rational man, are just not able to cope with them.
The supergoal of real art and for today is to be able to show the great in the small: “As a great breath is blowing in a small shell of the ocean” (M. Voloshin). An image can be created on a piece of paper, on asphalt or wall, it can be made of sand or snow, of one’s own life in the last resort, it does not matter... What matters is to be able to leave a trace of oneself in a single soul at least. Once you see the real, no imitation will do for you. I would like to add that the image may be on the screen only, but it is nearly indistinguishable behind an avalanche of rubbish. A burst of light in the night, only that. However, we do not wish to deal here with the decay of art, that theme is not addressed.
Another remarkable discovery of romanticism was to understand that everyone sees in his own way. For that reason nobody is entitled to thrust his own rules, hence his own errors, on another. The uniqueness of an artist can only be felt in the freedom of his art.
In European romanticism in the late 18th to early 19th century, Michelangelo Buonarotti was considered to be the father and forerunner. The artists of that time were very much interested in a situation when the forces of both Nature and Man (Michelangelo made no difference between the two) were at the highest tension. He was the lodestar for them, because himself was a romanticist. “Painting is not the truth of a situation, but the truth of feeling” (E. Delacroix). It is for this reason that even the simplest themes or black-and-white artistic execution by romanticists are extremely picturesque and full of meaning.
The never-ending “classicism” of the Soviet period tilled the soil for the rising romanticism of the 1960s. It was based on a stance taken against the old, antiquated forms of life and political form of society. The dream of an “earthly paradise” that exists on Earth, now and here, led and inspired people. Gleams of that light have not faded even now. The romanticism of today draws also on it to renew its force and hope.
Now is a different time and different obstacles that originate from it. The struggle for harmonizing one’s life, the search for a foot-hold, for the living man, goes on at this new turn of history.
The end of the 20th century did not yield anything new or original in culture, apart from a few isolated voices, one had a stoppage of motion. Orientation toward technical computerized means of expression, a new method (as was thought at first), which was wielded by art technicians, gave little that is useful, apart from the notion of “globalism”, which is itself supported by technical progress, involving ever new masses into its sphere. But it has turned out that the artist needs more than this. Glamour withers the soul of both author and onlooker. The living, human principle of artistry is being lost thereby. The artist, manual labor, feeling at work, these are the underlying principle and pivot of art and culture.
However, as always happens, everything is right in this world, cruel, but right. The wave of technical progress that has flooded the Earth is essentially a purifying wave. What is not destined to live, has no talent in itself, is weak artistically, all this will go and dissolve in time. This revision of values has also affected all past history, not merely recent events. And the new barbarians are a purifying instrument, as always happens, even though they end by descending into a nameless grave. The choice, so or otherwise, will belong to man and humankind.
The true spiritual progress, which always retained a continuity of culture, will pass that test.
The time of primitive pragmatism and one-sided rationalism is passing away. Now in what aspects has it benefited the man and the artist? It made him stronger by humiliating him, for who has survived has also not been humiliated, preparing the advent of a new time that has always been with him from the dawn of time.
It is to be hoped that everything will return to itself, and life will appear in its true light, as an equal struggle of two opposite but equally strong principles, Enlightenment and Romanticism. It has been so in the best day of human history, and so it will be forever; this struggle is the best work of human life striving to search for yet unknown ways and discoveries.
A.Kirghizov
January 2006, newspaper “Nash Izograf”, no. 2, February 2006
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