Romanticism 9780231889902

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
I. How is the Human Spirit Disposed ?
II. The Thesis of a Moralising Passion in Antiquity.
III. The Courtly and Romance Conception of Life
IV. From Romance to Romanticism Naturism
V. Rousseau Primary Inspirer of the Romantic Mouvement
VI. The Successive Generations of Romanticism
VII. The Ramifications of Romantic Mysticism
VIII. Passional Romanticism
IX. The Romanticism of Art and Beauty
X. Romanticism of Race and Nation
XI. Democratic and Social Romanticism
CONCLUSION

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ROMANTICISM h Baron ERNEST 5 E I L L I E R E M E M B R I Prtfac* CAROILL

OK and

L ' l N S T I T U T Translation

by

SPKIKTSMA, M . A . , D . ÉS L.

N E W YORK COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1939

PRESS

Reprinted from The

Bulletin

by HERBERT CLARKE, Paris, M a y ,

All

>929

rig bis reserved

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

Foreword, by Cargill Sprietsma Bibliography of works by Ernest Seillifere Romanticism, by Ernest Seilli£re Preamble Chapter I. How is the Human Spirit disposed „ II. The Thesis of a Moralising Passion in Antiquity . . . . „ III. The Courtly and Romance Conception of Life . . . . „ IV. From Romance to Romanticism : Naturism „ V. Rousseau Primary Inspirer of the Romantic Mouvement. ,, VI. The Successive Generations of Romanticism „ VII. The Ramifications of Romantic Mysticism „ VIII. Passional Romanticism ,, IX. The Romanticism of Art and Beauty „ X. The Romanticism of Race and Nation „ XI. Democratic and Social Romanticism Conclusion

4 6 9 9 10 15 19 25 30 35 40 44 50 56 61 65

o

FOREWORD Why translate a book on Romanticism? Who, in this age of Realism, is interested in

Hasn't enough appeared in English ; hasn't everything been said> Romanticism?

The title oj Baron Seilliere's study suggests these questions. The answers, as the author states in his chapter on T h e Successive generations of romanticism, lie in the fact that the vocabulary of contemporary writers is stocked with romantic expressions. Become cliches, these expressions now serve to hoodwink a public which too often takes the demagogue seriously. In God we trust, natural goodness, instinctively good, simple and spontaneous movements of a good nature, fighting for Democacy, expressions, all of which passed through romantic fire before being forged into modern weapons, need examination. Baron Seilliire traces their origins in this volume.

This is not Vain speculation ; it is an effort to state some of the fundamental issues of contemporary to point a way through its unavoidable difficulties.

civilisation,

The author examines Romanticism in the light of Imperialism, Mysticism and Socialism. Of these, particularly vital to us is the discussion of Imperialism, defined by Prince LichnoWsky, "the assertion of the collective will expressing itself in a nationalistic form", for it is, as President Masaryk says, an attribute of bourgeois government. An old question f

Of the most actual.

Is not one of the most striking novelties of modem politics the antiquity oj its problems ; most characteristic of it the naivety with which we accept them as new? Imperialism has a twentieth century connotation; we thank Baron Seilliire for precisions. is not new, as he tells us, and its diplomatic language is old.

The

"thing"

Polybius records that both Rome and Carthage sought the honour of defending Saguntum. To the Roman ambassadors' protest against Carthaginian overt acts, Hannibal replied, "It has been the hereditary custom of Carthage never to abandon the oppressed". Modern diplomats couldn t do better, witness the Journal in the recent Samoan annexation. Aggressive forces have never wished to appear as such. They would be allied to God. This was recently remarked by Julien Benda, and before him by Baron Seilliere in passing from the discussion of Imperialism to that of Mysticism. Mysticism in turn leads the author to Socialism where he shows how a certain class has adopted as its special pleaders Rousseau, Fourier, Bakunin and Marx to set up an imperialism of its own, based, as that of the nation, upon a mystic alliance with God. The war emphasized the vitality of these doctrines and their corollaries. "L'atmosphere de notre époque est Impregné« de ferments d'énergie. L'on y respire l'ardeur de posséder et de jouir", writes an observer of his generation, Jean de Pierrefeu. Luden Romier's Homme Nouveau is tuned to their rhythm, and Jean Luchcire and Bertrand de Jouvenel in Notre Temps strike the post-war note. Elsewhere dictators give the example

which writers are apt to follow toith biographies of illustrious captains. In this regard Professor Pretzollini's recent Machiavelli is most indicative. The most recent American expression of this is found in Ex-President Coelidge's Promoting Peace (Ladies' H.J., Apr. 1929). He states that were the United States the only armed nation in the world "it would not be long before the other nations had been over-run. " And he believes it "almost a moral certainty" that we should find an excuse for our aggretsion.

That Ernest Sàlhire (*) long ago signaled those problems which remain significant today and after searching oat their origins in fondamental traits of haman nature, offered a solution, accounts for the conàderation his studies have received from a group of young and influential writers among whom it suffices to mention Pierre Dominique, Reni Lofe, Henri Lichtenberger, Auguste Viatte, André foussain, Louis Estève, René Gillouin. Louis Bouse, Jean Héritier, Pierre Lacroix, Doctor Papillault, Albert Autin. The author's philosophy consists in the rationalisation of what Hobbes called the "love of power", and of Nietzsche's "will to power". It is in the light of this desire for sovereignty as the basis of all human action that he studies Freud in his most recent book : Psychanalyse freudienne ou Psychologie impérialiste? The reader of Romanticism will understand what reservations the author will of necessity make to Freudism. In his examination of romanticism he does not neglect to signal the beauties of the great XlXth century lyrics, but he splits no hairs in pointing out the damage an irrational practise of Rousseauist naturism would cause to the moral fibre of conservative government. The author's constructive program reposes upon the principle that the constant factor oj stable social evolution will be a rationalized socialism. Romanticism contains in a few pages the essentials of Baron Seilliere's studies of Imperialism, Mysticism, Romanticism and Socialism. His theories are known to readers of Professor Babbitt's Rousseau, but this is the first of the French Writer's works to appear in English. The following is a complete bibliography of Emesi Seilliire's work* "p to the present. Should public interest in this first volume warrant it. Romanticism will be followed by the translation of those volumes in which he develops his plea for a rational interpretation of life and to which it may serve as an Introduction. Cargill Sprietsma. (1) Baron Seillière has for almost forty years followed the German intellectual movement ; his first book written for the general public was a study of the founder of the Cerman socialist party. Ferdinand Lassalle (1897). About the same time La Revue des Deux Mondes published his studies of Arno Holz, Laur Marholm, Christian Wagner, Peter Rosegger, and of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In 1903 he brought Cobineau to the attention of his compatriots who had neglected him ; then came a book on Nietsche whom he calls "le plus fécond inspirateur de la cinquième génération romantique et de la sixième au deli du Rhin... the most fertile inspirer of the fifth generation of romantics (in France) and of the sixth in Germany." The author had already published two volumes of his Philosophy of Imperialism in which he pointed out not only the blindness and excessiteness of its expansive ambitions but also what there was of positiveness and reasonableness in its constructive policy. He now published a third : TImpirialisme démocratique. Democratic imperialism, or the Imperialism of democracies, in which he studied Fiench and German socialist romanticism. The fourth volume of this series soon followed with the title Le Mal romantique, the Romantic 111 (1908), and contained penetrating portraits of Stendhal and Fourier. For the next few years Baron Seillière divided his attention between France and Germany ; there appeared a Schopenhauer in 1910 as well as a volume on the Mystics of Neo-Romanticism, a (¡roup of studies of Marx, Tolstoi and the pan-Germanists. Just before the war appeared his Flaubert, or the Romanticism of the realists. Then for ten years Ernest Seillière confined himself almost exclusively to tracing the history of romanticism in France, until in 1924 he returned to Germany with his studies of contemporary pan-Germanists. It is in this direction he turns in his most recent volumes on Germany, in which he analyses Kaplan, Jung, Vetter, Freud, Chamberlain, Keyserling.

I a m pleased to be able to quote f r o m the advance sheets of the second volume of le Nioromantüme en Allemagne (La Sagesse de Darmstadt) and which Alcan is publishing, these remarks from Baron Seilliire's study of Keyserling as indicative of his attitude toward the leader of the School of D a r m s t a d t . "First cf all I would say that the epithet pan-Germamst which just after t h e war might, strictly construed, still have characterized certain of M . von Keyserling s oratorical or literary manifestations, does not in the least apply to his most recent intellectual activity. At times he still shows a certain partiality for G e r m a n culture, which moreover I hatten to add he has every right to do, for this culture has a gieat past and will undoubtedly have a great future, but in general, he rather show9 himself a severe critic, too severe sometimes of contemporary Germany, and he judges the events of the last ten years with a very open mind, with the exception of the T r e a t y of Versailles and certain of its consequences, which he has not yet learned to look upon with sang-froid. " M y new effort at a synthesis is, moreover, not without its difficulties, I readily admit. In Schöpferische Erkenntnis, Creative Knowledge (1922) d i d n ' t the Count write (p. 44), " N o one, so long as my mental resources do not abandon me, will be able to classify m e as one holding certain fixed ideas. If G o d permit, I shall always succeed in keeping this misfortune f r o m me, by contradicting myself as much as may he ntcessaty. T h e more a student (at the School of D a r m s t a d t ) presses me to know my exact way of thinking about a given point, the more I express myself, and intentionally, by paradoxes; so that, at the limits, where he would look for redemption and peace, he finds himself plunged into an inquietude touching despair! "—These are his knowing criticisms for him who awaits t h e m !—"This is what 1 desire ", he insists. "Whoever pretends to help men must not carry t h e m peace, but the sword. It is only my vital attitude and my soul lythm which count for others. Each one must create his own thought after the inquietude of which I was for him the artisan, will have broken at its roots, that which was become crystalized, fixed, hardened ; will have turned, so to speak, his organism inside o u t ! " Here we have a reflection of Nielschtan "activism", of the pretention of activity for activity's sake, without reflection and without much control ; it is an aspect of contemporary naturism and of the religion of instinct. "However, the author of these lines is perhaps not so unseizeable as he may think and it seems to me that a fairly precise silhouette issues f r o m his very numerous communications, manifests or confidence» to his contemporaries." A n d in such chapters as " L e C o m t e H e r m a n n Keyserling et ses origines traditinnalistes" ; "le M i t a physicien g e r m a n i q u e " ; " L e mystique naturiste" : "le Fondatcur de religion" ; "la mystique de D a r m s t a d t appliquie aux f u t u r s destinr de l ' E u r o p e " Baron Seilliere succeeds in giving a less eulogistic portrait than Boucher in his Keyserling, but presents him sympathetically, cooly, in the Seillierian manner, and in the light of this philosophy, bringing out all the interest and importance which the thought of Keyserling has and will have for the twentieth century.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y O F W O R K S BY E R N E S T S E I L L I È R E ON T H E HISTORY O F

ROMANTISM

Vers le socialisme rationnel. « Aperçu d ' u n e philosophie de l'histoire moderne •. 1 vol. in-8°, 1923 ( F . Alcan, éditeur). Introduction à la philosophie de Timpérialisme. I vol. in-18, 1911 (F. Alcan, éditeur). Mysticisme et domination. 1 vol. in-18, 1913 (F. Alcan, éditeur). Les origines romanesques de la morale et de la politique romantiques. I vol. in-16, 1920 (La Renaissance du Livre, éditeur). La Calprenède et le roman classique. 1 vol. in-16. 1922 (Émile-Paul, éditeur). Isabelle Grimaldt, princesse de Monaco, par Madeleine DE ScuDÉRY (préface de E. SEJLLIERE), vol. in-16. 1923 (édition d u Monde Nouveau). Mme Guyon et Fénelon, précurseurs de Rousseau, I vol. in-8°, 1918 ( F . Alcan, éditeur). Le péril mystique dans i inspiration des démocraties contemporaines. 1 vol. in-16, 1918 (La Renaissance du L i v r e , éditeur), fean-Jacques Rousseau. I vol. in-16, 1921 (Garnier, éditeur). Les étapes du mysticisme passionnel (Rousseau. Chateaubriand, M m e de Staël, Byron). I vol. in-16. 1909 (La Renaissance du LivTe, éditeur).

Schoptnhauer, 1 vol. in-18, l910(Bloud, éditeur). Une tragédie ¿amour au temps du romantisme. « Henri et Charlotte Stieglitz ». 1 vol. in-16, 1909 (Plon-Nourrit, éditeur). Le mal romantique. 'Stendhal, Fourier «. I vol. in-18, 1908 (Pion, éditeur). George Sand, mystique de la passion, de la politique et de F art. I vol. in-16, 1920 (F. Alcan, éditeur). Sainte-Beuve, agent, juge et complice de Tévolution romantique. 1 vol. in-8°, 1921 (Paru, Société d'économie sociale). Balzac et la morale romantique. 1 vol. in-8°, 1922 (F. Alcan, éditeur). EdgardQuinet et le mysticisme démocratique. I vol. in-8°, 1920 (Société d'économie sociale, éditeur). Auguste Comte. I vol. in-16, 1925 (F. Alcan, éditeur). La mystiques du néromantisme " Marx, E. Rohde, Tolstoï, les Pangermanistes I vol. in-16, 1910 (Pion, éditeur). Ferdinand Lassalle. I vol. in-8°, 1897 (Pion, éditeur). L'impérialisme démocratique.1 Hobbes, Rousseau, Proudhon >. I vol. in-8°, 1917 (Pion, éditeur). AUxmdre Vinet. I vol. in-8°, 1925 (Payot, éditeur). Le comte de Cobintau et Faryanisme historique. I vol. in-8°, 1903 (Pion, éditeur). Le cceur et la raison de Mme Swetchine (d'après les documents inédits). I vol. in-8° carré illus'.ré. Paris 1923 (Perrin, éditeur). L'avinement du mysticisme passionnel au théâtre. « Alex. Dumas (ils ". 1 vol. in-16, 1921 (F. Alcan, éditeur). Les Goncourt Moralistes. 1 vol. in-16, 1928 (La Nouvelle Revue Critique, éditeur). DuQuiétisme au Socialisme Romantique.