cd. ROMANTICISM (15.04.2013)

Edmund Burke wrote:

“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully,

is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended,

with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot

entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it.”

SUMBLIME = WZNIOSŁOŚĆ (while the beauty is somehow ‘traditional’, the sublime should be
something more than that).

Caspar David Friedrich – Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

The Romantics emphasized the dangerous side of nature. There’s some kind of mystery, something
unknown. The man is standing upon a rocky precipice and we see that he can easily fall down and get
killed so there’s this element of fear, some kind of unpredictable element.
He said that in Greek language there’s the same word for fear and respect. If there’s no fear – there’s
no respect. (If you have a small nice cat with a pink ribbon, you may like it, but there’s no need to be
afraid. On the other hand, if you had a tiger… that’s the romantic idea of beauty).

Willam Blake – The Tiger
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Joseph Mallord William Turner -The Pass of St. Gothard

Nature is dangerous. It’s sort of powerful force capable of destroying human beings. The painting is
angular, there’s this dynamism.

Joseph Mallord William Turner –The Shipwreck of the Minotaur

Turner's fascination with man vs. nature is display in The Shipwreck. He wished to portray the power
of the elements and how no one is immune from the dangers of an angry sea; he can struggle and
fight but ultimately he will be swallowed up by the sea.

Maybe that’s why Romantics liked contrast so much – it’s a possibility to introduce action.

Umberto Eco – The History of Ugliness (what’s beauty and what’s ugly is a matter of perspective).

Previously (lecture: 25.03) mentioned The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli (German: Johann Heinrich
Füssli) is an example of grotesque which is a very popular esthetic cathegory. There are two
responses to grotesque: either you laugh because you find it funny or you may be afraid (or even at
the same time).
What terrifies people? Usually it’s a distortion of reality (the difference beetween our perception of
the world and that, what it really looks like). By distorting the reality you can reach the effect of
amusement or fear. Or both at the same time.
Anyways, the things that people found scary in the past, don’t scare us anymore (like the first
vampire movies – people were afraid of things on screen but now we’re making fun of them).

Matthew Gregory Lewis – The Monk
– a Gothic novel published in 1796.
Many people think that Gothic should be something mysterious and – in one way or another –
frightening.

The main character in an extremely devoted monk. During the novel he falls from innocent and
virtuous to completely evil. There’s a demon tempting him and he makes a decision like “I won’t be a
good guy anymore” and this demon helps him.
Firstly, the demon pretends to be a monk, then girl dressed as a man etc. So the main character is
quite confused: this is not a monk, this is a boy. Then, this is not a boy – it’s a girl. Later: this is not a
girl – it’s a demon. Well, he falls in love with this girl (who happens to de a demon). quickly, he gets
bored with her and she says that she’ll help him to get other girls. The thing is, there are a lot of
women raped and killed in this book, but you’re not afraid when you read it, you laugh.
(Nowadays, when you watch a film or read a book you kinda feel sorry for the murderer, because you
know he won’t succeed, the victim will be saved).

Théodore Géricault - Study of Truncated Limbs

This is something more likely to be consider terrifying rather than funny (but some people can still
find here something amusing ….).

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "grotto", which originated from Greek krypte
"hidden place", meaning a small cave or hollow.
There was this peasant, who fell into a hole which turned out to be remnants of a Roman villa. There
were some strange pictures on walls. They were referred as “grotesques”. In that time (17

th

C?) this

word referred only to those particular paintings. Later – style in architecture etc. In the past people
didn’t want their work to be called “grotesque” because it had negative meaning. In Romanticism on
the other hand artists wanted everything to be grotesque because they liked all of those odd,
unnatural things.