Pre-romanticism: what is it and what are its characteristics?

It can be considered the premiere of Sturm un Drang, a play by playwright Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (1767-1785), the starting point of pre-romanticism that would ultimately give its name to the pre-romantic movement German. However, For some years now, in the German territories, a real protest against the neoclassical precepts had been brewing..

The German Sturm und Drang would be at the head of pre-romanticism during the last decades of the century XVIII, while in Mediterranean Europe the Enlightenment of the so-called Age of Enlightenment continued to prevail. Authors like Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in literature or Johann Heinrich Füssli and Caspar David Friedrich in painting will give German culture a new dimension, much more interested in the emotional aspects of individual.

In this article we will talk about pre-romanticism, the generic name given to the various manifestations artistic and literary works that preceded canonical Romanticism and that laid the foundations of its aesthetics and ideal.

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Rousseau, the forerunner of pre-romanticism

By the 1770s, the Enlightenment, the German Aufklärung (if it ever had any serious weight on the ground) was obsolete in the German states. It is then when some intellectuals begin to demonstrate against the norms of the academy and the yoke that it imposed on the creators.. In this way, the individual spirit of the artist was born, the absolute vindication of his self.

The pre-romantics rebel against any norm, whatever its source of origin, that hinders the flow of the true feeling of the human being. In this sense, he is related to the theories of the Swiss Jean-Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778), inasmuch as he advocated a return to nature free and without ties. Although Rousseau is often included in the Enlightenment (more by time axis than by ideas), in reality his theories are closer to the spirit of pre-romanticism, as witnessed by his works La nueva Eloísa (1761) and Dreams of a solitary walker (1778), whose title could not be more Romantic.

Goethe, the standard bearer of the Sturm und Drang

Goethe (1749-1832) was one of the leaders of the German pre-romantic movement, the aforementioned Sturm und Drang (something like storm and impetus). Especially in his Prometheus, the poet takes advantage of the myth of the titan who rebels against order imposed by Zeus to make a simile with the artist who confronts the norms of classicism and academy.

The misadventures of young Werther, a pre-romantic work that, however, follows the illustrated tradition of epistolary novels, Goethe portrays the ideal young romantic: dreamy and idealistic, forever tied to the heights of the sublime and disappointed with life to the point of committing a decidedly tragic act to end his bitterness. The novel was a resounding success in Europe (they say that even Napoleon himself carried it with him), and it was even banned in some places on the grounds that it incited suicide.

The Sturm un Drang headed by Goethe also represented the seed of German national consciousness. The close relationship between these early German romantic manifestations and nationalism, which would later spread throughout the world, is well known. rest of the continent and would give rise to the liberal revolutions of 1830 and 1848 and the independence movements of countries like Greece and Belgium.

If the neoclassicism of the Enlightenment and, above all, of the French Revolution, exalted the beauty of classical art, Germany is going to do the same with the highly reviled European Gothic architecture, considered barbaric since the Renaissance (hence the name given to it by Giorgio Vasari, Gothic, from goths). After the Sturm und Drang this will change, and German intellectuals will begin to claim medieval art as something of their own, inherent to their origins as a nation.. Goethe himself captures this idea in his work German Gothic Architecture (1772), most probably influenced by the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), the great promoter of nationalism German.

Pre-romanticism outside of Germany

Pre-romanticism, materialized in Germany with the Sturm und Drang, had reverberations in many arts, not only in the literary field. In Switzerland, Rousseau's homeland, we find Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741-1825) who masterfully transferred the precepts of the new aesthetics to his canvases. One of his most famous works is The Nightmare or The Incubus (1781), of which the artist made several versions. In the painting we see a girl writhing in fear in her bed, the victim of a bad dream; on his body we can see several spectral apparitions.

The idea of ​​dreams and dream territories as a source of inspiration for artistic creation will be a constant in Romanticism., and his influence will survive until the 20th century in movements such as Pre-Raphaelism or Surrealism. Especially overwhelming due to its gloom is Lady Macbeth with the daggers, executed in 1812 and which reflects a clear influence of the British William Blake (1757-1827). Let's not forget that Füssli worked a large part of his life in England.

It is precisely in Great Britain where we find a great acceptance of the pre-romantic movement. This current is usually limited to German countries and, although the Sturm und Drang had a very powerful influence on the gestation of the future Romanticism, in the British Isles we find leading artists such as the aforementioned Blake, who develops his work within the framework of an indisputable feeling Romantic.

Blake's works are decidedly puzzling, some totally unusual even for the other pre-Romantics. His work The Ghost of a Flea, in which he depicts a huge terrifying-looking anthropomorphic insect, is a great example of his genius. On the other hand, reflects the love of the pre-romantics for the medieval past, since it is a very small panel painting made, among other materials, with a mixture of tempera and gold.

Since the beginning of the 18th century, some English authors had claimed the return to the natural homeland of the human being. James Mcpherson (1736-1796) was the one who published the famous Gaelic Poems, which he attributed to a supposed bard of Celtic origin, which both pre-romantic and romantic would place on the altars. The authorship of Ossian, the supposed bard, was denied years later, when it was confirmed that Mcpherson was the author of the poems. Be that as it may, the work contributed to the development of pre-romanticism in England, by focusing poetry on an almost mythical character from the nation's Celtic origins.

In pre-romanticism are the bases of the subsequent nationalist movements, which would have such a boom in full Romanticism. The countries of northern Europe, perhaps in an attempt to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the classical (linked to Greece and Rome), they tried to find a vehicle of their own expression that would differentiate them from the Enlightenment in vogue. His anti-classical movement turned out to be the seed not only of nineteenth-century Romanticism, but also of future movements in which the importance of the self and the absolute creative freedom of the artist.