Why the Romantics Matter (Why X Matters) (Why X Matters Series) by Peter Gay

Why X Matters Series

by Peter Gay

With his usual wit and élan, esteemed historian Peter Gay enters the contentious, long-standing debates over the romantic period. Here, in this concise and inviting volume, he reformulates the definition of romanticism and provides a fresh account of the immense achievements of romantic writers and artists in all media. Gay’s scope is wide, his insights sharp. He takes on the recurring questions about how to interpret romantic figures and their works. Who qualifies to be a romantic? What ties together romantic figures who practice in different countries, employ different media, even live in different centuries? How is modernism indebted to romanticism, if at all? Guiding readers through the history of the romantic movement across Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, Gay argues that the best way to conceptualize romanticism is to accept its complicated nature and acknowledge that there is no “single basket” to contain it. Gay conceives of romantics in “families,” whose individual members share fundamental values but retain unique qualities. He concludes by demonstrating that romanticism extends well into the twentieth century, where its deep and lasting impact may be measured in the work of writers such as T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

Genres: History, Art, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 13, 2015

About the author

Peter Joachim Gay was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers (1997–2003). He received the American Historical Association's (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004. He authored over 25 books, including The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, a two-volume award winner; Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968); and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988).
Gay was born in Berlin in 1923, left Germany in 1939 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984.
Gay was the interim editor of The American Scholar after the death of Hiram Haydn in 1973 and served on that magazine's editorial board for many years. Sander L. Gilman, a literary historian at Emory University, called Gay "one of the major American historians of European thought, period".

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Wow, what a weird little booklet! It reminds me very much of a story of my sister's - once upon a time, long ago and far way my sister worked in the bakery section of a certain national supermarket chain, one day she was at the counter serving customers when an old man wandered up, gestured towards the sticky buns and said 'I'll have three of those sticky willies' willie here meaning a slang and slightly childish term for the penis, rather than only a diminutive of William seeing my sister's discomfort writ large across her face, he laughed much amused and said 'I'm old, te-he, so I can say what I want'

That old man probably wasn't Peter Gay, but they share the same attitude. Starting on the second chapter entitled "Romantic psychology" I thought to myself 'I appear to be under some mysterious misapprehension, for I am fairly sure that this book is called Why the Romantics matter' indeed since my memory isn't what it once was I looked at the front cover and there indeed were the words Why the Romantics matter. Despite this after the first sixteen pages (ie chapter one) it was clear that this book is in fact is Here's me, Peter Gay, rambling on about Modernism for as long as I like, those youngsters at Yale University Press thought they had me tied down to write a book about the Romantics, but I showed them, I'm old so I can write what I like!.

It's not bad or uninteresting rambling, but it is implicitly scaldingly dismissive of Romanticism, since by implication it's only value and interest is as a springboard for Modernism because that's what everyone wants to talk about really. He closes saying "We no longer read much William Wordsworth - we have T.S.Elliot. we no longer amuse our free hours with Sir Walter Scott - we have Virginia Woolf" (p. 116) said Woolf howls the same point in To the Lighthouse. The Romantics here are the foundation of the Modernist house. A building needs foundations, but we don't want to have to look at them. The fifth chapter is about late Beethoven. Late Beethoven is apparently significant in being one of the first of the Modernists. Romanticism in Gay's personal timeline occupies a few months squeezed between the Enlightenment and Modernism. In his introduction Gay mentions the difficulties in defining the Enlightenment and the Romantic era, he points out that one solution devised by A.O.Lovejoy was to say there were Romanticisms rather than Romanticism, Gay in effect improves on his idea by galloping in to the territory like a Napoleon and annexing the entire region and providing it with a brand new constitution (and possibly a brother of his as its new king): the Romantics matter because they are followed by the much more interesting Modernists. As I said, he says what he likes.

Physically the book is annoying, the pages cut to suggest that it was done by apprentices in the corner of the workshop using handtools, personally I found it harder to turn them, what next? In order to demonstrate what pounces they are at Yale University Press, will they in future release books with the pages uncut so you have to slit them with a pocket knife yourself? And it looks as though the author needs a haircut, grrgh. Growl. Get off my lawn with your affectations.

I recommend this book very strongly to all readers who find the Sunday newspapers distasteful. This is a perfect antidote, it has no advertisements, no politics more recent than the 1940s, and you can learn that Mondrian's favourite dance was the Charleston - what more can you want?

[Thomas Breen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This short, erudite, but slightly unfocused essay on the defining attributes, and persistent relevance, of Romanticism (or the plural 'romanticisms', as Gay prefers to use throughout the text) is most effective in its few character portraits of the artists (like Oscar Wilde) and cultural mediators (like Hamburg Kunsthalle museum director Alfred Lichtwark) who best embodied the ideals, vicissitudes, and complexities of that foundational Romantic passion to shock, to create something new, to discover something about the self, and to blur the boundaries between high art and popular appeal.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with Thomas Breen(the only current Goodreads reviewer of this book) about the unfocused nature of the book. Giving the book an extra star for the comments on Beethoven, Brahms, and a passing mention of Jane Austen!

"It is not that we despise our literary and musical ancestors, but if we did not have the universities, the classics-as we are sure to call these-would be largely reduced to assignments, or revived by impassioned students who find, say, JANE AUSTEN(all caps by me, not the author) as thrilling as though she, too, were new, and speaking to us in surprising modernity. What is forgotten, unjustly, is the rich romantic past that was the first to question age-old traditions, and to teach novelists and poets, composers, painters, and dramatists, to say nothing of architects, where its creators' passions originated and how much they still live in that world." -Peter Gay "Why the romantics matter" pg 117

"Johannes Brahms is another case in point. Nowadays, more than a century after his death, his music is lodged securely among the classics. In his own time, he appeared to many listeners a heavy-hander imitator of his master Schumann, whom he tried to outdo with massive scoring and unlovely melodies. He was treated as an unoriginal and unruly follower of the establishment. .....And yet, the most discriminating listeners in his time found Brahms's compositions not just beautiful but difficult and daring-in a word, modern. It is instructive that in the 1940s, Arnold Schoenberg, the most uncompromising among modern composers, hailed Brahms as a thoroughgoing innovator." -Peter Gay "Why the romantics matter" pgs 40-41

[Nathan Wittmann]

I find no fault with author Peter Gay’s syntax: the mellifluous melodies he weaves throughout this work and other two works I’ve read by him (Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider and Modernism) grant an accessibility that is often a sad omission with many scholarly works. Why then, is this book entitled Why the Romantics Matter, and yet 85% of the book is devoted to the late-nineteenth century advent of modernism? Sure he ties the two disparate movements (at least that’s what we’ll consider them here) together in several of the chapters, but it is too often shrugged off in one sentence and then disappears, while we are forced to inhale an anecdote about Matisse and the Fauvists, or Mondrian, Kandinsky, and abstraction. If Byron and Oscar Wilde’s aesthetic sensibilities are paralleled, tell me more about the Byronic path tread through Wilde’s oeuvre! I want to see the progression from Beethoven to Schoenberg, through Chopin and Liszt and Brahms and all the other romantic luminaries; Where do those famous poets of the Lyrical Ballads fall? What about the modernist movement still speaks to artists after postmodernism?Perhaps Romanticism is so discarded that even a book advocating for its relevance is inclined to strap it to a cannonball and light the fuse. “Why indeed does it matter?” I imagine Gay says, as he departs for a contemplative walk amongst the nearest arboretum.

[Erdem Yılmaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romantikler Neden Önemlidir? (Why The Romantics Matter, 2015)
Peter Gay (1923-2015, 92y 🇩🇪 🇺🇸)
Çeviren: Kerime Dalyan

https://youtu.be/obFJeWUTOok?si=r1ask...

Peter Gay tarihçi, eğitimci ve yazar..
1923’de Berlin’de doğuyor. 1941’de 18 yaşında ABD’ye göç ediyor. Freud, Aydınlanma, Modernizm, Mozart, Weimar Kültürü’ nü içeren 25den fazla eseri var. Pek çok ödülü olan, Yale’den fahri professörlüğü olan ve direktörlükler yapan bir yazar. 2015’de 92 yaşında ölüyor.

kısa ama kapsamlı bir kitapla karşı karşıyayız, çok dolu..
..romantizmin doğası ve köklerine dair yeni ve özgün düşünceler.. aktarılıyor..

Novalis’ten Stendhal’e, Oscar Wilde’dan Beethoven’a biçok yazar, şair, ressam, besteci ve niceleri.. var bu kitapta..
Yazarın ve incelenen sanat ehlinin Kafa açan, ufkumuzu genişleten bakış açılarını içimize çekiyoruz..

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a nice read, the question posed in the title is not answered with any depth. Rather, Gay is trapped by his love of the Moderns and fails to make clear the link between the two. Thankfully it is still insightful and engaging, making it a lovely way to pass a couple of hours.