What do you think?
Rate this book
Classic, Romantic, and Modern
Drawing from the works of influential figures in art and literature, the author traces the development of romanticism from classicism and the emergence of the modern ego
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1943
5 people are currently reading
215 people want to read
About the author
Jacques Barzun
131 books209 followersWorks of French-American educator, author, and historian Jacques Martin Barzun include
Darwin, Marx, Wagner
(see Charles Robert Darwin, Karl Marx, and Richard Wagner) (1941) and
The American University
(1968).
He presented ideas and culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques...
He presented ideas and culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 8, 2023
Classic, Romantic and Modern is the second, final revision of Jacques Barzun's Romanticism and the Modern Ego. This short exposition seeks to accomplish four goals: to explicate the colloquial understanding of what is meant by Romanticism and the Romantic Period; to attack those understandings and deem them misinformed, contradictory, ambiguous, or simply false; to provide an historical sketch of Romanticism by surveying its thinkers, trends, and artistic and literary outputs; and to contrast the Romantic Period with Classicism, its predecessor, and Modernism, its successor.
The bulk of the work is 154 pages in length, but Barzun also provides one section devoted to the use of the word "romantic" in other works and contexts as well as a section devoted to notes and references, extending the length to 234 pages. These sections are not optional reading; when taken together with the core text, they provide an exceptionally well-rounded, focused study to the arguments therein.
At the outset, Barzun argues that Romanticism sought "to create a new world on the ruins of the old," with the "ruins" being the French Revolution of 1789 and its subsequent birth of Napoleon. It did so through its "creative mission" to explore "a great contradiction concerning man... the contrast between man's greatness and man's wretchedness; man's power and man's misery." Romanticism was not a period rife with irrational, subjective, emotionally-wrought propositions, superstition, or nonscientific assertions; it was, the author argues, a natural successor to Classicism.
Early on, Barzun gives Rousseau, the father of Romanticism, his due by debunking common myths attributed to the philosopher and political theorist, such as the phrase "back to nature," which Rousseau did not even pen. Barzun somewhat hints that Rousseau is a sort of intellectual successor to Pascal, a pre-Romanticist in spirit who lived one-hundred years prior, arguing not against the rationalism of his predecessors and contemporaries but the prospect of living and thinking in such a way that is antithetical to man's "nature." Rousseau did not think man ought to run without structure, the rule of law, or the shackles of society but rather to try to understand how the societal chains into which man is born came to be. In The Social Contract, Rousseau attempts "to make clear what conditions social chains are legitimate, to reconcile the rights of free individuals with the requirements of society."
With a survey of Rousseau, Barzun intends to introduce the essence of Romantic thought pervasive in its characters: "a vast emptiness of spirit" contending with experience. Put another way, it is "romantic striving" or "the effort to create order out of experience individually acquired." Interestingly, Barzun also insists that the open tenderness and naked vulnerability of the Romanticists is a poignant trait of the era, but a trait that was not absent from the Classicists. Barzun argues that inhabitants of the Classical period experienced "the life of leisure and the constraints of politeness [that] encouraged pleasures that were violent and exhausting." When we think of the Classicists, we do not think of the "irresoluteness of Dryden's faith" or the "mental depression" of Alexander Pope" or Samuel Johnson's psychiatric illness. In essence, Classicism is "stability within known limits," and Romanticism is "the expansion within limits known and unknown."
Barzun's historical sketch of Romanticism includes splitting the period into four phases. The first phase lasted from 1780 to 1850, comprised of the "undisputed masters" of the period (think Goethe, Schelling, Hegel, Novalis, and Balzac). The next three phases are "efforts at specialization, selection, refinement, and intensification." More generally, phase two is the period of Realism (think C. Darwin, Spencer, and Flaubert), phase three the period of Symbolism (or Impressionism), and phase four the period of Naturalism (think Emile Zola).
After this sketch, Barzun finally divulges his notion of the "modern ego," which may be woefully alien to the now-modern reader. The modern ego germinated at the end of the First World War, which compelled artists to rebel against the history that ultimately fractured Europe and the rest of the world (similar to the Romanticists in response to Napoleon's reign), resulting in creative output from selfish, damaged characters expressing "fury and destruction." As an example, Barzun, not in critical terms, points to Cubism as a complete rebellion of art previously conceived. This discussion of the modern ego in Chapter VIII is detrimentally constrained to analyzing art almost exlusively, but Barzun acknowledges other expressions, such as architecture, in Chapter IX's epilogue, serving as a response written in 1960 to the previous chapter that was written in 1943.
Chapters VIII and IX are the weakest links of Classic, Romantic and Modern, as they pertain to Barzun's conceptualizing of the 20th century, of which, as almost all of his critics tend to point out, he is especially harsh and critical. Barzun's remarks on the 20th century, for which he believes deserves our pity and in need of our help, contains a survey of only particular elements – namely art, literature, and classical music – that are largely abstractions based on his agreement with the philosophies of G.B. Shaw and W. James.
Ultimately, Classic, Romantic and Modern serves as the best book on Romanticism for its size, depth, and surprising comprehensiveness, save for the last two chapters, which date the work considerably and may leave the reader a bit dumbfounded. Barzun effectively achieves the four goals aforementioned, supplementing the work with deep, little-known insights and arguments as well as a careful inspection of the source materials, along with his own stylistic flair.
The bulk of the work is 154 pages in length, but Barzun also provides one section devoted to the use of the word "romantic" in other works and contexts as well as a section devoted to notes and references, extending the length to 234 pages. These sections are not optional reading; when taken together with the core text, they provide an exceptionally well-rounded, focused study to the arguments therein.
At the outset, Barzun argues that Romanticism sought "to create a new world on the ruins of the old," with the "ruins" being the French Revolution of 1789 and its subsequent birth of Napoleon. It did so through its "creative mission" to explore "a great contradiction concerning man... the contrast between man's greatness and man's wretchedness; man's power and man's misery." Romanticism was not a period rife with irrational, subjective, emotionally-wrought propositions, superstition, or nonscientific assertions; it was, the author argues, a natural successor to Classicism.
Early on, Barzun gives Rousseau, the father of Romanticism, his due by debunking common myths attributed to the philosopher and political theorist, such as the phrase "back to nature," which Rousseau did not even pen. Barzun somewhat hints that Rousseau is a sort of intellectual successor to Pascal, a pre-Romanticist in spirit who lived one-hundred years prior, arguing not against the rationalism of his predecessors and contemporaries but the prospect of living and thinking in such a way that is antithetical to man's "nature." Rousseau did not think man ought to run without structure, the rule of law, or the shackles of society but rather to try to understand how the societal chains into which man is born came to be. In The Social Contract, Rousseau attempts "to make clear what conditions social chains are legitimate, to reconcile the rights of free individuals with the requirements of society."
With a survey of Rousseau, Barzun intends to introduce the essence of Romantic thought pervasive in its characters: "a vast emptiness of spirit" contending with experience. Put another way, it is "romantic striving" or "the effort to create order out of experience individually acquired." Interestingly, Barzun also insists that the open tenderness and naked vulnerability of the Romanticists is a poignant trait of the era, but a trait that was not absent from the Classicists. Barzun argues that inhabitants of the Classical period experienced "the life of leisure and the constraints of politeness [that] encouraged pleasures that were violent and exhausting." When we think of the Classicists, we do not think of the "irresoluteness of Dryden's faith" or the "mental depression" of Alexander Pope" or Samuel Johnson's psychiatric illness. In essence, Classicism is "stability within known limits," and Romanticism is "the expansion within limits known and unknown."
Barzun's historical sketch of Romanticism includes splitting the period into four phases. The first phase lasted from 1780 to 1850, comprised of the "undisputed masters" of the period (think Goethe, Schelling, Hegel, Novalis, and Balzac). The next three phases are "efforts at specialization, selection, refinement, and intensification." More generally, phase two is the period of Realism (think C. Darwin, Spencer, and Flaubert), phase three the period of Symbolism (or Impressionism), and phase four the period of Naturalism (think Emile Zola).
After this sketch, Barzun finally divulges his notion of the "modern ego," which may be woefully alien to the now-modern reader. The modern ego germinated at the end of the First World War, which compelled artists to rebel against the history that ultimately fractured Europe and the rest of the world (similar to the Romanticists in response to Napoleon's reign), resulting in creative output from selfish, damaged characters expressing "fury and destruction." As an example, Barzun, not in critical terms, points to Cubism as a complete rebellion of art previously conceived. This discussion of the modern ego in Chapter VIII is detrimentally constrained to analyzing art almost exlusively, but Barzun acknowledges other expressions, such as architecture, in Chapter IX's epilogue, serving as a response written in 1960 to the previous chapter that was written in 1943.
Chapters VIII and IX are the weakest links of Classic, Romantic and Modern, as they pertain to Barzun's conceptualizing of the 20th century, of which, as almost all of his critics tend to point out, he is especially harsh and critical. Barzun's remarks on the 20th century, for which he believes deserves our pity and in need of our help, contains a survey of only particular elements – namely art, literature, and classical music – that are largely abstractions based on his agreement with the philosophies of G.B. Shaw and W. James.
Ultimately, Classic, Romantic and Modern serves as the best book on Romanticism for its size, depth, and surprising comprehensiveness, save for the last two chapters, which date the work considerably and may leave the reader a bit dumbfounded. Barzun effectively achieves the four goals aforementioned, supplementing the work with deep, little-known insights and arguments as well as a careful inspection of the source materials, along with his own stylistic flair.
August 1, 2017
Begins with a wonderful exploration on the difficulty of accurately attributing a set of all encompassing traits to a decades long artistic movement with multiple unique points of view, while acknowledging the understandable desire to categorize. A strong and readable defense of romanticism follows, but then the focus wanders and argues small points that may have carried more weight many years ago but is now moot.
September 5, 2009
I love Barzun. My sister introduced me to his The Dawn of Decadence on a summer vacation and I have been hooked since. That book became the textbook for my 11th grade Omnibus class. This book was originally written in 1948. He added a new forward and chapter in 1960. As a cultural historian he understands the philosophy of an age. He helped me understand what is meant by romanticism and its influence on modern times. He also noted trends which proven right on. While this book will not be for everyone but if you are interested in history and how we got where we are today this book will have things that make you think.
May 30, 2011
ah!! so romantic and a sweet one.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews