Romanticism and Its Discontents

by Anita Brookner

ROMANITICISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS is a lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced study of the lives and works of eight painters and writers. Anita Brookner shows how French romanticism followed the political turmoil of the late 18th century and replaced the agnosticism of the Enlightenment and Revolution with a new heroism. Examining the works of Delacroix, Ingres and Gros, the Brothers Goncourt, Zola, Alfred de Musset and Husymans, Brookner argues that the Romantics in France made the heroism of modern life their creed and transferred their idealism to the domain of art, either as practitioners or as critics.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History, Art History, Essays, Romanticism, Literary Criticism

198 pages, Paperback

First published November 7, 2000

About the author

Anita Brookner published her first novel, A Start In Life in 1981. Her most notable novel, her fourth, Hotel du Lac won the Man Booker Prize in 1984. Her novel, The Next Big Thing was longlisted (alongside John Banville's, Shroud) in 2002 for the Man Booker Prize. She published more than 25 works of fiction, notably: Strangers (2009) shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Fraud (1992) and, The Rules of Engagement (2003). She was also the first female to hold a Slade Professorship of Fine Arts at Cambridge University.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

An alternative and more accurate title for this book would be 'here are ten French blokes that I want to write about', or in fact even more accurately after a hasty recount and using all of my fingers 'here are nine French blokes that I want to write about' - but admittedly that is counting the Goncourt brothers as two people and maybe that is a bit over the top.

The book consists of eight chapters of twenty pages each plus a clever introduction and a conclusion. I feell that twenty pages roughly converts into about an hour long lecture so my working theory is that the book is a written version of a lecture course from her days teaching at the Courtauld Institute of Art (London), recycled and given a unifying theme by her clever introduction. I visualise Broookner after her retirement clearing out her garage and finding boxes full of lecture notes, looking through them and thinking 'yeah, I can use these again'. In which case this would be an environmentally friendly book on Romanticism.

I don't think it has much use as a study of Romanticism - you could not guess from this book that Romanticism was an international Pan-European movement except for the illustration of the painting Ossian receiving the ghosts of the French Heroes which offers the slightest, most delicate hint of a suggestion that Romanticism was not a purely nineteenth-century French movement , but it is a nice readable set of portraits of nine nineteenth century French cultural figures - provided you can ignore or smile away the occasionally strained attempts to claim that they were all Romantics. Well and what do we get? Essays on the painters Gros, Delacroix and Ingres, and on the writers Zola, Bros. Goncourt, Huysmans, Baudelaire, and Alfred de Musset. The latter I had never heard of, and a few pages after finishing the chapter about me I have already forgotten what he was all about, apparently even Brookner herself thought he was a minor novelist. It strikes me that I am not having much luck in reading about Romanticism, Why the Romantics Matter saw Romanticism as of interest because they were in the author's opinion, forerunners to Modernism, and here Romanticism in Brookner's hands strikes me only as a unifying concept for looking at nineteenth century French Culture - and at that not a very good concept given that Delacroix and Ingres both saw themselves as Classicists (or would we say neo-classicists?) and I have never heard anyone describe Zola, the Goncourts, or Huysmans as Romantics before. Still Blanning's The Romantic Revolution was not bad. Brookner gets round any difficulties in identifying these gentlemen as Romantics in her introduction (which as I said, is clever), but defining Romanticism in very broad ways, such as a sense of longing, or a sense of loss, I couldn't help feel that such definitions were so dilute that they were not worth drinking.

I was deeply impressed by her ability to pull her punches Gros' Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa she says shows Napoleon as being like the kings of France a Roi thaumaturge, ok, but the point of that was that the king was like-Christ, therefore the painting is showing us that Napoleon is at least as big as Jesus.

And why didn't she write about Stendahl or Chateaubriand, or Madame de Stael, or any other person generally recognised as a Romantic ? He lurks in the background of the first couple of chapters and is the basis of a couple of her definitions of Romanticism, perhaps the saddest of which was that one should be able to dance all night and fight the following day - this Brookner explains is a reference to the Ball held the night before the Battle of Waterloo, where the pre-eminent Romantic hero: Napoleon, was to be defeated. Which brings us back to the sense of loss and defeat as a defining characteristic for Brookner of Romanticism.

[Banbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am mostly "illiterate" in regard to painting and sculpture, and not very organized in my understanding of artistic movements and history, so understanding a lot of this book was a stretch (not always successful) for me. The writing is clear, and I learned good number of interesting facts about the Romantic painters and writers. I am still not sure I understand any overarching thesis, but I assume the fault is with my lack of background, and not with the author. I particularly note with delight the similarity of Girodet's Endymion to Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa, as pointed out by the author.

[Gabriel Congdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read for anyone looking to brush up on their Romantic painters and writers. Having some Baudelaire and Zola under your belt is preferable.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idealists and expressionists of this age stepped away from the conventional to become daring heroes. They didn't create art for social reward or government approval, but actually to get disapproval and sometimes to shock. The artistic rebellion, was an attack on classicism. These are the risk takers who challenged the boundaries of human imagination to create "art for art's sake".

[Antony Vathy-Riakos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read nearly all of Brookner’s novels, I decided to read one of her art history books. I was surprised to see how late among her publications this one was, and outside her area of specialization when she was a professor. I found this book to be a delight, filled with insight and making interesting connections between the work of nineteenth century painters and writers and critics. Brookner’s fictional characters often spend time in museums and reveal a great interest in writers like Balzac and Zola, so for the author to produce a didactic work is no surprise.

I am a frequent visitor to museums, and have spent a fair amount of time in the Louvre, Victoria and Albert, etc, and minored in French language and literature. I therefore was familiar with Brookner’s subject. My education, however, hadn’t made the connections that Brookner explains in this book. Someone who is unfamiliar with the poetry and essays of Baudelaire or the paintings of people like Gros, Ingres, and others might derive little from this book. The title, it occurs to me, may be a reference to Freud’s Civilisation and Its Discontents. Her title, moreover, may be viewed as an oxymoron, as the ‘Romantic’ hero is ipso facto discontented, feeling the ‘mal du siècle’ of many of the French novels of the era. Their ‘discontent’ is with the growth of industrialism and the increasingly inhumane treatment of the poor and the difficulty of the artist in finding acceptance and a means of making a living.

My one negative comment would be that I would have liked even more illustrations, although Brookner gives an example of the work of each of the artists she discusses. For those with a computer, it is easy to access every single work she cites. If you don’t read French, there are translations of the novelists’ work. Baudelaire’s poetry needs to be read in the original to appreciate the ‘music’ of his writing, but he too can be read in translation. I highly recommend this book.

[Patricia Boksa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit difficult to understand in places, if you don't already have a background understanding of Romanticism. But interesting to get the general gist of it.

[C]

Good stuff.