The Western Tradition - Episode 43 - Revolution and Romantics (1989)

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00][Music] it was a time of revolution when writers and artists also fought for freedom they exalted the outlaw decried injustice stirred the imagination they reached millions with their art and in doing so they colored the politics of a century revolution and the romantics this time on the western tradition [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and now ucla professor eugene weber's continuing journey through the history of western civilization i've been talking about the achievements of the 19th century and they were impressive now i want to talk about its conflict these were generational conflict social conflicts which were the dark side of the century's material triumphs national conflicts and international ones including bitter colonial friction it's a story no less exciting than that of the industrial revolution because it too is the story of upheaval social revolution national revolution and their international counterparts the 18th century's legacy to the 19th every age lives in the shadow of the past even if he doesn't know it the 19th century lived in the shadow of the 18th and it was very strongly aware of this the politics of the 19th century the ideas that moved or repelled it were the fallout of revolution and revolution was its constant point of reference very often its constant experience the wars of the french revolution in napoleon began in 1792 and ended in 1815 at waterloo when napoleon was finally defeated by the british with prussian help the great powers were determined to avoid another ordeal on this scale and the congress system they set up kept war from spreading beyond localized conflicts for a long long time but political disorder had come to stay for the next 40 years or so there wasn't a single year in the western world from poland to peru without revolutions rebellions insurrection some of them very bloody indeed waterloo or no waterloo not all the king's horses nor all the king's men could put the old regime together again the revolutionary agenda rose like the tablets of the law before the peoples of europe and the americas and the revolutionary agenda seemed unending the american revolution then the french had proclaimed two astonishing notions both of them knew in the experience of europeans the first was that they could make war against their rulers the american colonists after all had used violence to get rid of their british king and the french had used violence to get rid of their monarchy and then they had gone on to overthrow or humiliate the ruling dynasties of all of europe this kind of thing on this kind of scale had never happened before in european history the notion that subjects could make successful war against their hereditary rulers opened up similar political possibilities in the 19th century that nuclear weapons opened up in the 20th century and they were just as unsettling within a lifetime of waterloo latin america had fought itself free of portugal and spain greece had fought itself free of the turks the belgians had set up their own independent kingdom italians poles canadian swiss danes germans spaniards portuguese had produced insurrections not to mention the french who changed rulers several times and the english who tried hard to do so but failed the second notion that came out of this era of revolution reinforced the first the political philosophy that justified the war of subjects against rulers the revolutions in france and in america had not just succeeded you could also justify them on moral grounds it was this claim that they were just and righteous acts that made revolutions respectable before this rebellion had been a crime generally looked on as the ultimate civil and moral crime but americans and french claim that they were not criminals at all they were standard bearers of a new philosophy of man they seemed to suggest that all attempts to overthrow a king by violence were good because practically all kings were evil but above all because the institution of kingship was evil and this view affected increasing numbers of ordinary respectable people who would have kept well away from revolutionaries in earlier times the basis of the new position was to be found in three major ideas that we have already encountered the perfectibility of man the sovereignty of the people and the equality of man and if i use man rather than people or humanity it's because this is the language that was used the most fundamental of these ideas was that humans are perfectable that they can be made perfect that their lives can be made perfect and so can the societies in which they live this was a very new idea and at the secular level it was very anti-christian because according to christianity we cannot hope to be perfect in this fallen temporal world but this new idea said that man could be perfect if only he were not prevented by the superstitions of the church and the tyranny of kings churches and kings condemn us all to spiritual and temporal slavery or as also said man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains those who agreed with this view felt that all you had to do was to break the chains if you did that you would achieve not just freedom but perfection so at the beginning of the 19th century a generation of europeans grew up who were told that they were free men condemned to slavery but that their liberation was at hand and really that it was in their own hands they remembered voltaire's advice to crush the infamous cleric the agent of backwardness and superstition and they agreed with the poet shelley that the world would be a better place when the last king had been strangled with the guts of the last priest they never went that far in practice but they rather did talk that way [Music] equally new was the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people nobody could say exactly just what this meant but it was clear it did not mean the sovereignty of kings kings and especially absolute kings were tyrants usurpers of the true sovereignty which rests in the people and so kings should be done away with finally all men were equal and all men were brothers again no one could define exactly what this should mean in practice though it implied that no man should enslave oppress maltreat another more importantly it denied that any group of men could claim rights over other folk just by referring to privilege tradition property ancient conquest or blood or birth rights based on such traditional claims are no rights at all the only rights that matter are the inalienable rights of man rights that are yours just because you are a man in due course this notion would be claimed for the disinherited as well and the rights of man meant the emancipation of slaves in europe by 1848 and in america 20 years later although the emancipation of women took a great deal longer but the first use of the slogan was simply to deny the rights of kings and priests and hereditary aristocrats to rule over others or tell them what to do this composition for example is called a nightmare of the aristocracy the legacy of 1776 the legacy of 1789 was the belief that social and political wrongs were there to be righted that it was our duty to write and that if governments and societies didn't do their duty then a revolution should do it for them an attitude which brings us to an important strain of 19th century thought that we call romanticism look at this picture of napoleon as emperor and grand the last of the enlightened despots now look at this one where his youth his beauty his conquering aspect are stressed and the surroundings are wild not solemn not orderly napoleon could be abandoned a highwayman a rebel the sort of figure that was supposed to excite young men and make young ladies swoon which we call romantic in fact napoleon embodies both these characteristics he's the authoritarian father figure identified with law and order and repression and police and the code that protects property and contracts in the family but he is also the romantic hero a sort of robin hood who triumphs over tremendous odds who represents adventure excitement energy and youth against age and the out against the inns after waterloo it was this second image of napoleon that survived and that turned the master of a very efficient police state into a patron saint of revolution but the real patron saint of the new era was another figure from the previous century jean-jacques russo i mentioned before that rousseau provided many slogans of the revolution but his real influence in the 19th century came from his confessions which were only published in the 1780s when he was safely dead the confessions are the first modern autobiography in which the writer is so fascinated with himself that he tells everything he can about himself his weaknesses his bad actions his love affairs his sexual hang-ups [Music] according to rousseau behaving badly doesn't matter because man is naturally good it's society that perverts him man is naturally happy it's society that makes him unhappy and resource conclusion fight oppression fight repression be yourself resist social convention scorn money and status drop out choose rejection and failure if that is what it takes to be true to nature your nature russo chose rejection and failure which made him a very suitable figurehead for the party of the rejected and the oppressed although in his case i must say nothing succeeds like failure in france alone half a million copies of his works were printed in the seven years between 1817 and 1824 russo was in the right place at the right time before romanticism he was the incarnation of romanticism because romanticism above all was a reaction against the rationalism of the earlier enlightenment a reaction against the enlightened dream of a world where everything could be calculated and worked out in rational terms remember that the spirit of 17th and 18th century enlightened thought had been to investigate what you could see with the help of new scientific instruments and to calculate what you could calculate but the romantics wanted to get the invisible and the incalculable they were interested in the forces that move us or reveal us to ourselves dreams fantasies madness romantic painters painted nightmares they painted mad men they painted people under stress who didn't act reasonably they painted terrible accidents where nature mastered man the romantics were also interested in the great silent currents of society and history the two great results of this would be the systems of thought elaborated by karl marx and by sigmund freud both of whom wanted to reveal the underlying forces that move and affect human beings behind or below the apparent activities of society and individuals more immediately romantic literature and art were about opposition and conflict they were against conformity in manners beliefs taboos even to the extent of condoning incest they were against oppression national political and social oppression they wanted to abolish suffering they opposed slavery they opposed the death penalty and they were against the law which was an agent of oppression against the law they exalted the bandit the outlaw in their paintings in their plays in their novels their operas even the fashions they were for rebels against established authority for youth against old age and in part it was a generational revolt against conservatism against the older generation who botched the revolution or opposed it against fathers and elders who were the incarnation of the tyrant to be overthrown romantics were rebels or they were sympathizers with rebellions like wordsworth who you remember went to france in 1791 and found that bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but wordsworth changed his mind when liberation became war and terror and others reacted just like him the german poet gertie admired bonaparte as the carrier of revolution admired him as the great liberator until that is napoleon became the great oppressor beethoven dedicated his third symphony the heroica to general bonaparte but when on the eve of its first performance he heard that the general had made himself emperor he tore off the dedication page and almost destroyed the score some took longer before they lost their illusions the poet byron supported the italian patriots in 1820 and the greek patriots a few years later he went to greece to fight for greek freedom he set up and subsidized a byron brigade and then he died of a fever at missalongi and shelley supported radicals in england as well as freedom fighters in greece and shelley's widow mary wrote the story of frankenstein which is not only the first science fiction novel but a very russo-esque story of a kind of noble savage naturally good corrupted and driven to murder by ill-treatment [Music] romanticism also exalted history the past against the present the past used to justify and inspire present conflict present action the great deeds of germans or scots or greeks or what have you who deserve to be great again the rebellions of william tell or of robin hood or of the people of paris against foreign oppressors or against local oppressors probably the most influential romantic of all sir walter scott invented the historical novel a genre that brought the past to life in a colorful moving way in stories of adventure romance daring do in picturesque settings novels like ivanhoe which was published in 1819 didn't just stir the imagination they inspired pride in being british and by extension in whatever nationality you might be they also inspired a desire to fight against injustice against intolerance the heroine of ivanhoe was jewish against the oppression of the weak by the strong and the young by the old french romantics like victor hugo labor the same theme justice for the people for the poor the weak the oppressed and one of hugo's heroes is a hunchback another is a convict his greatest success les miserables is a political and social novel about the virtues of those whom society casts out or crushes finally in shelley's most famous political poem which is about england in 1819 we find this which he wrote after british cavalry had ridden down a crowd of unarmed men and women in saint peter's fields at manchester killing 11 and injuring several hundred a massacre which ironic popular analogy with waterloo turned into peterloo the massacre of peter lou [Music] an old mad blind despised and dying king princes the dregs of their dull race who flow through public scorn mud from a muddy spring rulers who neither see nor feel nor know but leech-like to their fainting country cling till they drop blind in blood without a blow a people starved and stabled in the until field an army which liberticide and prey makes us a two-edged sword to all who wield golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay religion christless godless a book sealed a senate times worse statute unrepealed are graves from which a glorious phantom may burst to illumine our tempestuous day [Music] i've talked so long about the romantics because their spirit infused the politics of the century and inspired its major conflicts both national and social as a matter of fact when at the end of the 19th century a french labor leader was asked about his inspiration did he read marx did he read jacques sorel he answered lord no i don't read the sort of chap i read alexander dumas i read the three musketeers now perhaps germans were more serious than the french but i'm sure that british labor leaders read more walter scott and read more dickens both of whom were romantic novelists than they ever read marx it was the romantic spirit that inspired political and social revolt in england in the 1820s and 40s in france the 1830s and 40s and 70s not so much revolt by the oppressed as by those members of the upper and middle classes who couldn't stand the oppression couldn't stand the injustice and the suffering that they saw around them and indeed there were many terrible things to see as we shall discover next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so you