The Romantic Manifesto is an anthology of essays by Ayn Rand, assembled with the intention of single-handedly reviving the Romantic movement (as Rand defines it). Ayn Rand never did shy away from Himalayan objectives. In preparation for this work, she first defines Romanticism as a movement characterised by commitment to personal values. While emotional, it is not, she says, a movement that is primarily concerned with the elevation of emotion. Indeed, to Rand, it is nothing short of a commitment to reason. Her argument is that emotion and passion are side effects of one's commitment to values and that the pure Romanticist IS emotional because of an apriori commitment to values. “What the romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values,” she writes:
“an element that had been missing in the stale, arid, third and fourth hand (and rate) repetitions of the classicists formula copying. Values – and value judgments –are the source of the emotions. A great deal of emotional intensity was projected in the work of the romanticists and in the reactions of their audiences, as well as a great deal of color, imagination, originality, excitement and the all the other consequences of a value-oriented view of life. This emotional element was the most easily perceivable characteristic of the new movement and it was taken as its defining characteristic, without deeper inquiry.” p. 105
“Romanticists saw their cause primarily as a battle for their right to individuality and – unable to grasp the deepest metaphysical justification of their cause, unable to identify their values in terms of reason – they fought for individuality in terms of feelings, surrendering the banner of reason to their enemies.” p. 105
Like a religious reformer returning to the seminal sacred texts or like a strict constructionist, returning to the framer's intent in interpreting the Constitution, she argues that true Romantics do not hold emotion sacred so much as the values that they derive from reason. And it is in committing themselves to values that they live life passionately and emotionally. Rand pities the souls who live out their lives as objects, drifting in the tide of emotion and whim because they have surrendered their reason and values to others. “For good or evil -- and usually, for evil” she says of the common man, “he is left at the mercy of a subconscious philosophy which he does not know, has never checked, has never been aware of accepting.” p.31
Even the act of falling in love, she says, is not so much a matter of emotion but of reason, philosophy, and values. Rand argues that we love those who we discover value the values that we value. “There are two aspects of man's existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life,” she says,
“love and art. I am referring here to romantic love in the serious meaning of that word – as distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is devoid of any consistent values, of any lasting emotions other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person's sense of life that one falls in love – with the essential sum, that fundamental stand in our way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of values that formed a person's character, which are reflected in his widest goals and smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul – the individual style of the unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one's own sense of life that acts as the selector, in response to what it recognizes as one's own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.
Many errors and tragic disillusionment are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide and if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism – in terms of human suffering – is to believe that love is a matter of “the heart” not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy Love is the expression of philosophy.” p. 32-33
Rand would agree with c.S. Lewis when he wrote:
"Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." We can imagine that among those early hunters and warriors single individuals -- one in a century? one in a thousand years? -- saw what others did not; saw that the deer was beautiful as well as edible, that hunting was fun as well as necessary, dreamed that his gods might be not only powerful but holy. But as long as each of these percipient persons dies without finding a kindred soul, nothing (I suspect) will come of it; art or sport or spiritual religion will not be born. It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision -- it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude. . . .
Lovers seek for privacy. Friends find this solitude about them, this barrier between them and the herd, whether they want it or not... as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? -- Or at least, 'Do you care about the same truth?' The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. . . .
[Companions will be doing something together, and so too will friends] be doing something together, but something more inward, less widely shared and less easily defined... Hence we picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead. That is why those pathetic people who simply 'want friends' can never make any... Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers."
She argues that art provides us with concrete idealized pictures (be they embedded in literature, sculpture, or painting) of values.
“Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if it were precepts. This is the psycho-epistemological function of art and the reason of its importance in man's life.” p. 20
In several places, she illustrates by comparing the art of the Classical Greeks and the art of the Middle Ages.
"Consider the difference it would make if – in his need for philosophical guidance or confirmation or inspiration – man turns to the art of ancient Greece or to the art of the Middle Ages. Reaching his mind and emotions simultaneously, with the combined impact of abstract thought and immediate reality, one type of art tells them that disasters are transient, that grandeur, beauty, strength, and self-confidence are his proper, natural state. The other tells him that happiness is transient and evil, and that he is a distorted, impotent, miserable little sinner, pursued by leering gargoyles, crawling in terror of the brink of an eternal hell. The consequences of both experiences are obvious – and history is their practical demonstration.” p. 23-24
“An artist (as, for instance, sculptors of ancient Greece) who presents man as a godlike figure is aware of the fact that men may be crippled or diseased or helpless; but he regards these conditions as accidental, as irrelevant to the essential nature of man – and he presents a figure embodying strength beauty, intelligence, self-confidence, as man's proper, natural state. An artist (as, for instance, the sculptors of the Middle Ages) who presents man as a deformed monstrosity is aware of the fact that there are men who are healthy, happy or confident; but he regards these conditions as accidental illusory, as irrelevant to man's essential nature – and he presents a tortured figure embodying pain, ugliness, terror, as man's proper natural state.” p. 37
For Rand, the choosing of art is tantamount to the choosing character. Art portrays the goals to which character will eventually conform itself. And this is why she has nothing but disdain for modern art. “I do not know which is worse;” she reflects, “to practice modern art as a colossal fraud or to do it sincerely.” p. 77
“'Something made by an artist' is not the definition of art. A beard and a vacant stare are not the defining characteristics of an artist.
'Something in a frame on the wall' is not a definition painting.
'Something with a number of pages' in a binding is not a definition of literature
'Something piled together' is not a definition of sculpture.
Something made of sounds produced by anything' is not a definition of music.
'Something glued on a flat surface' is not a definition of any art. There is no art that uses glue as a medium. Blades of grass glued on a sheet of paper to represent grass might be good in occupational therapy for retarded children – though I doubt it – but it is not art. 'Because I felt like it' is not a definition or validation of anything. There is no place for whim in any human activity – if it is to be regarded as human there is no place for the unknowable, the unintelligible, the undefinable, but non-objective in any human product. This side of the insane asylum, the actions of the human beings are motivated by conscious purpose; When they are not, they are of no interest to anyone outside a psychotherapist's office. And when the practitioners of modern Art declared that they don't know what they're doing what makes them do it, we should take their word for it and give them no further consideration.” p. 79
If we would have great models to emulate, we must have great art, she insists. And great art is not vague or unclear or distorted. It gives us characters of virtue who can explain why they are virtuous. It presents us with characters making choices – choices similar to those we must make if we wish to live lives based on rationally chosen values.
“Most men have inner conflicts of values; these conflicts, in most lives, take the form of small irrationalities, and inconsistencies, mean little evasions, shabby little acts of cowardice, with no crucial moments of choice, no vital issues or great,decisive battles – and they add up to the stagnant, wasted life of a man who has betrayed all his values by the method of a leaking faucet.” p. 84
“If an author keeps telling us that his hero is virtuous, benevolent, sensitive, heroic, but the hero does nothing except he loves the heroine, smiles at the neighbors, contemplates the sunset, and votes for the Democratic party – the results can hardly be called the characterization.” p. 88
“Since art is the expression and product of philosophy,” she writes, “it is the first to mirror the vacuum at the base of a culture and the first to crumble.”p. 113 Her call to a resurgence of Romanticism, is a call to the creation of art that mirrors not what is around us but what should be around us. “Romanticism was the great new movement in art,” she writes,
“Romanticism saw man as a being able to choose his values, to achieve his goals, to control his own existence. The Romantic writers did not record the events that had happened, but projected the events that should happen.” p. 123
“Man is being a self-made soul – which means that his character is formed by his basic premises, particularly by his basic value premises. In the crucial, formative years of his life – in childhood and adolescence – Romantic art is his major and, today, is only source of a moral sense of life.”
“If man is to gain and keep a moral stature, he needs an image of the ideal, from the first thinking day of his life to the last.” p. 147
“In the translation of that ideal into conscious, philosophical terms and its actual practice,” she adds, empathizing with young people who she believes are growing up in an age where literature and art is infected with a debasing and mockery of values.
“a child needs intellectual assistance or, at least, the chance to find his own way. In today's culture, he's given neither. The battering which which his precarious, uninformed, barely-glimpsed moral sense of life receives from parents, teachers, adult 'authorities' and little secondhander goons of his own generation, is so intense and so evil that only the toughest hero can withstand it – so evil that of many sins of adults towards children, this is the one from which they would deserve to burn in hell, if such a place existed.
Every form of punishment, from outright prohibition to threats to anger to condemnation to crass interference to mockery – is unleashed against a child at the first signs of his romanticism (which means: at the first signs of his emerging sense of moral values). 'Life is not like that' and “Come down to earth!' are the catchphrases which best summarized the motives of the attackers, as well as the view of life and of this earth which they seek to inculcate.
The Child who withstands it and damns the attackers, not himself and his values, is a rare exception. The chilk who merely suppresses his values, avoids communication, and withdraws into a lonely private universe, is almost as rare. In most cases, the child represses his values and gives up. He gives up the entire realm of valuing, of value choices and judgments – without knowing that what he is surrendering it morality.
The surrender is extorted by a long, almost imperceptible process, a constant, ubiquitous pressure which the child absorbs and accepts by degrees. His spirit is not broken in one sudden blow: it is bled to death in thousands of small scratches.” p. 147-148
Her antidote is Romanticism – a conscious rejection of culture and art that presents no challenge to the soul daring to climb upwards and against the current of mediocrity. And while she herself has a clearly defined sense of her own values, she is not excessively particular. Echoing the sentiments of her favorite Romantic author, Victor Hugo, she simply advocates that each and every person make use of their reasoning process to construct and commit themselves to a life that values life.
“The emphasis [Hugo] projects is not “What great values men are fighting for” she writes of Hugo's last great novel Ninety-Three, but: “What greatness men are capable of when they fight for their values!” p. 157
Question for Comment: What values do your children hold to? Where do those values come from? What forces in their lives seek to erode their commitment to them? How can you play a part in fostering a spirit of resistance to values-dilution?
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