Romanticism as a creative method has long been used in the history of Chinese and foreign literature, but romanticism as a literary trend is the product of a specific stage in the history of human culture. It originated in Western Europe at the end of the 18th century. After being popular in Western European countries for nearly half a century, it also affected other parts of the world, including China. As a literary concept, modern romanticism is a fusion of the two. The relationship between Taoist culture and Chinese modern romantic literary view is quite complicated. On the one hand, Romantic poetics's promotion of freedom, concern for individuals, reliance on nature, hostility to alienation, etc. have distant echoes with Taoist poetics; on the other hand, modern romanticism resolutely opposes "not appealing to people's hearts". ”, the tense fighting posture and decisive rebellious spirit it maintains between individuals and the community, especially the subject’s anxiety, are completely inconsistent with Taoist ideas.
Lu Xun’s romantic literary views are closely related to Western romanticism and traditional Chinese cultural resources. He not only appears to be greatly open to Western ideological trends, but is also deeply rooted in the reality of his nation. In line with the needs of the times, it shows the calm and broad-mindedness of a generation of cultural giants at the beginning of the century when facing the modern world culture and their positive construction mentality based on local reality. Modernization and nationalization are the dual directions of Lu Xun's construction of romantic literary outlook. The treatises that represent Lu Xun's romantic view of literature include "On the Power of Moro Poetry", "On Cultural Partiality", "On Destroying Evil Voices", and "Opinions on the Art of Broadcasting" and so on.
The core expression of Lu Xun's romantic view of literature is what he said in "Cultural Partiality Theory": "Putting material things aside to make things clear, and allowing individuals to exclude the masses." This shows Lu Xun's position as a cultural giant. For the contribution of the predecessors' scholars in promoting the construction of Romanticism with their leaping transcendent spirit and integrity.
The atheistic debate that broke out around Fichte's philosophy was no less intense than the pantheistic debate involving Lessing. In the final stages of the debate, not even Fichte's impassioned Annunciation ("Read this before you search," 1799) could prevent his expulsion from Jena. Novaris clearly sided with Fichte in this dispute. Regarding the "Announcement", he wrote to a friend at the time: "This is an outstanding short article that allows you to understand such a bizarre idea and plan of our government and pastors, and understand a plan that has been partially implemented. A plan to suppress public opinion. It therefore requires every reasonable person to observe these steps and draw important conclusions from these premises” (Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 270). In his "Miscellaneous Manuscripts", Novalis even talked about the establishment of a "Knights of Reason" - realistic thinking based on the fraternity of the Enlightenment - as the "main activity" of his life. Who else would say: He has no right to defend reason? Perhaps Novaris was an Enlightenmentist at heart?
This shows how wrong it is to put "Enlightenment" (Lessing!) and "Romanticism" (Novaris!) in direct opposition. This opposition is favored by those who identify Romanticism with the political Restoration after Metternich in 1815 (Signals of the Restoration: Friedrich Schlegel's entry into the Habsburgs, 1808-09 Served in the dynasty's diplomatic and propaganda services). First the intellectuals of Young Germany (especially Heine), then the liberal literary critics (such as Gervinus), and finally the Marxists (mainly Lukacs) used the Enlightenment to oppose Romanticism , in their view, romanticism is political reaction. In contrast, both the "New Romantics" of the turn of the century and the study of Romanticism in the interwar period (such as Novalis experts Rudolf Unger and Paul Kluckhorn) , all regard romanticism as just a reaction to the Enlightenment of the 18th century.
However, the Enlightenment and Romanticism are not purely antagonistic like Descartes and Pascal. The latest research on Novalis since the 1960s (W. Marsch, H. Schanzer, C. Traeger, P. Pitts, W. Rush, K. Peter) has shown more and more clearly that they in a nuanced relationship of opposition. Romanticism – as biographies of H?lderlin, Hegel, Fichte, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis reveal – emerged from the Enlightenment. Romantic escapism is a crude and cheap cliché. The Enlightenment and early Romanticism were completely consistent in their opposition to the absolutist rule of princes and monks, their rejection of prejudice, superstition, hypocrisy, suppression and burning, and in short, their affirmation of man's self-liberation. In other words, Romanticism originally had only an indirect relationship with the irrational; what mattered to it was the reconciliation of the rational with the irrational, that is, with the realms of the human soul, nature, and history that have not yet been reached by consciousness. Therefore, Romanticism should first be understood as the critical inheritance and development of the Enlightenment; before turning to reaction and restoration, it is a further stage of the autonomous movement in the modern paradigm.
In November 1799, the first "Romantic Party" in Jena (including the Schlegel brothers and their wives Caroline and Dorothea, Tick, Schelling and Li (Tel), Novalis recited his article "Christianity or Europe" which soon caused an uproar among his friends. It provoked Schelling to write a satirical poem "hostile to religion," and Goethe, acting as arbiter, refused to publish the article. During Novalis's lifetime, "Christianity or Europe" was never published, and even the first edition of Novaris's complete works was not included in it. It was only published by Schlegel in Tickeburg twenty-five years after his death. Post it if you know it. In subsequent editions, Tick removed this article, and it was not officially published until the late 1860s, becoming one of Novaris's major works. Today, "Christianity or Europe" is regarded as the first-class religious, political, and poetic document of Romanticism. So how did Novalis write this sensational article in such a short time?
Novaris's poetic work was composed in the three years between the death of his fiancée at Easter 1797 and his own fatal illness in the summer of 1800. Of course, as we have seen, it Built on a long process of development and maturity. Faced with the death of Sophie (and soon his brother Erasmus), Novalis seemed to feel that everything was "dead, desolate, rotten, and stagnant" (Volume 4, p. 179 ): "While I am still watching the morning glow, dusk has spread around me. My sadness is as boundless as my love" (Volume 4, p. 183). Despite this, in his loneliness and loss, the will of life still resists all desires and intentions of death. To be precise, this is what he himself calls "the mission to the invisible world": "full of love" It is man's endowment to approach God and the most sublime" (Volume 4, p. 190). It was not until weeks later that he mustered up the courage to visit Sophie's tomb, where he experienced a vision similar to that of his fiancée in a "moment of passion."
Just like Diotima to Holderlin, the image of Sophie has also become a great model for Novaris’s poetic activities, and even a bridge between the visible and invisible worlds. of Christ-like mediators. Even the subsequent engagement (to Juliette von Charpentier) did not contradict this. Death, night and love, so far no poet has become his consistent theme in such ever-changing forms as Novaris. In Sophie, Novalis felt not only "love", but also "religion". Through his union with Sophie, he becomes convinced that there is an invisible realm of harmony and love. The law graduate now devotes himself to the study of "science", philosophy and natural science (professional studies at the Freibeck School of Mines) - all as dialectically as possible, and often in an arbitrary and contradictory way, United together under the vision of a "higher purpose", which is: "from a higher standpoint, to look at the invisible world" (Volume 4, p. 192).
The "higher standpoint" - the "invisible world" - is now clearer: free from "Fichte's magic" (by which he kept one fascinated), and from "the terrifying confusion of abstractions" Concept” (Volume 4, p. 208). Under the influence of Friedrich Schlegel (who believed that aesthetics, poetry, sociability, and even love were missing from the rigid system of Fichte's "knowledge"), Novalis began to devote himself to studying the subjects with which he was already familiar. Works by Dutch philosopher and art theorist Frans Helmsthuis (d. 1790). The philosopher evoked much that Novaris had not found in Kant and Fichte: the similarity of natural and spiritual forces and the unity of the universe. This similarity and unity can be experienced by a man only in his innate "moral organs" of knowledge and feeling (soul, conscience). The basic power of this organ is love, and poetry (poetic truth) is its expression. If the moral organ is developed, then the golden age long awaited by many will arrive.
"Pollen" (1798) was Hardenbeck's first published work after the 1791 poem, and he adopted the pseudonym "Novaris". Many of his inspirations, thoughts and themes of the time are reflected in this work: as a "hybrid commentary" it can provoke active further thinking and promote a common "same philosophy", that is, "Synthetic Philosophy". "Pollen", together with "Faith and Love" (1798), which has a more political bent and considers the ideal country as a poetic country, is the earliest example of the "romantic fragment" that has become common today, and brings with it There is a clear and typical Romantic turn inward: "We long for a journey through the universe: and is not the universe within us? We do not know the depth of our spirit, but the mysterious path leads inward. Eternity and its The world—past and future—is either within us or nowhere else” (Complete Works, p. 326).
So, is Novalis really a "romantic dreamer"? A man who had political fantasies about his poetic country, about kings and queens (referring to Prussia!) as representatives of monarchy and monarchy or monarchy and monarchy, about poets as priests, And the man who, for that matter, announced to the public (albeit only a small part) his dream of "Christianity or Europa"? Indeed, this is almost like a dream, if we listen to the unpretentious, concise, and sonorous sentences at the beginning of "Europa" (as Novaris himself called his article): "There once was A beautiful and glorious era, when Europe was still a Christian country, and a kind of Christianity still lived on this continent formed by mankind; a great religious interest still connected the most separated peoples in this vast spiritual kingdom. Distant Provinces (Complete Works, p. 499)
This is Christendom! It is here, precisely when we draw the comparison with H?lderlin, that there is clearly something unheard of. Happened. H?lderlin ultimately wanted to reconcile ancient Greece and Christianity, so he tried to celebrate the Greek world of gods through Christ, the returned god. Novaris was completely different: he never broke away from Christianity. -The atmosphere of the sect of the Brotherhood of Henhut, educated in spiritualist philosophy and modern exact natural science, and religiously awakened through the death of a loved one, he now rediscovers the opposition between ancient Greece and Christianity. , and attempted to ultimately defeat the Greek world of gods through Christ. "You must meet him; for you will not know him better by reading thirty of his books than by having a cup of tea with him." Legere's girlfriend, Dorothea Feit, wrote of Novalis in a letter to Schleiermacher, "Of course, he hasn't blown me away yet. He looks like a psychic prophet, with an eccentric personality and a maverick personality, which is undeniable. Here Christianity once again became a fashion..." (Quoted by G. Schulz, p. 124). Novalis, then, as the worried Goethe sneered, was the romantic intellectual's " "Emperor" or "Napoleon"? In his letter to Schlegel, Novalis left no doubt that he regarded himself as "a newborn of the new age - the religious age." A new world history begins with this religion..." ("Letters", p. 164).