Title: Rodin's Gate of Hell, Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini. Neoclassical library at Osterley Park House, Robert Adam mantlepiece: symmetry and consistency. Enclosure: prison of the spirit vs. movement. Beethoven's Leonore Overture no. 3 (op. 72a). Go to confront the infinite! The sea. Beyond reason to vivid assertion: in pursuit of a new political constitution. Rousseau, Burns, Mordaunt (who?).
French Revolution: June 1789. David's Oath at the Tennis Court. La Marseillaise. Arc de Triomphe, Paris. Wordsworth's Prelude. The romantic movement in action. Secular fervor and piety. The Sorbonne. Naming new months. David's Madame Verniac and Madame R�camier with naked feet! Robert's ruins. Revealed religion vs. natural religion. Robespierre and the reign of terror, 1792. September massacres: sadism, a pogrom. St. Just. Anarchy vs. violence. David's Death of Marat. Consequent pessimism. The m l�e. Bonaparte's rise in 1798. Rechanneling energy to imperial ambitions. Napoleon's interior decorations. Military trophies, classical war heroes. Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great. Conquest as a metaphor for human striving. "No great art ever yet rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers," Ruskin. Code Napoleon. Portraits by David, Ingres. Favorite poem, Fingal by Ossian (a.k.a. Macpherson), pseudo bardic saga. Ingres' Ossian's Dream. Girodet's Ossian and Napoleon's Marshalls in Valhalla, predicts Nazi painting. Beethoven's Symphony no. 3, in Eb maj. (Op. 55, 2nd mvmt) "Eroica." The sense of glory. Napoleon's tomb in Les Invalides, Paris. Opponents silenced by fear. The withdrawal of the great romantics: Wordsworth, Goethe.
Beethoven and Byron: the archetypal romantic heroes. Beethoven's destruction of the dedication page of the Eroica symphony when learning of Napoleon's self-declaration as Emperor. His "Prisoners' Chorus" from the opera Fidelio. Hymn to liberty. Unquenchable desire for liberty. Subsequent revolutions. [Consider the irony of Clark's statement, "recent revolutionary movements haven't got us far forward"!] Beethoven's immunity to despair. The age of reason toppled, its ideals discredited. Goya's 3 May 1808. Shattered romantics. Byronic pessimism. Bad poetry distilled from that pessimism, but also such as "The Prisoner of Chillon." The damaged soul of the prisoner. Anticipates Sartre and Beckett. Byronic hero's self-identification with the great forces of nature, the sublime. Berlioz's King Lear, Op. 4.
The sublime: an English discovery. Alps. Nature's indifference, cruelty. Even Ruskin branded Turner as a man "without hope." Turner's Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying--typhoon coming on. "Hope, hope, fallacious hope, where is thy market now?" asks Turner. G�ricault's Raft of the "Medusa". Portraits of lunatics. Death wish. Delacroix, G�ricault's heir with a more powerful intellect. Delacroix's Massacre of Scios. Public commissions. Attila the Hun trampling on the remains of antiquity: odd subject for a library. The fragility of European civilization. Two classes: 1) the new middle class, hopeful but without a scale of values, a defensive morality. Chronicled by Daumier. Conventional, hypocritical. 2) The heirs of the romantics, intellectuals haunted by disaster, in search of a soul.
Rodin: the last great romantic artist. Symbolic poses. Eve. The Burghers of Calais, city's leaders submit themselves in bondage to appease invader and save their fellow citizens. Sacrifice. Richard Strauss's Festive Prelude for Organ and Orchestra. Romantic man at the end of his pilgrimage. Rodin's Balzac. Monumentality and movement. Scandal at the salon of 1898. Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel.