Colin Wilson on Romanticism

“[R]omanticism is the feeling that man is not the mere he has always taken himself for. Romanticism began as a tremendous surge of optimism about the stature of man. Its aim — like that of science — was to raise man above the muddled feelings and impulses of his everyday humanity, and to make him a god-like observer of human existence.”

“The romantics of the 19th century thought that the artist is at war with society, and must be destroyed by it eventually; this is the theme of all of Hoffmann's stories. [T]he fault lies partly with the artist, for preferring pessimism and self-pity to serious thought, and that the 'outsider' must eventually learn to accept his position as a spiritual leader of society. The church once provided the link between 'outsiders' and society, standing for the world of values, of 'meanings' beyond the present. The artists of the 19th century found themselves without this visible symbol of non-material values, and were, as Hoffmann says, frequently destroyed by society, or by their own destiny of standing outside it. I concluded that they must learn to stand alone, to be twice as strong, for half the problems of our civilization are due to 'the treason of the intellectual', their tendency to opt out and collapse in self-pity.”