“The Romantic principle is far different. It gives rein to individual fantasy and passion to a degree which opens the door to lawlessness, intemperance, and disorder. But the door which opens to lawlessness, intemperance, and disorder, offers at the same time a clear path to the exploration of limitless yearning and aspiration. In opening this door, Romanticism virtually proclaims that there is no final and complete satisfaction for man within the finite. The rejection of the Classical spirit is the rejection of the possibility of achieving stability and perfection at the terrestrial level. The assertion of Romanticism is that man’s profoundest yearnings and aspirations break beyond the bounds of any principle of order or harmony that can be fully manifested within the finite. The works and lives of great Romantic artists, if they testify to nothing else, certainly testify to the Christian belief that man is tortured and delighted by dreams and longings which earthly experience can never realize or set at rest. It is true that few Romantic artists have sensed the full significance of the yearnings which they have nursed and glorified, teased, sharpened, and even worshipped; but this failure in understanding does not invalidate the fundamental Romantic principle that it is right for man to fling his heart to the stars when the inner inspiration cries out for a reality beyond the scope of human fashioning. Instead this failure, like the current distorted romanticism of jiving, sex-ridden, gang-minded teenagers, stands as a challenge to Christian thinkers that they should touch man with the guidance and penetration of a theology at the point where his whole soul cries out that earthly life is not enough. And surely this cry is implicit in the rebellion of the delinquent teddy-boy or of the more educated but nonetheless amoral student, as it is in the tortured self-explorations of a Berlioz or a Baudelaire….
“If the dreams and longings of youth did not lose their edge and their delight, but moved to culmination in a final, though finite, satisfaction, we should have less cause to know our homelessness on earth. Because they lose their intrinsic joy, we know our early dreams and longings for what they are, the pointers to fulfillment and reality; not ends in themselves, but significant disturbers of our peace. Unsatisfied longings must be nourished in us, and the elusive dream of fulfillment dangled before us, or we should never know that we are not here, on earth, in our proper resting-place. Utterly divested of this disturbing inheritance, men’s hearts would never desire the ultimate peace and joy offered by God. The Christian mind makes sense of passionate youthful longings and dissatisfactions as pointers to the divine creation of man and the fact that he is called to glory.”
“God calls; and all the vehicles of natural and human beauty are at His disposal in tugging at the soul of man with the vision of the glory. Man responds; and all the richness of human appetite, thrust, and aspiration are at his disposal in either answering obediently or answering rebelliously. He may submit to the discipline inherent in each call to taste and see, making of all things an offering and a self-dedication. Or he may assert the predominance of the grasping, enjoying self in a riot of claimed and plumbed indulgences. The one way leads to peace; the other way to torment.”
posted by Catherine Rogers @ 5:29 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home