Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 112, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1910 — ATTITUDE OF THE ROMANTICS. [ARTICLE]

ATTITUDE OF THE ROMANTICS.

How It Was Exaggerated by Some of the Famous French Writers. Ostensibly the Romanites were chiefly concerned with the breaking down of the old rules which fettered literary and dramatic composition, making meters more elastic and de manding more latitude in the choice of subjects. They really differ from their predecessors in making literature more subjective, in attaching more importance to their own personalities, experiences and “sensibilities,” in more openly exploiting the secrets ol their souls, in arranging limelight effects and posturing in the center oi the stage. One or two of them, indeed, like Alfred de Vigny, were too proud to care to make themselves conspicuous in this way; one or two, like Pros per Merlmee, were too cynical. But their general tendency was to turn on the limelight, strike attitudes and call upon the world to behold and admire them, not for what they had done, but for what they were. The attitudes struck by some of them —by Dumas, for instance —were more or less intentionally grotesque, but the more usual intention was tc appear either sentimental or says the London Times Even SainteBeuve aspired to be sentimental, though circumstances were against him, for he was ugly and undistinguished. Victor Hugo never tired of reminding his admirers (untruly) that Chateaubriand had saluted him as “sublime child,” while the pioneers of Romanticism were, if possible, even more insistent in their self-conscious egoism. It was said of Chateaubriand that he would be content to starve in a garret provided that the garret were in a theater; and Lamartine had no scruple in formulating his unfavorable opinion of any one whom his personality failed to impress. Of a certain stranger who neither blushed nor shrunk into his shoes when introduced to him he remarked: “I predict no good of that young man. He was unmoved by my presence.” That surely is the acme of egoism—inoffensive because unsurpassable. One cannot help applauding the sentiment if only because Lamartine, in uttering It, robbed even Chateaubriand of his laurels.