Modern vs. Modernist

Dear Classier Hoeing and Natewozere,

I would first like to make the important distinction between "modern" and the modernity implied by "modernism." In my previous post, "The Mean Nurse Returns," I assert at the end that Romanticism can be considered the first modern period in the long progression of European history. By calling Romanticism "modern," I was not relating it in any way to the subsequent modernist movement; as you both have pointed out, Modernism and Romanticism are completely different animals, and any relationships between them are most likely due to the fact that one happened to follow the other chronologically. To conflate the two is a mistake, but should they have to be related to rationalize Romantic modernity?

I agree that Romanticism was not the pinnacle of artistic and social individualism; one can identify the so-called Romantic art and poetry with practiced ease. In some ways, the Romantics have become the well-known cliches of the present day--which would not be the case if Romantic artists were radically different from one another. (Perhaps the contemporary conception of the Romantic cliche is also what impedes our understanding of Romanticism as a form of the avant-garde or the modern.) Despite the inadvertent homogeneity of Romantic technique, the irrevocable shift in attitude towards the nature of the individual is ultimately what labels it as a modern movement. Prior to Romanticism (even during the Enlightenment), a philosophical assumption was made that humans are fundamentally good, rational creatures. With the advent of thinkers such as Nietzsche and Freud in the 19th century, the perception of the individual emphasized the irrational and animal in us--hence, the Id. Romanticism may not have artistically demonstrated the full potential of individualism, but the simple reconsideration of the nature of the individual pegged Romanticism as a heterogeneous movement. A modern movement, even, since it was more experimental than those that had preceded it.