Romanticism and Neo-Romanticism: Dialogue in the Era of Postmodernіzm

Abstract

Relevance of research. The peculiarities of the historical and socio-cultural situation, the specificity of multi-ethnic mentality determined the corresponding complex of common features of romanticism as one of the main directions of development of the European artistic culture of the 19th century. This is lyricism, philosophical self-deepening, the opposition of the categories of the real and the unreal, the tendency to synthesize genres, the gravitation towards intimacy, giving a priority role to the vocal principle, appeal to verbality, and the expansion of theatrical imagery.

Attempts to create some neo-romantic thesaurus of past and present compositional techniques were inspired by the formation of a discussion space in which the phenomenology of the concepts “romanticism”, “neo-romanticism”, “postmodernism” is located. The search for adequate definitions of these concepts and adequate interpretation of their meaning has been going on for over a century. In the artistic space of different national traditions, their interpretation requires consideration of many objective and subjective preconditions, which determined the relevance of the topic of this study.

The scientific novelty of the article is that for the first time a wide range of modifications and original author’s approaches to the interpretation of the romantic tradition in the 19th – 20th centuries are studied. The romantic tradition is interpreted as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists, an inconspicuous genre-style continuum, able to live a new life, to resonate with new socio-cultural and psychological issues. Purpose of the article is to explore the manifestations of the dialogue between Romanticism and Neo-romanticism in the era of Рostmodernism.

Methodology. The article uses the methodology and techniques of systematic research, combining comparative, cognitive and analytical methods, updated in the process of studying the stylistic cyclical nature of romanticism of the 19th–20th centuries:

• comparative, used in the process of comparing the iconic artistic features of romanticism, postmodernism and neo-romanticism;
• cognitive, which allows to comprehend a qualitatively new aesthetic nature of romantic neo-stylistics;
• analytical, updated in the process of studying the stylistic cyclical nature of romanticism in the European culture of the 19–20 centuries.

The general theoretical basis necessary for the study of the outlined range of problems are works on art history, culturology, history and theory of music.

Conclusions. The observations made in the article allow us to conclude that at the end of the twentieth century the dominance of lyrics in many shades and gradations as the most essential and reliable way to embody the romantic beginning is indicative. In addition, the article states that neoromanticism at the end of the millennium tends to expressive perception of the world; moreover, one of the cross-cutting themes is the theme of beauty — not only external, but also the beauty of spirit, thought, idea, concept. As in the historical era of Romanticism, the process of destruction of rigid genre boundaries, their mutual enrichment continues. The proposed approach can become a scientific basis for further research of creative processes of the 20th–21st centuries.