Active and Passive Romanticism
The Romantic Era was a period from 1800-1870, during which the Romanists all emphasis on nature and human emotion as well as against the Enlightenment ideas, like reason and science. However, with the development of the romanticism, it began breaking apart into two different attitudes, one is passive romanticism, and the other is active romanticism. Generally speaking, the active and passive romanticism all belong to romanticism, so they have ideas in common like they are all dissatisfied with the bourgeois society, emphasis on nature, imagination and human emotion. But they have some distinct ideas in politics, religion, and attitudes toward life and future.
The political opinions held by the passive and active Romanists are different to some extent, for that the former one tend to be more conservative, and the later one behaves more radically in asking for democracy, freedom, and nationalism than the passive Romanists. Take the famous passive Romanist William Wordsworth as an example, though he supported revolutionary ideas in his youth and never betrayed his liberal ideas, he changed his idea about the social reform and became conservative when he grew old. "Wordsworth's conservatism hardened as he grew into middle age, sometimes becoming small-minded. In later years, as he was revising The Prelude, he added a tribute that summed up the negative lesson he had learned. Burke, Wordsworth wrote,
. . . forewarns, denounces, launches forth,   
Against all systems built on abstract rights,
Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims
Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time;
Declares the vital power of social ties
Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain,
Exploding upstart Theory, insists
Upon the allegiance to which men are born.
Wordsworth had become a neocon." (ANDREW KLAVAN)
As for the active Romanists, like Percy Shelley and Byron, Byron devoted himself to nationalism and died for it in the Greek independent war, while Shelly's famous poetic drama "Prometheus Unbounded" shows his revolutionary and liberal ideas to overthrow the tyranny. "Essentially, Prometheus Unbound, as re-wrought in Percy Shelley's hands, is a fiercely revolutionary text championing free will, goodness, hope and idealism in the face of oppression. Percy Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound' responds to the revolutions and economic changes affecting his society, and the old views of good and evil needed to change to accommodate the current civilization."  (Abrams) The passive romanticism always reflected those classes which had been ruined by the bourgeoisie, but later grew conservative to protest against capitalist development; and active Romanists are firm supporters of French Revolution, who expressed the aspiration of the laboring classes and set themselves against the bourgeois society and the ruling class, as they bore a deep hatred for the wicked exploiters and oppressors and had an intensive love for liberty.
Since their political ideas are dissimilar in some areas, it influences their religious ideas, about which the passive Romanists love myths and linger the past religious regime, while the active Romanists hate the old religious so much and cannot bear its existence. "Wordsworth's youthful political radicalism, unlike Coleridge's, never led him to rebel against his religious upbringing. He remarked in 1812 that he was willing to shed his blood for the established Church (of England), and his Ecclesiastical Sketches of 1822 represent a homage to tradition and to that church. This religious conservatism colors The Excursion(1814), a long poem that became extremely popular during the nineteenth century; it features three central characters, the Wanderer; the Solitary, who has experienced the hopes and miseries of the French Revolution; and the Pastor, who dominates the last third of the poem."  (Glenn Everett) The passive Romanists like Wordsworth always considered that people need to seek from the old religious regime to find the spiritual ballast. On the contrary, the active Romanists like Victor Hugo considered that the old religious and Catholic Church controlled people's thought. "Religion is nothing but the shadow cast by the universe upon human intelligence." So although he was born a Catholic, he changed his mind to be an anti-catholic when he realized the true condition of the Catholic Church and became deism. And Percy Shelley also believes in atheism.
In addition, their attitudes toward life and future also vary a lot in escapism and realism as well as linger the past and look forward to the future.  From the lives of passive Romanist like Wordsworth and Chateaubriand, we can tell that most of them are escapists, and instead of facing and try to change the reality, they are more likely to withdraw from society and live in solitude. Also, they turned to feudal past and idealized the life of the Middle Ages instead of looking forward to the future. In contrast with, the active Romanist had never tried to escape from the cruel reality, but fight against it and believe the future is beautiful. Percy Shelley said: "Once I belonged to azrael, but the future will belong to me." "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" By writing, the active Romanists always convey the image of beautiful future to people to raise the awareness to fight against and try to transform the ugly society. Besides, there is also a sharply contrasting tendency between passive and active romanticism, it is how a man treats his life. Passive romanticism endeavors to reconcile man with his life by embellishing that life, or to distract him from the things around him by means of a barren introspection into his inner world, thoughts of life's insoluble problems, such as love and death. However, the active romanticism strives to strengthen man's will to live and raise him up against the life around him, and against any yoke it would impose.
Although the passive and active romanticism has so many differences in different area, they have characteristics in common. "They were both partly reactions to the Industrial Revolution",  "the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment", and the scientific rationalization of nature.  Furthermore, they both emphasis human feeling and emotion, for example, William Wordsworth said that "poetry should begin as 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,' which the poet then 'recollect[s] in tranquility'."  And the German painter Caspar David Friedrich also said that "the artist's feeling is his law."  In addition, nature also plays an important role in both of their work. The passions of man and the beauties of nature appealed strongly to the imagination of the writer, and the splendor of classical art all become the fountain-heads of the writer's inspiration. Like both William Wordsworth and Shelley, their poems are full of the description and worship nature. 
  Though the active and passive Romanticism has so many differences in politics, religion, and attitudes toward life and future, both of them have broken the old ways of Neoclassicism and created new things as well as brought the fresh air into many realms. And I think there is no good or bad between the active and passive romanticism after all both of them have great contributions to the development of humanism and human civilization.



                        References
ANDREW KLAVAN. Romanticon. http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_3_wordsworth.html
Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973.
Glenn Everett. Wordsworth's Religion. http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/religion1.html
Encyclopædia Britannica. "''Romanticism''. Retrieved 30 January 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online". Britannica.com. Retrieved2010-08-24.
Casey, Christopher (October 30, 2008). ""Grecian Grandeurs and the Rude Wasting of Old Time": Britain, the Elgin Marbles, and Post-Revolutionary Hellenism". Foundations. Volume III, Number 1. Retrieved 2014-05-14.
From the Preface to the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads, quoted Day, 2
Novotny, Fritz, Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780–1880 (Pelican History of Art), Yale University Press, 2nd edn. 1971 ISBN 0-14-056120-X











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