#Neo-Romanticism

[lionofchaeronea]

Bonfire Celebrating Midsummer Night, Nikolai Astrup, 1912/1926

[caviarsonoro]

Pēteris Vasks :“Lonely angel”,meditation for violin and strings (Daniel Rowland )

“Lonely Angel” de Pēteris Vasks es una meditación para violín y orquesta de cuerdas que combina una profunda introspección espiritual con una técnica compositiva que bebe tanto del minimalismo como del post-romanticismo contemporáneo. Escrita en 1999 y revisada en 2006, esta obra refleja una marcada dualidad emocional: la búsqueda de consuelo y esperanza frente a la tristeza y el sufrimiento del mundo. Vasks, conocido por su música emocionalmente intensa y conectada con la naturaleza y la espiritualidad, logra crear en esta pieza una atmósfera que parece trascender lo terrenal, como si el oyente acompañara al ángel solitario en su vuelo contemplativo.

La estructura de "Lonely Angel" es fluida y expansiva, careciendo de secciones claramente delimitadas. La obra comienza con un tessitura orquestal estática y delicada, donde las cuerdas despliegan un fondo armónico sereno, construido sobre pedales armónicos sostenidos que recuerdan las texturas del minimalismo. Sobre esta base, el violín solista irrumpe con una melodía lírica y expansiva que se eleva hacia los registros más agudos. El violín, como representación del ángel, canta con un legato puro y expresivo, generando un contraste dinámico y emocional frente a la tranquilidad de las cuerdas. La sencillez de la línea melódica es aparente, pero está cargada de una profunda intensidad emocional que expresa soledad, amor y un deseo de reconciliación.

A medida que la obra progresa, la relación entre el violín solista y la orquesta se vuelve más compleja y emocionalmente tensa. Vasks utiliza recursos como crescendo y diminuendo prolongados, así como momentos de clímax que rompen momentáneamente la calma inicial, introduciendo disonancias suaves y tensiones armónicas que subrayan el conflicto espiritual presente en la narrativa musical. En el clímax, el violín alcanza notas altísimas con un sonido casi etéreo y desgarrador, mientras la orquesta intensifica su acompañamiento con texturas más densas. Hacia el final, la música vuelve a la serenidad inicial, con una coda apacible y contemplativa, donde el violín y las cuerdas se funden suavemente, sugiriendo sanación y esperanza. Esta resolución no es triunfal, sino más bien un susurro de consuelo, como si el ángel finalmente encontrara un espacio de paz en su vuelo solitario.

[maertyrer]

Stanley Spencer Saint Peter escaping from prison

Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 36.5 cm, 1958

[internationalemeteorologie]

Harald Sohlberg

Havfruen. 1897

[permament-witzelsucht]

Walter Crane (1845-1915) - Keats' Tomb in the Protestant Cemetery, 1873

[collectionstilllife]

Stanley Spencer (British/English, 1891-1959) • Apples and Pears on a Plate • Sketch and study • 1920

[haggishlyhagging]

In its uncertainty, feminism at this moment hedges with a philosophy of individual choice: let there be rights; let there be choices; let there be no right or wrong way for all women. Neo-rationalism is thus condoned (after all it champions the right to individual choices). And neo-romanticism is condemned only for its absolutism, for its hostility to free choice. As neo-romanticist ideology gains ground, fueled by the subjective crisis in women's lives, feminism seems to be come ever more nervously defensive of "choice" for its own sake, less and less prone to pass judgment on the alternatives, or to ask how these came to be the choices in the first place.

The reason we hang back is because there are no answers left but the most radical ones. We cannot assimilate into a masculinist society without doing violence to our own nature, which is, of course, human nature. But neither can we retreat into domestic isolation, clinging to an archaic feminine ideal. Nor can we deny that the dilemma is a social issue, and abandon each other to our own "free choices" when the choices are not of our making and we are not "free."

The Woman Question in the end is not the question of women. It is not we who are the problem and it is not our needs which are the mystery. From our subjective perspective (denied by centuries of masculinist "science" and analysis), the Woman Question becomes the question of how shall we all—women and children and men—organize our lives together. This is a question which has no answer in the marketplace or among the throng of experts who sell their wisdom there. And this is the only question.

There are clues to the answer in the distant past, in a gynocentric era that linked woman's nurturance to a tradition of skill, caring to craft. There are the outlines of a solution in the contours of the industrial era, with its promise of a collective strength and knowledge surpassing all past human efforts to provide for human needs. And there are impulses toward the truth in each one of us. In our very confusion, in our legacy of repressed energy and half-forgotten wisdom, lies the understanding that it is not we who must change but the social order which marginalized women in the first place and with us all "human values."

The romantic/rationalist alternative is no longer acceptable: we refuse to remain on the margins of society, and we refuse to enter that society on its terms. If we reject these alternatives, then the challenge is to frame a moral outlook which proceeds from women's needs and experiences but which cannot be trivialized, sentimentalized, or domesticated. A synthesis which transcends both the rationalist and romanticist poles must necessarily challenge the masculinist social order itself. It must insist that the human values that women were assigned to preserve expand out of the confines of private life and become the organizing principles of society. This is the vision that is implicit in feminism—a society that is organized around human needs: a society in which child raising is not dismissed as each woman's individual problem, but in which the nurturance and well-being of all children is a transcendent public priority . . . a society in which healing is not a commodity distributed according to the dictates of profit but is integral to the network of community life . . . in which wisdom about daily life is not hoarded by "experts" or doled out as a commodity but is drawn from the experience of all people and freely shared among them.

This is the most radical vision but there are no human alternatives. The Market, with its financial abstractions, deformed science, and obsession with dead things—must be pushed back to the margins. And the "womanly" values of community and caring must rise to the center as the only human principles.

-Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women

[rainbowcastleintheclouds]

A fruit bat's ode to the night

The night is....

Peaceful....Tranquil...

I pirouette under the moon

The bullfrogs sing ...

the crickets croon...

The night she speaks as a dance

A timeless embrace a blissful romance

A sweet soiree

A raspberry yogurt parfait

A far better thing than the fury of Day

Ever do my little feet pitter patter

Skip gallop and run

I am free and nothing matters

I wish I could turn off the sun

I feel full of flight

Effortless light

Wings with fur not feathers

The world is my playground

I am a tiny bat

Now and forever

I bathe in dew to beat the heat

I hang by my tiny feet

I seek a food that is ethical and kind

I've got berries on my mind

Nature's candy grows on trees

As sweet sands waft from saltwater taffy seas

I dance, I drift, I do ballet

Spirits uplift until the day

When I return to my little cave by the sea

And snuggle with my colony

A tiny bat will I always be

And that's okay, okay for me

[namedvesta]

— Pina Bausch, performance still from “Blaubart” (𝟣𝟫𝟩𝟩)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

there's just... there is no reason to make yet another cop show in this day and age. copaganda is not only bullshit, it is a failure of imagination.

you want to watch brooding characters with dark pasts investigate crimes in an official capacity? just use private detectives (cops have a miserable solve rate anyway). want eccentric geniuses & their sidekicks solving mysteries? i present you with armchair detectives & neighborhood busybodies. oh, you're craving a workplace comedy-drama starring overworked protagonists doing their heartfelt best to resolve community conflicts? social worker office sitcom! bitch this is ACHIEVABLE

[neo--queen--serenity]

The Black Butler revival will, of course, in this day and age, be the complete embodiment of pro-ship vs. anti-ship discourse, given the subject matter.

But for those of you who are watching this for the first time in 2024 (which includes myself!), there are certain things about the show you simply must understand, for the sake of media literacy.

The first is that Black Butler is supernatural gothic romanticism at its core. This genre alone should tell you that the relationships integral to the plot will be complex, messy, and toxic, by default. That is not only a huge part of this genre’s appeal, but very much the point of the story.

The themes are dark, the terrible things that happen to the main characters are dark, and therefore the relationships at the forefront (and in the background) will reflect that.

The gothic genre has been alluringly popular for over a century (longer, if you know your history) because audiences are entranced by the macabre, the tainted antiheroes, the monsters who live inside us all. It’s popular for a reason.

That being said, understand that whether you, the viewer, ship Sebastian and Ciel or not is irrelevant. Their bond doesn’t need to be understood as romantic or sexual, but it sure as hell isn’t normal. It isn’t healthy. And the audience knows that. That’s the draw. It’s what makes them compelling to watch.

Ciel and Sebastian’s relationship mirrors many gothic novels, poems, and penny dreadfuls written in the Victorian Era (the very same time period in which Kuroshitsuji takes place). The Victorian folks who read these tales for the first time ate that shit up, because it was tantalizing. It was shocking. It was inappropriate, and monstrous, and violent, and erotic, and went against societal norms. But that was the point.

A huge part of gothic romanticism is the blatant sexualization of the relationship between the “monstrous” characters and their human counterparts in the story. Sex itself doesn’t need to take place for their bond to be sexually charged. The forbidden nature of their relationship—which typically involves layers of social taboos, moral ambiguity, or simple infatuation—is what makes their interactions erotic. Sexual contact rarely ever actually happens in these stories. It’s the taboo nature of their bond that creates the tension.

One of the many reasons audiences love this genre is the constant question of morality in its themes. Who, between them, is the real monster? Could the human character have ever been saved? This genre is often associated with tragedy, because the bond forged between the characters in these stories are destined to end in death and destruction. The reader knows it can’t end any other way. How can it?

But an integral element of these gothic tales is the catharsis that comes with this tragedy. The corrupted human often gets what they want in the end, even if it’s at the cost of their own life. Whether they regret their choice to foster this monstrous relationship varies on the story, but it doesn’t change the trajectory of their descent.

Sebastian and Ciel’s relationship is the whole plot of Black Butler. Their closeness bears a grotesque ick factor, but it is deliberate. It is a constant reminder of how unnatrual their bond truly is. Rationalizing or watering down how abnormal they are about each other misses the point entirely. They will never have a normal, healthy relationship, and that’s what moves the plot forward.

That’s why you’re watching it.

[the-spirit-of-yore]

Château de Pierrefonds, Picardie, France

[illustratus]

Bad Dream (Böser Traum) by Herbert von Reyl-Hanisch

[classicalcanvas]

Title: The Moat and Bishop's Palace, Wells Cathedral

Artist: Walter Crane

Date: 1893

Style: Neo-Romanticism

Genre: Landscape

[canvasmirror]

Charles Picqué (Belgian, 1799-1869) • Self-Portrait • 1833 • Museum of Fine Art, Ghent, Belgium

Charles Picqué was a Belgian painter, lithographer and engraver known for his neo-classical and romantic works. He was distinguished in several fields: portraiture, landscape, still-life, sacred art and history painting. – Wikipedia

As I was looking into this artist I came upon this painting by him and was struck by the resemblance of the sitter to the artist's self-portrait. The tilt of the head, the facial features, as well as the right hand – the artist holding a brush, the woman her long hair.

Woman at her toilet • 1827

[the-decay-of-an-angel]

The Three Witches from Macbeth (1775) by Daniel Gardner