Classics and Romantics: an Attempt of Self-review

In my article, I sum up main results of my research of “Weimar classics” and early German romanticism presented in my book “Klasyky i romantyky: shtudii z istorii nimetskoi literatury 18–19 st.” (“The Classics and the Romantics: The Studies of the History of German Literature in the 18th–19th Centuries”, 2013). I analyze the notions of three worldview crises of modern era. By the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th centuries, there was a first crisis in the aesthetical, philosophical, and religious spheres. The philosophers of that epoch presented utopian project of searching for a lost ideal condition in the past, in the history. From the aesthetical and historical standpoints, they divided art into mass and high, and from the historical stance, into modern and “classical” mainstreams. By the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries, there was a second crisis of Modern times, and the third crisis occurs in a present time. The classics and the romantics initiated artistic avant-garde: presented a young protagonist in the literature, accented the meaning of young author as the bearer of progressive mind; elaborated on such features of avant-garde text as irony, parody, “play” with a reader, implicit and explicit citations, pastiche, allusions, paraphrases, centons, etc. As European civilization left behind the classical values, the “Modern” project lost its meaning; it turned into a “high narrative” of the past. Contemporary literature is one of the means to maintain society in the stable condition, and in this status, there are necessary communicative and meaningful forms of the discourse and communication. In this status, literature insensibly merges with the non-fictional forms, including “digital verbalism” of social media, which is controlled not by philosophers, but by businessman and politicians.