Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

By Andrea Wulf

Book Overview

A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ * From the best-selling author of The Invention of Nature comes an exhilarating story about a remarkable group of young rebels--poets, novelists, philosophers--who, through their epic quarrels, passionate love stories, heartbreaking grief, and radical ideas launched Romanticism onto the world stage, inspiring some of the greatest thinkers of the time. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times * The Washington Post "Make[s] the reader feel as if they were in the room with the great personalities of the age, bearing witness to their insights and their vanities and rages." --Lauren Groff, New York Times best-selling author of Matrix When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, How can I be free? It all began in a quiet university town in Germany in the 1790s, when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, their writing, and their lives. This brilliant circle included the famous poets Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis; the visionary philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the contentious Schlegel brothers; and, in a wonderful cameo, Alexander von Humboldt. And at the heart of this group was the formidable Caroline Schlegel, who sparked their dazzling conversations about the self, nature, identity, and freedom. The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape of Europe, but the young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that transformed our world forever. We are still empowered by their daring leap into the self, and by their radical notions of the creative potential of the individual, the highest aspirations of art and science, the unity of nature, and the true meaning of freedom. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfillment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our responsibilities toward our community and future generations. At the heart of this inspiring book is the extremely modern tension between the dangers of selfishness and the thrilling possibilities of free will.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1984897993
• ISBN13: 9781984897992
• Release Date: October 2023
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Goethe, Schiller and Company

It all began in a small town in Germany more than 200 years ago. Between 1794, when Goethe arrived, and 1806, when Napoleon arrived, Jena was the capital of European freethinkers. The French Revolution and the liberal constitution of the University of Jena inspired writers, philosophers, and intellectuals from far and wide to participate in this new movement, which came to be known as Jena Romanticism. Andrea Wulf provides a vast parade of characters, sometimes making it difficult to keep track of their relationships and feuding. They are all strong characters who quarrel often. I find it best to keep in mind Goethe and Schiller are the elder statesmen and founders. Then come the Schlegel brothers, August and Friedrich, famous translators, literary critics, and founders of the seminal journal Athenaeum. Equally prominent in this story were their wives, Caroline and Dorothea, renowned for their literary salons, lovers, divorces, and upending the status quo in general. Finally, we are told of Schelling and Fichte, two radical young philosophers who revolutionized philosophy. Fichte put individual autonomy at the center of the philosophical world by declaring the self as "the source of all reality." Such was the invention of the self and the birth of the Romantic movement. The Jena Romantics later inspired the English Romantic poets and the American Transcendentalists, liberating them from the strictures of Classicism. However, there was also a dark side to all this liberation—there always is. Napoleon plundered Jena in 1806, possibly seeing his vision of reality as the only one. Such was the end of the Jena Romantics. At the time, Hegel - another denizen of Jena - wrote of Napolean as a "world-historical" figure, having all of reality concentrated on this individual. Some of the Jena group praised Napoleon, but that is another story.