Are you a Realist, a Romantic, or a Renaissance Person?
Which cultural outlook do you favor?
In my 2022 novel Renaissance Radio, my six main characters co-host a national radio show in the year 1928. One day the six co-hosts discuss three cultural outlooks – three cultural stances that remain very much with us in the 2020s. Slightly adapted for us on Substack, here is their dialogue:
Riis: “Let’s talk about three of the key choices we face in choosing a cultural stance: the Realist view, the Romantic view, and the Renaissance view. Because when it comes to our philosophical approach to culture, most of our humanities professors in college and many leading writers and thinkers have given us three choices: The Realist school. The Romantic school. Or the Renaissance school.”
Troy: “The three Rs.”
Riis: “The Renaissance outlook is sometimes called humanism, but only because the Renaissance embraced the humanities after centuries of neglect during the Dark Ages.”
Gwen: “Quick, choose! Are you a Realist, a Romantic, or a Renaissance person?”
Mary: “Sounds a bit limiting, having to choose.”
Francis: “Let’s get on with it.”
Riis: “One choice, so we’re told, is Realism.”
Gwen: “I’m in the Realist school.”
Riis (groaning): “Spiritually shallow.”
Troy (groaning even louder): “A vacuum aiming right at our souls.”
Carmen: “Any time I start a novel by Dreiser, Norris, or London, I end up throwing it against the wall.”
Mary: “Or in the trash can.”
Troy: “Good place for them, Mary.”
Francis: “Yes. Realism and Naturalism are just reality unmediated by the soul.”
Troy: “But I’ll always love The Red Badge of Courage. I like Stephen Crane.”
Francis: “Me too.”
Riis: “Yes, but I think Crane’s the only writer in the Realist and Naturalist school that I do like.”
Carmen: “Theodore Dreiser novels have no humor, no grace, no dreams, no beauty. He thinks those are all a sham. We’re just in an amoral struggle for existence. We’re nothing but animals.”
Riis: “That’s Dreiser, all right, Carmen.”
Gwen: “I think different.”
Troy: “Defend yourself, Gwendolyn.”
Gwen: “Maybe we need to stop being so content and face hard facts. Dreiser lays reality bare and makes us think about it, confront it. He’s a strong tonic against complacency.”
Mary (incredulous): “How can you be a Realist and Naturalist?”
Gwen: “I see value in them. They’re objective. They’re grounded. They cleave close to reality. They strive to be accurate, to be faithful to experience, to be truthful. Why not deal with life as people actually live it? Why not portray people as they really are?”
Carmen: “But nonfiction can handle that. Case histories can do that. Crime statistics and newspaper articles can give us that. Human beings are much more than beastly creatures.”
Francis: “Realism and Naturalism reduce everything they write about.”
Mary: “That’s right. They cheapen human life.”
Troy: “Definitely, Mary.”
Carmen: “They proclaim the futility of human life, as if every living person is mastered and defeated by circumstances.”
Riis: “Yes.”
Troy: “I agree, Carmen. All I see in Realism and Naturalism are victims to be pitied as they succumb to fate. Realists and Naturalists just try to show us how pathetic we can be, how dreary life can be, how bad the human condition can be.”
Francis: “Sounds right to me, Troy. Realism sets down evil on one side and nothing on the other.”
Gwen: “Look, all five of you are missing something fundamental. Most people lead ordinary lives, with a lot of frustrations, and they count too, not just a few saints and heroes. There are advantages to revealing how bad things are, even if it shocks people. And a sober look at reality can help us reform things.”
Riis: “I see what you’re driving at, Gwen. All right, five of us are against Realism and Naturalism, one of us is quite favorable to it.” Five yesses.
Riis: “That moves us on to the Romantic school. I can’t say I care much for Romanticism. I didn’t enjoy reading Byron or Keats or the rest of them.”
Francis: “Romanticism is nothing but feelings and imagination run amok.”
Gwen: “Too sentimental.”
Carmen: “Yump. They loved nature and they thought everything is good, including human nature, including the impulses of nature within us.”
Riis: “Right.”
Francis: “Romanticism is a dangerous view. Exalting the natural man is dangerous to our soul. Seems obvious we can’t trust our natural impulses to guide us through each day.”
Riis: “The whole thing takes moral and ethical judgment and replaces it with feelings. But without judgment, society falls apart. Sentiment alone cannot be our guiding value.”
Troy: “I think you’re all being too hard on the Romantics. Some of William Wordsworth’s moods, inspirations, and epiphanies are sublime, as are some of Percy Shelley’s poems, like ‘Mont Blanc’.”
Mary: “I agree with you, Troy.”
Riis: “I get you, Troy. Very well, Mary.”
Riis: “So four of us are against Romanticism and two of us are favorable to it.” Five yesses.
Riis: “Anyone favor the Renaissance school?”
Mary: “Yes! We’re all for maximizing people’s gifts and talents.”
Troy: “Yes! Individual achievement! Shaping our personal destiny!”
Gwen: “Yes. Cultivating our minds and our best qualities.”
Francis: “Yes. Practicing moral and ethical virtues.”
Carmen: “Yes. Valuing the worth and dignity of the human being.”
Riis: “Yes, me too. All of that. For emulating and propagating what is excellent and best. Striving to adhere to high yet universal standards.”
Francis: “It’s the best approach to life. It’s totally compatible with our faith. And we have history on our side. The Renaissance view was the main view of our ancestors, of our Judeo-Christian Western civilization, from about 1350, with Petrarch, until about 1800.”
Mary: “I agree, Francis. And look how many well-rounded people emerged in those centuries.”
Troy: “Remarkable people! And geniuses! DaVinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian! Shakespeare! Mozart! And Leon Battista Alberti! A mathematician, architect, engineer, painter, sculptor, musician, philosopher, historian, playwright, and athlete.”
Francis lets out a whistle.
Riis: “My favorite Renaissance thinker is Desiderius Erasmus. So earnest and reasonable, with an essential humanity about him. His approach was that we love and trust what is Divine from deep in our soul while living a life of virtue, learning, self-improvement, and civic duty.”
Carmen: “Exactly! Jane Austen promoted the virtues. And George Eliot.”
Mary: “George Eliot. Real name, Mary Anne Evans. Two great women writers.”
Riis: “Definitely.”
Mary: “Troy mentioned Shakespeare. Was Shakespeare a Renaissance Christian?”
Gwen: “A Renaissance writer, for sure. A Christian writer? That discussion could last for hours.”
Riis: “Indeed.”
Carmen: “But is that approach to life disappearing?”
Francis: “There was Matthew Arnold. He insisted that culture should promote personal excellence and moral, ethical, and social goodness.”
Troy: “Matthew Arnold. Stuffy, stuffy. But true, the works of culture ought to affirm what’s best in us.”
Mary: “Yes, Troy. Ought to enhance our quest for the good life.”
Francis: “Absolutely. Our music, our paintings, and our literature should serve as guiding lights.”
Riis: “So all six of us share a Renaissance outlook, with one of us seeing Realism as a good adjunct to it, two of us seeing the Romantic outlook as a good adjunct to it, and three of us preferring a Renaissance outlook without Realism or Romanticism.” Five yesses.
"They proclaim the futility of human life, as if every living person is mastered and defeated by circumstances.” I have the strong, instinctive feeling this was why Italy Calvino abandoned realism after his first novel, A Path to the Spiders Nest. His characters in The Cloven Viscount or The Baron in the Trees did not accept this futility. Italian postmodernism is the only kind I like, since it basically continues what modernism started, rather than destroying it.
“Romanticism is a dangerous view. Exalting the natural man is dangerous to our soul. Seems obvious we can’t trust our natural impulses to guide us through each day.” I know this is set before our time, but it reminds me of how hypocritical people are about that today. A lot of what we teach people is to basically follow their impulses. But at the same time, it's dangerous? Perhaps this is really what people mean when they say they want equality: we are all afraid of each other. (Slightly historically unprecedented, since we didn't share that fear with our fellow villagers) The problem is, there are both good and bad among us. Binding people in the conceptual prison of equality (in this manifestation: I don't mean its good forms, like political equality) restricts the good people as much as the bad. It's not just the Hitlers who are confined, but the Churchills and De Gaulles as well.
I don't know if I'm allowed to answer this way. But I would say I'm half Romantic, half Renaissance. The bolstering of personal quality in the Renaissance enabled the Romantics to write much of the greatest literature in history. (And of course the Renaissance guys weren't bad themselves) But the Romantics nonetheless understood that we are not robots, but emotional beings. And this is one of literature's strengths, as other fields of knowledge do not deal with this kind of thing. (Except maybe psychology, and even then it's totally different; though it's also why we have psychological novels rather than, say, archaeological novels, chemical novels and - God forbid! - theoretical novels) As you've probably noticed on Timeless, I make little effort to suppress either inclination. I don't know of a single Realism work that is better than Young Werther. (And I also don't think realism can compete with nonfiction)