"In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who experiences the event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is the victim of an illusion of the senses, of a product of the imagination--and laws of the world then remain what they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality--but then this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us."

Todorov

Is there a world beyond common sense where vampires, angels and demons walk? A place where love never dies? Is the supernatural world only a figment of imagination? Or if such a reality exists - can we reach it - how do we reach it? 

These are eternal questions. Below I have tried to summarize the main philosophies that may constitute a theorethical background of Dark Romanticism. Within every topic there are endless of subtopics. The main purpose is to describe the main influences in order to define Dark Romanticism as a philosophy - not merely as a deviation from, but a reaction against and continuation of romanticism. I will define this philosophy by joining different philosophies with my own thoughts and the words of Nick Cave. Of course, this philosophy merely presents general ideas - it can not explain every darkly romantic song or novel. Every artist represent their own vision.  

Calvinism

Are we dead?

We can't help ourselves. Only God can save us. He chooses which to save and which to damn. We can't find God - he must find us. We are dead in our sins and our lives are predestinated - even if we are chosen by God we can't even chose to disbelieve. Calvinism is defined in five points (TULIP): Total Depravity; Unconditional Election; Limited Atonement; Irrisistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints.

Romanticism

Are we creative?

According to romantic philosophers human beings can find salvation . The creative ego is invented or discovered in the romantic era. Romantics believed that human beings are able to create the reality they live in, mainly through art. Through the expression we might once again discover the unity from which we all originated - the unity from which we divided into nature and spirit, subject and object. The main purpose is to find the "system" (God). The artist writes/sings/paints God into existence (The Bible). Romanticism empasize the Mystery - the world is not fixed or permanent. 

Idealism

Are we one? 

Can knowledge help us to unite with the supernatural world? Or is the reality we know of totally independent of our consciousness (realism)? Idealism is closely related to romanticism. Reality is defined through our knowledge and our consciousness. German idealism is sometimes synonymous with Romanticim. The interesting difference, I believe, is that romanticists believe in the expression while idealists believe in knowledge and education. 

Read more: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel

Transcendentalism

Can we save ourselves?

Transcendentalism is often associated with romanticism, or rather, in our case "light romanticism". Transcendentalism is the opposite of Calvinism and deism (God doesn't intervene after the creation). Each individual is part of God or the "oversoul" from which we originate and to which we return after death. God's spirit is everywhere. There is no need for a church or an assembly - we must rely on ourselves and look inward.  Evil is a negative - merely an absence of good. Light is more powerful than darkness because one ray of light penetrates the dark.

Read more: Kant, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Fuller

Mysticism

Can we unite?

While romanticists believe that we could create, idealists that we could learn and transcendentalists that we are born in God or a spiritual union, the mystic believes that he or she must turn his or hers back on the world. Through ecstasy the mystic unite with God. Nature and spirit, humans and God, are not forever separated - but there is a distance between them. This distance can only be decreased if we look beyond the temporary - only then we can find words for the unspeakable and catch eternity in time and space.

Medieval mysticism

Solipsism

Are we alone?

Are we prisoners in our own minds? Can we know of anything else then the self? Solipsism is sometimes supposed to be the key concept of Dark Romanticism. We can't attain any knowledge about anything that we haven't experienced ourselves - or anyhting outside our own private consciousness. We're alone and can not be sure of anything outside ourselves.

The Supernatural

The supernatural (God, unity, oversoul) is a key concept in romanticism, idealism, transcendentalism and mysticism. A spiritual union with the supernatural world is often the purpose of human life, individually or together, in a church or at home, in this life or after death. The purpose is to unite with God, mankind or a lover (all three of them generally understood as God), according to me. Erotic love is no consolation - true love is eternal. The yearning human being tries to reveal the supernatural world in the perishable natural world. 

The supernatural world is beyond our senses and experiences. The spiritual union is an elevation of mind - the sublime - but is it necessarily a light world? Or are the wonders obscure? At least, it frightens us - I dare to say we're always frightened of the supernatural world, whether it means heaven or hell. 

The supernatural and the sublime

The Sublime

I n 1756, Edmund Burke (A Philosophical Enquiry into Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful) identified the sublime  as the strongest emotion our minds are capable of feeling. This emotion is fear, or pain. "Terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently the ruling principle of the sublime." Whatever threatens to kill or injure oss evokes fear - all motions of the soul are suspended. This theory explains the existence of horror  novels. But according to me Burke simplified the matter. First, we might fear things that can not kill or injure us and second, what might kill or injure us must not evoke fear. In the notion terror I would like to include sadness - memories and dreams of the future evokes fear as well, I believe.

The sublime is evoked by a world of irregularity, diversity and scale. Mountains and gothic cathedrals elevated the soul with a sense of power and infinity. Vast, magnificent and obscure objects evoked the sublime. According to John Baillie (An Essay on the Sublime, 1747): Hence comes the Name of Sublime to everything which thus raises the Mind to fits of Greatness and disposes it to soar above her Mother Earth; Hence arises the Exultation and Pride which the Mind ever feels from the Consciousness of its own Vastness - That Object only can be justly called Sublime, which in some degree disposes the Mind to this Enlargement of itself, and gives her a lofty Conception of her own Powers."

  
Imaginative flight

In his two lectures Nick Cave argues that God is imagination taken flight.  "Just as we are divine creations, so must we in turn create". Nick Cave speaks of creation as a duty - God almost demands it. Imagination shall not be restrained in any way. God is written alive. God is imagination. Imagination is salvation.

Love is madness - an obscure wonder. True love - erotic or the love of God -  is our "innermost wish to take leave of our senses". Cave speaks of Suadade or Duende - "an inexplicable sense of longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul".  

Dark Romanticism?

Can we decrease the distance?

Personally I don't think of Dark Romanticism as primarily influenced by calvinism or solipsism - rather by romanticism and idealism. Dark Romanticism doesn't simply imply that we are forever rejected by God. It doesn't imply that we can't know of God. We are not predestinated depraved sinners. We can find salvation - we can unite to God, mankind or a lover. We - ourselves - will start to believe through our creations. 

Calvinists argue that God is nowhere and transcendentalists argue that God is everywhere. Distance (mysticism) is the key concept of Dark Romanticism according to me - the distance to God, mankind or a lover. We wander the earth lonely and misunderstood. But we can decrease the distance - through our creations. We create in ecstasy - in a state of the excessive grief, distress or pain. (Some reinforce this ecstasy with whisky and cigarettes - or even drugs) This distance can sometimes be decreased when we pray, write, weep, drink, paint, smoke etc - with other words, use our imagination. We try to evoke the supernatural world by all means.  

The world is not fixed or permanent. Our imagination shall not be restrained. We can not decide where our imagination shall take us - we might encounter vampires and demons. We can write them into existence - like the Bible - in a reality beyond senses and reason.  

When we voluntarily becomes victimes for our own imagination we suffer. There are always interuptions and hesitations before we meet the reciever, the saviour - before our emotional or spiritual maturation. In other words, there is always a struggle. These interruptions and hesitations - the tragic dimension of human life - are the sources to sublimity. In our aspiration to become angels we now and then become animals. We might find hell where we hoped to find heaven and vice versa. We feel abandoned and disappointed (solipsism, calvinism...) Disappointment might lead to terrible deterioration - we want to avenge ourselves on life and destroy it (murder). Under these circumstances we are confused - the perishable and eternal, the light and dark, sin and virtue, saint and villain, spirit and nature, fear and love melt together. 

When God, mankind or the lover (suggesting that there is a painful difference between the temporary and the eternal) is too far away in any sense we feel pain. Terror and horror. We fear that we are prisoners of this world. With other words, we fear that this is all that there is. The supernatural frightens us. God might be angry - as long as our imagination is not restrained to a specific church, assembly or book (as long as "God is not in the house") - we can't know. If we are close to diminish the distance we might still feel pain. We are leaving the world as we know it and move towards the supernatural - a union with a God, mankind or a lover. What awaits us there appears obscure. This union is actually our own imagination without any rules. The laws of the existing world no longer apply when we create another reality. (I think it is fair to say that the passionate lover lives in a totally different reality). The union might is the end of struggles. With other words - the end of human life. We are dead. "The melancholy of fulfilment" as Bloch expressed it. Or true struggles begins - who knows?  (In "Nomore shall we part" Nick Cave portraits marriage as this sad end, I believe.)

We are always struggling towards a shore we are not sure we want to reach - when we reach it, maybe the real struggle begins. This struggle makes us human - without this struggle we are dead. Without this struggle God is dead. Dark Romantics portraits the cold world where God, mankind or a lover abandoned man, the violent disappointment and the decay, the struggle towards the other obscure world - or that world itself. Finally, I think that Lessing's legend describes the difference between romanticism and dark romanticism. Lessing imagined himself in a situation where God gave him a choice - either all Truth or the active search for Truth (with the condition to never find it.) While a romanticist or transcendentalist would choose all Truth, the dark romanticist would choose to search.   

That is what I believe. That is what Dark Romanticism means to me. Do you agree? Feel free to mail me.