A Bloomian Definition of Romanticism

Harold Bloom, an intellectual heir to Walter Pater, offered the following definition of Romanticism (from Figures of Capable Imagination, published back in the mid-1970's):

Romanticism, even in its most remorseless protagonists, is centrally a humanism, which seeks our renewal as makers, which hopes to give us the immodest hope that we--even we--coming so late in time's injustices can still sing a song of ourselves. Despite all its studying of the nostalgias, the high song that is Romanticism persists in saying: 'Nothing need be lost--nothing is lost--if we will learn to listen again, and with the ear of the mind too, to see into the life of things and to see with the eye of the mind, to touch without self-appropriation.'

In his ever-so-idiosyncratic manner, Professor Bloom here put his finger on three important aspects of Romanticism as a perennial human tendency:

(1) It is a humanism, which is to say that its central concern is the creature who occupies time while longing for the eternal (or the not-time);

(2) It is a humanism which translates creaturely desire into visionary saying and hearing;

(3) It is a visionary humanism which attempts to "touch" with the eye of the mind that which lies outside the mind: the world. The world's body: like Leonard Cohen's Suzanne who has "touched your perfect body with her mind."

The refusal of solipsism, as well as the struggle or agon with time, are distinguishing marks of the Romantic impulse; an impulse we neglect at our peril.