Spring Awakening: An Eternal Revival of Romanticism

Written by Lorena Orlacchio

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781. Oil on Canvas, 101.7 × 127.1 × 2.1 cm. Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit.

As spring unfolds and the seasons change once more, we are reminded of the rhythmic patterns that govern not only nature but almost everything around us – from fashion trends and aesthetics to politics. Just as nature oscillates between dormancy and renewal, art moves in cycles swaying between restraint and exuberance, order and passion. Emerging from the grey stillness of winter into a season of light, colour, and emotion, I find myself thinking of Romanticism—a movement that first flourished in eighteenth-century Europe, and as Ross Barkan recently argued in The Guardian, recurs predictably throughout history.[1]

Romanticism surfaces time and again under different names, always emerging in response to the exhaustion of dominant intellectual and aesthetic paradigms. Artistic and philosophical thought has long vacillated between order and intensity: the classical balance of Periclean Athens gave way to the dynamism of Hellenism; the somber Romanesque was replaced by the grandeur of the Gothic; the refined formalism of the Renaissance was shattered by the drama of the Baroque. Simply put, each era’s rationalism eventually gives way to the next generation’s creative rebellion.

What we today label as Romanticism was, at its core, a movement against the cold rationality of the Enlightenment and the dehumanizing march of industrialization, dating roughly from the 1780 to the 1830. Much like the natural shift into spring, Romanticism emerged as a counterpoint to periods of structure and control. Its artists rejected rigid social conventions in favour of a world seen through passion and intuition—a world where beauty was not simply about form but about the profound emotions it could evoke.

Romantic artists and writers sought to elevate emotion over reason, championing individualism, subjectivity, and the sublime power of nature. One striking example is Swiss artist Henry Fuseli’s (1741–1825) The Nightmare (1781), a painting that captures the Romantic fascination with dreams, mystery, and the unknown. He depicts a sleeping woman, her body stretched limply across the bed, as a terrifying vision looms over her.

The setting is contemporary and fashionable, as reflected in the interior and the woman’s clothing. Yet Fuseli constructs a stark visual contrast: the foreground is illuminated, refined, and rational, while the background is cloaked in deep reds, yellows, and ochres, evoking darkness and unease. From this shadowy realm, the nightmare emerges—the mare and the incubus materializing from the depths, their spectral presence intensifying the painting’s psychological tension.

This interplay between light and darkness, order and chaos, heightens the painting’s unsettling effect. The structured foreground suggests stability and reason, while the shadowy, dreamlike background immerses the viewer in an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere. The contrast not only reflects the division between reality and imagination but amplifies the painting’s psychological intensity, making The Nightmare a powerful exploration of the unconscious mind and its haunting visions.

Artists like William Blake (1757–1827) meditated on the same idea of this duality. He believed that humans had an inner divinity, which was the source of imagination, the most vital element of human existence and the soul. In works like “Songs of Innocence and Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul” (1789/1794), Blake creates a kind of interconnected dialogue between the two opposites. However, instead of putting these two into contrast, he suggests that a true understanding of the human condition emerges only by recognising the unity of opposites—innocence and experience as complementary rather than conflicting forces. Blake’s rejection of rigid binaries reflects Romanticism’s embrace of fluidity, intuition, and the boundless nature of human imagination.

William Blake, Title Page, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794. The William Blake Archive.

The Romantics sought to escape the rigid structures of their time, yet their intense idealism often led to disillusionment, excess, and despair. Today, we see echoes of this impulse across contemporary art, literature, and digital media – an undeniable yearning for sincerity, depth, and transcendence. This is evident in the resurgence of New Spiritualism and the rising popularity of practices like manifestation, both of which reflect a desire to reclaim agency in an uncertain world.

Still, this hunger for authenticity—for something raw, unfiltered, and profound—is both exhilarating and precarious. As history has shown, every movement carries the seeds of its own undoing. The question, then, is not whether we are witnessing a new Romantic revival, but where this longing for transcendence will ultimately lead.

[1] Ross Barkan, ‘The Zeitgeist Is Changing. A Strange, Romantic Backlash to the Tech Era Looms’, The Guardian, 28 December 2023, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/28/new-romanticism-technology-backlash.