Tieck and Romanticism

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Essays on German Literature (London, 1892), ch. xiii., Literary Aspects of the Romantic School, pp. 341-43:

We fondly believe that in an enlightened age like ours, when science mercilessly penetrates to the causes of every cherished mystery, the range of the terrible is gradually reduced to a mere vanishing quantity; but no amount of scientific reasoning can conquer the tremor which a timid person feels in a dark hall or in an empty church at midnight. The small territory of clear daylight fact which we have conquered for ourselves is on all sides surrounded by a far vaster realm of mystery, and whenever the gates are opened to this realm, our reason refuses to do our bidding, and we are on the verge of insanity. It is on the boundary between these two realms of reason and mystery that Tieck has laid the scene of his fairy-tales; he is perpetually setting the gates ajar, and while we dwell on situations which on the surface appear only grotesque and comical, we involuntarily shudder. He knows exactly where to touch us to find our reason weak and our sense of mystery the more active. Vulgar ghost-stories he seldom deals with, but frequently with those situations in which some undeniably real but unexplained psychological element overmasters the will and urges it on to deeds for which the individual is hardly himself responsible. According to Tieck, the ghost of insanity is lurking in us all, and the moment we become conscious of its presence, we are all already half-way under its sway. . . .

Tieck was excessively fond of moonlight, and literally flooded his tales with its soft, dim splendor; therefore moonlight is now romantic. He never allows a hero to make a declaration of love without a near or distant accompani ment of a bugle (Schalmei or Waldhorn); accordingly, the bugle is called a romantic instrument. He showed a great preference for the Middle Ages, and revived the interest in mediæval history and literature; therefore the Middle Ages are to-day regarded as the most romantic period of history, and their literature is par excellence the romantic literature, and so on in infinitum.