The
dictionary definition of “manifesto” is “a public declaration of intentions,
opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or
organization.” The Random House
Dictionary of English Language, College Edition, 1968)
I
must state, therefore, that this manifesto is not issued in the name of an organization
or a movement. I speak only for myself. There is no Romantic movement today. If
there is to be one in the art of the future, this book will have helped it to
come into being.
According
to my philosophy, one must not express “intentions, opinions, objectives or
motives” without stating one’s reasons for them ---i.e., without identifying
their basis in reality. Therefore, the actual manifesto---the declaration of my
personal objectives and motives---is at the end of this book, after the presentation of the
theoretical grounds that entitle me to these particular objectives and motives.
x
x x
Those
who feel that art is outside the province of reason would be well advised to
leave this book alone: it is not for them. Those who know nothing is outside
the province of reason will find in this book the base of rational esthetics.
It is the absence of such base that has made today’s obscenely grotesque degradation
of art possible.
To
quote from Chapter 6: “The destruction of Romanticism in esthetics --- like the
destruction of individualism in ethics or of capitalism in politics --- was
made possible by philosophical default…In all three cases, the nature of the
fundamental values involved had never been defined explicitly, the issues were
fought in terms of non-essentials, and the values were destroyed by men who did
not know what they were losing or why.”
“xxx”
I
must emphasize that I am not speaking of concretes, nor of politics, nor of journalistic
trivia, but of that period’s “sense of life”. Its art projected an overwhelming
sense of intellectual freedom, of depth, i.e., concern with the fundamental
problems, of demanding standards, of inexhaustible originality, of unlimited
possibilities and, above all, of profound respect for man.
“xxx”
Renunciation
is not one of my premises. If I see that the good is possible to men, yet it
vanishes, I do not take “Such is the trend of the world” as a sufficient
explanation. I ask such question as: Why? --- What caused it? --- What or who
determines the trends of the world? (The answer is: philosophy)
The
course of mankind’s progress is not a straight, automatic line, but a tortuous struggle,
with long detours or relapses into the stagnant night of irrational. Mankind
moves forward by the grace of those human bridges who are able to grasp and
transmit, across years or centuries, the achievements men had reached --- and
to carry them further. Thomas Aquinas is one illustrious example: he was the
bridge between Aristotle and the Renaissance, spanning the infamous detour of
the Dark and Middle Ages.
Speaking
only of the pattern, with no presumptuous comparison of stature intended, I am
a bridge of that kind --- between the esthetic achievements of the nineteenth
century and the minds that choose to discover them, wherever and whenever such
minds might exist.
It
is impossible for the young people of today to grasp the reality of man’s
higher potential and what scale of achievement it had reached in a rational (or
semi-rational) culture. But I have seen it. I know that it was real, that it
existed, that it is possible. It is that knowledge that I want to hold up to
the sight of men --- over the brief span of less than a century --- before the
barbarian curtains descend altogether (if it does) and the last memory of man’s
greatness vanishes in another Dark Ages.
“xxx”
As
for the present, I am not willing to surrender the world to the jerky
contortions of self-inducedly brainless bodies with empty eye-sockets, who
perform, in stinking basements, the immemorial rituals of staving off terror,
which are dime a dozen in any jungle --- and to the quavering witch doctors who
call it “art”.
Our
day has no art and no future. The future, in the context of progress, is a door
open only to those who do not renounce their conceptual faculty; it is not open
to mystics, hippies, drug addicts, tribal ritualists--- or to anyone who
reduces himself to a subanimal, subperceptual, sensory level of awareness.
Will
we see an esthetic Renaissance in our time? I do not know. What I do know is
this: anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
(Excerpt: Intoduction
of The Romantic Manisfesto – Ayn Rand)
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