A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ - From the best-selling author of The
Invention of Nature comes an exhilarating story about a remarkable
group of young rebels--poets, novelists, philosophers--who, through
their epic quarrels, passionate love stories, heartbreaking grief, and
radical ideas launched Romanticism onto the world stage, inspiring some
of the greatest thinkers of the time.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times - The Washington Post
"Make[s] the reader feel as if they were in the room with the great
personalities of the age, bearing witness to their insights and their
vanities and rages." --Lauren Groff, New York Times best-selling author
of Matrix
When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point
did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we
first ask the question, How can I be free? It all began in a quiet
university town in Germany in the 1790s, when a group of playwrights,
poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, their
writing, and their lives. This brilliant circle included the famous
poets Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis; the visionary philosophers Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel; the contentious Schlegel brothers; and, in a
wonderful cameo, Alexander von Humboldt. And at the heart of this group
was the formidable Caroline Schlegel, who sparked their dazzling
conversations about the self, nature, identity, and freedom.
The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape of
Europe, but the young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that
transformed our world forever. We are still empowered by their daring
leap into the self, and by their radical notions of the creative
potential of the individual, the highest aspirations of art and science,
the unity of nature, and the true meaning of freedom. We also still walk
the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfillment and destructive
narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our
responsibilities toward our community and future generations. At the
heart of this inspiring book is the extremely modern tension between the
dangers of selfishness and the thrilling possibilities of free will.
