''The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature'' is a collection of essays regarding the nature of art by the philosopher

Ayn Rand Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;, . Most sources transliterate her given name as either ''Alisa'' or ''Alissa''. , 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and p ...

. It was first published in 1969, with a second, revised edition published in 1975. Most of the essays are reprinted from Rand's magazine ''

The Objectivist Objectivist periodicals are a variety of academic journals, magazines, and newsletters with an editorial perspective explicitly based on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Several early Objectivist periodicals were edited by Rand. She later en ...

''.

Summary

At the base of her argument, Rand asserts that one cannot create art without infusing a given work with one's own value judgments and personal philosophy. Even if the artist attempts to withhold moral overtones, the work becomes tinged with a deterministic or naturalistic message. The next logical step of Rand's argument is that the audience of any particular work cannot help but come away with some sense of a philosophical message, colored by his or her own personal values, ingrained into their psyche by whatever degree of emotional impact the work holds for them. Rand goes on to divide artistic endeavors into "valid" and "invalid" forms.

Photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

, for example, is invalid to her (qua art form) because a camera merely records the world exactly as it is and has very limited, if any, capacity to carry a moral message beyond the photographer's choice of subject matter. Art, to her, should always strive to elevate and idealize the human spirit. She specifically attacks Naturalism and

Modernism Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

in art, while upholding

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

(in the artistic sense, which Rand distinguishes from the philosophy also called Romanticism, which she strongly opposed). The first eleven of the book's twelve chapters were essays originally written for periodicals and an introduction to an edition of Victor Hugo. The final chapter is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

entitled "The Simplest Thing in the World".

Publication history

Most of the essays in the book originally appeared in ''

'', except for the "Introduction to Ninety-Three", which was an introduction for an English-language edition of the

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

novel. The first edition of ''The Romantic Manifesto'' was published by The

World Publishing Company The World Publishing Company was an American publishing company. The company published genre fiction, trade paperbacks, children's literature, nonfiction books, textbooks, Bibles, and dictionaries,Nathaniel Branden Nathaniel Branden (born Nathan Blumenthal; April 9, 1930 – December 3, 2014) was a Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer known for his work in the psychology of self-esteem. A former associate and romantic partner of Ayn Rand ...

, and unlike her two previous essay collections it did not contain material by Branden or any other authors besides Rand. A paperback edition was published by

New American Library The New American Library (also known as NAL) is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publish ...

in 1971. The revised edition in 1975 added the essay "Art and Cognition".

Reception

Upon its initial release, ''The Romantic Manifesto'' received only a few reviews. Most of these were brief and negative, and even the longer reviews paid little attention to the details of Rand's aesthetic theory. From then until the late 1990s, ''The Romantic Manifesto'' and Rand's aesthetic theory in general received little attention, leading Rand scholar

Chris Matthew Sciabarra Chris Matthew Sciabarra (born February 17, 1960) is an American political theorist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of three scholarly books—''Marx, Hayek, and Utopia''; '' Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical''; and ''Total Freedom: T ...

to refer to it as "a nearly forgotten book in the Randian canon". One of the few exceptions was a 1986 journal article by literature professor Stephen D. Cox, in which he contrasted Rand's formal aesthetic theory from the book with her own practices as an author of fiction, arguing that her practice contradicted some of her theoretical points. Another exception was a chapter on Rand's aesthetics in '' Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand'', a detailed presentation of her ideas by her friend and heir

Leonard Peikoff Leonard Sylvan Peikoff (; born October 15, 1933) is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is an Objectivist and was a close associate of Ayn Rand, who designated him heir to her estate. He is a former professor of philosophy and host of a nation ...

. Overall this period was described by one later critic as a time of "benign neglect", when even Rand's admirers wrote little about her ideas on art.

Mimi Reisel Gladstein Mimi Reisel Gladstein (born 1936) is a professor of English and Theatre Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her specialties include authors such as Ayn Rand and John Steinbeck, as well as women's studies, theatre arts and 18th-century Br ...

described the book as "perhaps the most unified and coherent of Rand's nonfiction works." However, the historian James T. Baker contrasted the book with Rand's approach in her book '' Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology'', most of which was written as a single work. Baker described ''The Romantic Manifesto'' as lacking the "systematic" approach of the other book. Barry Vacker said that while the book "offers unique and valuable insights", it fails to "present a complete philosophy of fine art". As of 2008, the book had sold over 350,000 copies.

References

Works cited

* * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Romantic Manifesto, The 1969 non-fiction books American essay collections Art manifestos Books about writing Books by Ayn Rand English-language books Objectivist books Philosophy books New American Library books