The temporality of the Romantics. Notes on the conception and figuration of time

The intensive awareness or experience of time is one of the central topics of 19th century literature, particularly among authors considered Romantic. By way of several examples we focus on the poetry of these individuals (e.g. A. de Lamartine, V. Hugo and J. Vrchlický), whose work attempts to confront the irreversible course of time (the ancient, Virgilian subject: „fugit irreparabile tempus“, also dealt with by e.g. Petrarch and Pierre de Ronsard) by invoking and resurrecting the past, conserving and immortalizing the past, and with memories. For example, this penetrates the present of the subject and is involved in the creation of the continuum, when the passage of time, which in the Romantic conception of art is to be resisted by creation itself, does not necessarily entail disappearance and loss. In contrast to this we have Baudelaire's figures and the figure of time as the universal evil, the destructive enemy of the people provoking constant anxiety, the destroyer who cannot be eliminated, but who can, at least temporarily, be resisted by various forms of escape