Aries 7 (2007) 3-19 www.brill.

nl/aries

“Eternal Sun” / “Black Sun”:

Illuminism and Disenchanted Romanticism

Arthur McCalla
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy/Religious Studies,
Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Canada

Abstract
“L’éternel soleil” /“le soleil noir”: Illuminisme et romantisme désenchanté
Cet article interpelle les oeuvres de Paul Bénichou, Jerome McGann et Yves Vadé pour explorer le
rôle de l’Illuminisme dans les écrits et la vie de Charles Nodier (1780-1844) et de Gérard de Nerval
(1808-1855). Son trope maître, c’est le soleil comme signe dans notre monde de la Divinité.
L’expression “l’éternel soleil” est de Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, le Philosophe inconnu. L’article
commence donc avec une brève exposition du rôle de la poétique dans le système théosophique de
Saint-Martin. “Soleil noir” apparaît dans Les Chimères et Aurélia de Nerval. Nodier a utilisé des
thèmes illuministes dans ses contes fantastiques et dans ses idées de l’imagination et de la foi. Nerval,
bien qu’il écrive des textes de base nouvel enchantement littéraire du dix-neuvième siècle, a refusé
de renoncer dans sa vie personnelle et dans Aurélie à l’espoir de retrouver une clef magique de
la réalité.

Keywords
Illuminism; Romanticism; Disenchantment; Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de; Nodier, Charles;
Nerval, Gérard de

The poetics of high Romanticism is the expression of an epistemological opti-

mism, or the conviction that human beings possess extra-rational faculties that
permit direct apprehension of the metaphysical order and/or the divine will for
humanity. Poetry mediates between humanity and the transcendent or meta-
physical realm by revealing the Infinite in the finite and the spiritual unity of
creation. The symbolic, analogical poetics of the Romantics embraced the
Illuminist concepts of poetry as symbolic knowledge and the key to an analogi-
cal world, of the poet as the recipient and transmitter of revelation, and of the
limitation of language to express spiritual truth.1 The non-literal language of
1)
On Romantic poetics and Illuminism, see Bowman, ‘Theory of Harmonies’; Viatte, Les Sources
occultes; Bénichou, Sacre; Hanegraaff, ‘Romanticism and the Esoteric Connection’; Juden, Traditions
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/157005906X154692

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 4 A. McCalla / Aries 7 (2007) 3-19

poetry and fiction became for Romantic authors, like Illuminist ones, the neces-
sary vehicle for expressing a deeper truth that can only be communicated indi-
rectly; spiritual truths require symbolic circumlocution.2 Romanticism joined
with Illuminism in demoting Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism in
favour of the imagination. Further, whereas Enlightenment intellectualism had
placed imagination as an order of knowledge on a par with dreams and delirium
as irrational nonsense, Romanticism accepted the equation of imagination with
dreams and delirium but interpreted their empirical inadequacy as epistemo-
logical privilege: the multiform imaginary transcends the limits of reason and
grasps spiritual reality.3 Romantic poetics thereby reconceptualized revelation
and, by this very reconceptualization, transformed poets into prophets and magi.
This conception of poets as mages underlies the works and lives of the genera-
tion of French high Romanticism, including Alphonse de Lamartine, Alfred de
Vigny, and Victor Hugo.4
Jerome McGann has located the epistemological optimism of the high
Romantics within particular historical conditions. The self-imposed task of
Romanticism, he argues, was to overcome the historical conflicts and transien-
cies of the post-Revolutionary period by grounding society and culture on an
ontological order beyond history that is grasped by the imagination of the poet.
In order to do this, Romanticism asserted that poetry operates beyond the realm
of immediate experience, at the level of the mind’s idea or the heart’s desire, and
that, by seeing through appearances to the spiritual reality beneath, it provides us
with an escape from the vicissitudes of historical existence. Poetry, and art in
general, therefore transcends partisan, didactic, or doctrinal matters. McGann
points out, however, that the Romantic project, far from transcending its times,
is a historically specific construction that responds to the conditions and utilizes
the intellectual resources of the Romantic period. The belief that Romantic
poetry transcends history is an illusion thrown up by the historical conditions
of the Romantics themselves. This illusion is the heart of what McGann calls
the Romantic ideology because Romantic poetry—and all other Romantic
productions—depend on it. ‘The idea that poetry, or even consciousness, can

orphiques; Cellier, L’Épopée romantique; McCalla, ‘Romanticism’; Borel, Séraphîta; Evans, Louis
Lambert.
2)
Gusdorf , Du Néant, 409.
3)
Gusdorf, L’Homme, 336. But for a cautionary note on assimilating too easily esoteric and Roman-
tic imagination, see Hanegraaff, ‘Romanticism and the Esoteric Connection’, 258-260.
4)
The theme of the poet as mage is central to Bénichou’s analysis of high Romanticism. See Béni-
chou, Temps and Mages.

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