As the great Yeats put it when he spoke of the Decadence movement, 'We were the last Romantics...'
He must have been feeling despondent by then. What I think about Romanticism is, it is like the vampire: you can set it on fire, drive a stake through the undead heart, chop the head off. It just keeps coming back. You killed a vampire. So? There will always be more. Romanticism at the end of yet another century finds itself as Frankenstein's creature; a reanimated corpse. That is by no means a detraction. Instead, it goes to prove Romanticism's lasting character.
In light of the previous opinion, I am forced to state that there were no such men as the 'last romantics'.
The Romantic, Decadent and Gothic arts always find new homes in young hearts. These three worlds of aesthetics and shadowplay arise from deep-seated traits of the human psyche, and therefore aren't easy to eradicate. Our modern society, and that's one example out of many, finds itself enthralled with the vampire as a very popular form of entertainment. It is no insignificance either that Mary Shelley's creation, Frankenstein, has survived, albeit in somewhat distorted forms over the course of the years, and is still a staple of popular culture, where the common volk (love that word) have named the creature itself (rather himself, since he asks Victor to build him a female mate) after the creator. Whence all this need to cling to darkness? Alas, there is no easy answer.
But the need is there nonetheless. It has to do with a constant wish to question the inscrutable; this question you will find most pressing in Keats, although he made a point of perceiving darkness but leaving it alone. I say, maybe he knew what he was dealing with. Sometimes the answers are much too potent for our little systems.
One idea I have come up with on my own (such ideas appear infrequently I'm afraid) is that the quest for darkness more or less runs parallel to the search for the Holy Grail: something that is profound and permanent. Something that can be recycled, re-used, rearranged, validated anew one century after another. Yet I believe darkness has been around us for a lot longer than the Grail, it is a lot older, a lot wiser, and knows us far better. As a result our atavistic selves connect to it from very early times of our lives. I remember enjoying ghost stories and a good scare before I got any amount of religious education.
Consequently I now turn to that which I know best even through subconscious means. The constant pull of darkness has turned me into a Romantic, and a Decadent, and I like it. I chose to weed out the weak in me, that is to say, the constant urge to buy new clothes, new records, go see new movies. The craving for novelty is also a healthy trait of the individual, what happens is that characteristic is overtly, extremely exploited by our commercial world. Let us face it, most of us have sold our souls to the corporate god. There is a glut of popular entertainment that slowly (and sad enough it is) drowns out different currents of aesthetics and forces them to become some sort of undertow. And we all know what parents tell their children about the undertow. In a way I'm glad it is so, that violets are not exposed to the jack-boots of the zombified.
As a thinking individual in a western democracy it is my prerogative to say no to the thirst for hollow entertainment, to utter lack of substance. Unfortunately for the puppeteers of our planet, (now that makes me happy -- honest injun) even shallow drivel like Beverly Hills 90210 can be psychoanalyzed... though listening to educated adults waxing academic over hidden meanings in the series might be pathetic to the point of queasiness. That's another tale altogether, and I'll leave it for now.
Luckily for the rest of us who like black clothes (and some weird jewelry) Romanticism is there to save our souls, provide a sense of identity perhaps. We can get together in yet another uniformed community -- but at least there is a sense of community! Luckily there was a Decadence, a Fin-de-Si�cle ennui: we of the dark persuasion are now graced with the privilege of having very prominent ancestors.
So what is being a Romantic all about in the end of the twentieth century?
Above all, I believe it is, as much as it was, the absolute refusal to follow the herd, not to allow yourself to be herded, or branded. In ancient religions knowing the name of an entity would grant you power over that entity, and even Isis became mightier than Ra when she made him tell her his secret name. There is a lesson in the parable (there always is more than one, depending on where you're coming from): for me the lesson is: do not allow yourself to be branded. Remember, if they know what you're calling yourself, be it dandy or dada, they will be able to pigeon-hole you, control you in a way. They (note the Babylonian quality of the pronoun) will come to you peddling all the right wares. Therefore, move, and disappear. Be invisible if you must. Decline any label. Revel in the absolute that is your creative self. Become nothing else but living art, and know that you are a true Romantic and a Decadent at heart.
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