La modernidad prometeica: de la "obra de arte total" a los totalitarismos

Abstract

The verses of the early German Romantics defi ne the poet as a fi gure responsible for guiding humanity towards the artistic and political renewal of the world. It is in this sense that we should understand Richard Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art” a defi nitive synthesis of the arts as a whole, and, in an even broader sense, of nature and culture, politics and creation, and life and art. This Promethean mission to create a new credo for the modern world and a new redemptive outlook fully suited to modernity took hold in German Romanticism and achieved full resonance in the 20th century. Some of history’s leading avant-garde movements and the totalitarian regimes so prevalent in Europe between the wars were continuations of the totalitarian need that emerged from Romanticism.