Romanticism flourished on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century partially in reaction to the rise of science and the Enlightenment but also as stance and attitude in its own right. Characterized by heightened sensitivity to inspiration, the ineffable, and emotion, Romanticism was both a lifestyle and an approach to life as it was a definitive movement in the arts and history of thought.  For the Romantic, the soul’s condition was valued over and above the growing reliance upon objective certainty, contemplation on transcendent meaning took precedence over pragmatic knowledge, and the translation of one’s feeling response into inspired thought and art was the greatest possible achievement.

We can see in Romanticism one way of expressing and managing the eternal dilemma of the Saturn-Neptune equation. As a core principle, the Saturn-Neptune gestalt makes the divide between some transcendent other and the mundane and commonplace that which needs to be attended to in a serious and significant fashion. The Romantic reaction to this predicament is to attempt to express and harness this divide and all of its concomitant challenges through some form of heightened, sublimated awareness, action or achievement: poetic melancholy, exquisitely sentimental music, serious meditation on the profundity of meaning in life, inspired and revelatory expression of the divine.