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criminal divinity who oppresses and denies mankind...if God kills and repudiates mankind, there is nothing to stop one from killing and repudiating one’s fellow men.”23 Unpropitiously and dreadfully for Camus, Sade’s censored ‘underground’ writings profoundly influenced the Romantics and artists of the 1780’s to 1840’s.
The Romantics, who later shall influence Andre Breton’s avant-garde surrealist movement and Dadaism, sojourn into the samba depths of their hearts. They listen to their emotions and intuitions while enraptured in the stunning song of beauty, nature and the supernatural. They are deeply moved and enticed by the sublime, imagination, creativity and their unconscious dreams. Romantics dwell on spontaneity and subjectivity crystallized in the Gothic novel and in the pre- romantic exuberant movement of “Sturm and Drung” (Storm and Stress).
As flamboyant and stormy as the Romantic Movement, Goethe and Schiller’s “Sturm and Drung” thrives on passion, oneness with nature and the violent expression of one’s individuality. Nietzsche compares Sturm and Drung to the Apollonian illusion where the “will longs so vehemently for existence, that Homeric man feels himself so completely at one with it, that lamentation itself becomes a song of praise.”24 According to Nietzsche, this symbolizes the great human
23 Camus, Albert. The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1991. 37
24 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. 9
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