FRENCH ROMANTICISM: OBSOLETE OR IN SEARCH OF A NEW YOUTH?

Whatever the eras of romanticism, what are we really talking about if not emotion, feelings, vulnerability, love and the unknown! Buried because of its kitsch,  Romanticism is the purest expression of one's feelings and states of mind, but it would seem that accepting a part of fragility is nothing less than a capital sin in our time where the admission of the feeling of dependence and weakness can only go against all these liberal injunctions linked to performance.  Why risk exposure to pain and addiction when we are encouraged to approach love as a product, with ever higher demands, where bodies are to be consumed without moderation?

Is Romanticism Dead? Not so sure... it would even rise from its ashes because many are the cupids of tomorrow who promise it a second youth with a much more romantic approach to love. The true values of the couple are reinvested, Romanticism 2.0 aims to be more lucid in the intensity of the moment and no longer necessarily has the same fundamentals as yesterday. 

A brief historical look at the birth of Romanticism

A brief historical look at the birth of Romanticism

On July 4, 1778, at nightfall, a boat transported the coffin of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Isle of Peupliers for a somewhat special nighttime ceremony. A few weeks earlier, Voltaire had also passed away without a sound… Two leading and indisputable figures in our entire literature disappeared without a sound. But wasn’t the solitary walker in Rousseau’s “Reveries” ultimately the first of our great romantics?

The bloodbath of the 1789 revolution, which devastated bodies, hearts and minds in our country, gave birth over decades to a superb generation of new poets, novelists, painters and artists of all kinds.

Romanticism has its roots in the very heart of the Age of Enlightenment , brilliantly led by Madame de Staèl (Germaine Becker in the civil registry) and François-René de Chateaubriand. From then on, from melancholy to nostalgia, from passions to suffering, it is love and romanticism that will be successfully on the bill with Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset as leaders.

Romantic illusions and this state of mind to embellish everything, to adorn the most trivial reality with the fires of the imagination will, however, be extinguished with Flaubert and “Madame Bovary”, with Stendhal and “The Red and the Black”, with Georges Sand and “The Devil’s Pond”, with Emile Zola and his “Rougon-Macquart”.

In the second half of our 18th century, a beginning of French romanticism extinguished the great era of the “Enlightenment”. Born from an intellectual ferment that followed the Revolution, romanticism sent to the devil all those rules of classicism that Shakespeare in England and Goethe in Germany were already denouncing outside France. It had its hours of glory in the first half of the 19th century and reached its peak around 1840.

Loved, admired, tossed around from all sides, often outdated, French romanticism has overcome all the trials of time but in today's romances and love relationships, it is something quite different...

                     

The New Romanticism 2.0

Deep down, in our hearts and heads, we still have a lot of hope for a new romanticism that is coming. Yes, love with a capital A has changed and it is no longer the same as yesterday! It is difficult to say that the series "Married at First Sight" carries the same romance as the melodramatic tragedy of a " Romeo and Juliet " by Shakespeare. Does true love still exist? Is the blue-flower romanticism, a little saccharine according to some, really so pathetic in 2021?

                                                                                                                                               

There are many reasons that push us to become hearts of stone, impervious to all these feelings, but all of this seems to be only of the order of "fear", the fear of being overwhelmed by our feelings, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of losing control. We are afraid of losing our loved one as we are afraid of losing our job; so in the end, we prefer not to try anything and multiply the conquests without getting attached. However, these one-night stands only prove satisfactory for our narcissism and our ego. And it is for want of being loved in reciprocity that we turn to the consumerist of romantic encounters offered by tinder, badoo or adopteunmec.

To protect themselves from all these disillusionments (divorces, separations, breakups, broken hearts), our youth has equipped itself with a foolproof realism, without sexual and sentimental exclusivity. From now on, we judge ourselves, we recruit ourselves on our CV, we can have a good time and have fun with our "sex friend", go from love experience to love experience, be free to love who we want when we want. The most important thing is not to suffer! 0r, romanticism includes a more global love without concession, intense and most overwhelming.

So yes, it is easy to blame the Internet, to blame these dating apps, this consumer society and this zapping of the heart . And it is perhaps much more complicated to accept that we are a little "philophobic" in our spare time.

We are far from the idealized and exclusive love of the 19th century, but it may be a blessing in disguise. Romanticism “à la française” is reborn differently today and aims to be, in the authenticity and spontaneity of feelings, in exchange and in the moment. It embodies with force and for a long time to come, all these values ​​of individual revolt and passion for the freedom to love and be loved. It is in no way “old-fashioned” and even if slow seduction seems to be over and love aims to be more rational, we all need a little dream, magic, and irrationality to escape cynicism, disengagement and romantic dispersion.

Be attentive, attentive, creative, original, spontaneous, tell him what you feel, open up, continue to surprise your partner! What could be more pleasant than a sunset, a night walk in the moonlight, a romantic dinner with your other half, a pretty bouquet of flowers on a table, a sweet word lovingly written on the bathroom mirror with our invisible ink marker.

A new generation of “French-style” romanticism is on the rise! Our youth need this romanticism so much! Very recently, Time magazine published a study that claimed that 90% of American teenagers wanted to stay with the same partner for their entire lives.

In France, a recent IFOP study also told us that 30% of people were lacking real encounters.

According to a study conducted by Happn and Opinion Way, more than one in two French people declare themselves to be romantic, and more than 41% of women and 32% of men say they are ready to leave everything behind to throw themselves into a new love story.

These figures and this unexpected optimism prove to us once again that romanticism has not said its last word but that it has simply adapted to the reality of its time and to new technologies.

YESforLOV and its products at the service of romance

YESforLOV and its products at the service of romance

For the two of you, lovers alone in the world, the “salon-saloon” becomes a cabaret for an evening. In the half-light, soft music escapes from the grooves of the sound system. Guest from the first hour and accomplice, the YESforLOV room fragrance diffuser brings its share of mystery with its subdued light and its scents of aphrodisiac perfume. Warm and sensual atmosphere guaranteed with the LOV'space fragrance diffuser !


As the preliminaries approach, the intoxicating massage candle is discreet when the breaths become subject to cuts! Extensions galore are to be expected before the fireworks: the YESforLOV candle, which has become a very softening massage oil, is now invited into your sheets and on your skin.


Love is freedom! So let loose, lovers. Play hide-and-seek with our satin blindfold that will take you on adventures you never imagined! It's hot, hot in the saloon and the YESforLOV caressing feather , with its unrivaled softness, is in the right place to give you the best of helping hands or helping hands depending on your affinities.

It's up to you two to take the initiative! Between two impulses, between two desires, listen to the sound system that says that "freedom is a song!" It's up to you to find the author and the title! The rest of the events is up to you...

French women and men have tough skin but always open hearts: in the inevitable era of social networks and all-out excitement on dating apps that inexorably and without a second thought weave their web in the sheets of the most fearful lovers. Romantic love in its modernity has not changed sides, it is there in our hearts and we are ready to vibrate, to palpitate at the approach of our other half, for a moment, a night or for eternity.