User:BeingBitha/sandbox

BeingBitha (talk) 06:13, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

_NOINDEX_ Romantic Originality is a notion that is an offshoot from the idea of Originality. The Romantic impulse has been defined as man's 'expansive eagerness to get his own uniqueness uttered.'.

History Previous to the 18th century, originality had been synonymously accepted to mean 'different.' To attain originality, it had been effectively restrained, other than in exceptional instances, by stern necessity of achieving prominence through mastery of the difficult. In other words, if you wanted to be noticed, you have to do something better than others. Rousseau's statement, 'If I am not better than other men, at least I am different' changed the perception of what it took to be 'original.' His statement came to mean that if you could not do the thing better, or even as well as others, you could substitute something easier and call attention to its difference. Rousseau's statement has a paradoxical quality to its essence. A careful investigation could reveal it to be little more than the mechanical trick repeated ad infinitum of standing Alexander the Great's principle of 'originality' on its head, where Alexander gave evidence of extraordinary ability to do the thing as his version of 'originality.' That the word 'difference' in Rousseau's statement need not be the worse of the comparison but the essence of the difference and hence have reference to the essence of what 'better' means, and therefore may have been in match to Alexander's version of 'originality' may have been the other part of the paradoxical nature of Rousseau's statement. (needs specific citation from the Article to avoid the risk of derived/implied meaning).