ENCOUNTERS DIARY
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Inventing the world
According to Simon Schama, the roots of our modern world lie not in the past few decades, but in the late 18th and early 19th century – the years following the start of the French Revolution in 1789. This was a time when Romanticism flourished, with its emphasis on the individual and of the emotions over the intellect. We still think as the Romantics did, he argues, and perceive the world through their eyes and ears.
It’s an idea the historian explores over three episodes in a superb new TV series that ranges across the arts, so that Schama offers his learned take on visual artists including Caspar David Friedrich (whose 1822 painting is seen here), as well as the music of Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann and
