Romanticism has two sides, which I call the self-destructive tendency of romanticism and the self-creative tendency of romanticism.

Self-destructive romanticism is epitomized in the legend of Tristan und Isolde, particularly in Wagner's version.  The essence of this is ecstatic pessimism.  You also see a different side of it in The Flying Dutchman.  There's something Dionysian about it.  (One can see a trace of this in Foucault's work, and perhaps also Bataille?  But that's a more complicated question.)

But there has always been another side of Romanticism: self-creative Romanticism, or Promethean Romanticism.  Blake epitomizes this, and perhaps Shelley even more so - not to mention Byron.

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