Herzen’s Romantic Irony

Alexander Herzen was regarded as influential Russian thinker, writer and democratic revolutionary. His language was natural and his thought was complicated. In his view,From the Other Shore was one of his most successful works. And what’s more, Berlin regarded it as a distinguished masterpiece. Herzen created a new political philosophy language in the book which particularly reflected the romantic irony.On the basis of defining the notion of romantic irony, this paper, divided into three chapters is probing into the romantic irony of From the Other Shore. The first chapter introduces creation background of From the Other Shore, and through analyses of social political atmosphere and Romanticism of Russia in the first half of the 19 th century, reveals the ideological root and social root of the Herzen’s romantic irony. The secondary chapter mainly discusses the metaphysics revolt, political views and aesthetic feature of the book in order to illuminate the romantic irony of Herzen. The tertiary chapter describes the historical significance of Herzen’s romantic irony, and probes into the quintessence of his thought by comparison with Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky’s political thought and aesthetic conception so as to reveal his peculiarity in Russian intellectual history in 19 th century.