The French Revolution ended when the spirit of Classical vengeance abandoned it. The Revolution had reduced the priesthood to ashes, destroyed social… - Osip Mandelstam

" "

The French Revolution ended when the spirit of Classical vengeance abandoned it. The Revolution had reduced the priesthood to ashes, destroyed social determinism, and brought the secularization of Europe to its ultimate conclusion. It was then washed up on the shore of the nineteenth century as an already unfathomable thing, not as a Gorgon's head, but as a fascicle of seaweed. Out of the union of mind and the furies a mongrel was born, equally alien to the high rationalism of the Encyclopedia and to the Classical raging of the revolutionary storm-Romanticism. Nevertheless, as it developed, the nineteenth century moved much further away from its predecessor than Romanticism. The nineteenth century was the conduit of Buddhist influence in European culture.