Except for the exceptions, there is no literature (and no art) today—in the
sense of a broad, vital cultural movement and influence. There are only
bewildered imitators with nothing to imitate—and charlatans who rise to
split-second notoriety, as they always did in periods of cultural collapse.
Some remnants of Romanticism may still be found in the popular media—but in
such a mangled, disfigured form that they achieve the opposite of Romanticism’s
original purpose.