Historian Jacques Barzun argued that romanticism was falsely opposed to realism[5] and declared that "...the romantic realist does not blink his weakness, but exerts his power.
[8] According to Theodor W. Adorno, the term "romantic realism" was used by Joseph Goebbels to define the official doctrine of the art produced in Nazi Germany, although this usage did not achieve wide currency.
[9] In 1928 Anatoly Lunacharsky, People's Commissar for Education of the Soviet Union, wrote: The proletariat will introduce a strong romantic-realist current into all art.
As part of her aesthetics, Rand defined romanticism as a "category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition",[12] a realm of heroes and villains, which she contrasted to naturalism.
Musicologist Richard Taruskin discusses what he calls the "black romanticism" of Niccolò Paganini and Franz Liszt, i.e., the development and use of musical techniques that can be used to depict or suggest "grotesque" creatures or objects, such as the "laugh of the devil", to create a "frightening atmosphere".
[15] Thus, Taruskin's "black romanticism" is a form of "romantic realism" deployed by nineteenth-century virtuosi with the intent of invoking fear or "the sublime".