ART & ORGANISM

THE SUBLIME

BEAUTY, TERROR, AWE: notes for considering the sublime in life and art

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“In 1688, literary critic John Dennis took a Grand Tour of Europe, as was de rigueur for gentlemen of his station. During his passage of the Alps, he wrote that he experienced “a delightful Horrour, a terrible Joy and at the same time that I was infinitely pleased, I trembled”. A term used in transcendent literature seemed appropriate: such experiences were “sublime”.

The sublime caught on, with other adventurers extolling the terrible beauty of the wilderness. In 1757, the philosopher Edmund Burke defined it as an aesthetic category distinct from beauty, and it became a potent concept in 19th-century Romantic literature and art, in part as a reaction to early industrialisation.”  (Paul-Choudhury 2016)[2]

 

Sublime, “In aesthetics, the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.” (Wikipedia) BUT there’s a unique quality: the sublime is beautiful (because?) it is terrifying (Kant 1764) or overpowering (Schopenhauer 1818), or numinous (Otto 1917)[3]

Awe, is an element of the sublime (Edmund Burke), a feeling that accompanies a sense of an enormity that transcends human capacity for conceptualizing.  Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt have argued that awe, however evoked, has evolved because of its capacity to “bind us to social collectives and enable us to act in more collaborative ways that enable strong groups, thus improving our odds for survival.” (Keltner & Haidt 2003).  [Arcangeli et al 2020 have explored the connections between AWE and the SUBLIME)

“DEEP ETHOLOGY” has become the disciplinary scaffold we use to explore shared ideas and feelings. But “DEEP” has other connotations:  Read an excerpt from Emerson on circles.

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EXPERIENCE of AWE.  “In a review of the theoretical literature on awe, Keltner and Haidt (2003) proposed that awe-eliciting stimuli are characterised by two features: perceptual vastness and need for accommodation. Although the term ‘‘vastness’’ implies great physical size, in this usage ‘‘vast’’ describes any stimulus that challenges one’s accustomed frame of reference in some dimension. … What is critical is that the stimulus dramatically expands the observer’s usual frame of reference in some dimension or domain.” (from Shiota et al 2007).

Awe is generally positive and a feeling actively sought, suggesting that the pursuit or its success involves personal happiness.

Interestingly, awe and happiness are associated with different contexts.  Shiota (et al 2007) compared awe to happiness and found that AWE is relatively asocial compared to HAPPINESS. “As expected, awe was elicited by information-rich stimuli, particularly panoramic nature views and novel art and music, and reliving awe experiences made participants want to be in such environments again. Happiness was experienced in overwhelmingly social contexts, and was three times as likely to involve smiling*a social display.”

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EVOLUTION of AWE: In the course of reviewing The Evolutionary Function of Awe, Lucht & Van Schie (2023) defined awe and related it the to sublime.  The authors aimed “to contribute to the scientific literature on awe by reviewing seven perspectives on the evolutionary function of awe. each is presented with accompanying empirical evidence and suggestions for research investigating unanswered questions. based on the existing perspectives, this review proposes an integrated evolutionary model of awe, postulating the evolutionary selection of awe through three adaptive domains: (1) social cooperation, (2) reflective processing, and (3) signaling suitability as a potential mate.”  [read more]

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Enjoy the “BBC moment” about Edmund Burke’s view of the sublime

Also, watch the short video about art, paying close attention to the words the narrator uses and how the idea of “resonance” (mentioned in week 1) is represented: https://aeon.co/videos/why-caspar-david-friedrich-pits-natures-grandeur-against-the-humble-human?  

Browse the rich & multifaceted “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful With Several Other Additions”  by Edmund Burke (1756)  (Harvard Classics, Vol. 24, Part 2)  online via Bartelby

 for example, 

 

• “The elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our studies; which if they do not in some measure effect, they are of very little service to us. But, beside this great purpose, a consideration of the rationale of our passions seems to me very necessary for all who would affect them upon solid and sure principles. It is not enough to know them in general: to affect them after a delicate manner, or to judge properly of any work designed to affect them, we should know the exact boundaries of their several jurisdictions; we should pursue them through all their variety of operations, and pierce into the inmost, and what might appear inaccessible, parts of our nature…” (from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful,  Part 1, “The Conclusion”)
• So Burke observed that “Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused manner, sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of his work; but he can never have a certain determinate rule to go by, nor can he ever make his propositions sufficiently clear to others. Poets, and orators, and painters, and those who cultivate other branches of the liberal arts, have, without this critical knowledge, succeeded well in their several provinces, and will succeed: as among artificers there are many machines made and even invented without any exact knowledge of the principles they are governed by. It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory, and right in practice; and we are happy that it is so.”

 

The Romantic sublime

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851. Oil on canvas. Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth.  exhibited 1842.  Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856.  N00530. 

 

Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1757) connected the sublime with experiences of awe, terror and danger. Burke saw nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders. This Romantic conception of the sublime proved influential for several generations of artists.

In this section essays explore how artists responded to the sublime in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with articles on shipwreck and psychiatry, and case studies on the work of Stubbs, Haydon and Constable.

RESOURCES (Essays from the Tate) – come at this phenomenon, arguably a peak experience in a human life, from as many directions as possible.   Search for the right combination of words amongst the thousand you might read her that can at least begin to evoke insight.  

 ‘The Romantic sublime’, in Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (eds.), The Art of the Sublime, Tate Research Publication, January 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/the-romantic-sublime-r1109221, accessed 04 June 2017.

 

 

 

 

In 1791, when William Wordsworth was 21, he undertook a night ascent of Snowdon, a mountain in North Wales.  Philip Shaw[4] writes:  “Following an arduous journey to the summit the poet sees a flash of light which reveals ‘a huge sea of mist […] as far as sight’ can reach (line 51). From ‘a fracture in the vapour’ he hears ‘the roar of waters, torrents, streams / Innumerable, roaring with one voice’ (lines 59-60).

A meditation rose on me that night
Upon the lonely mountain when the scene
Had passed away, and it appeared to me
The perfect image of a mighty mind,
Of one that feeds upon infinity,
That is exalted by an under-presence,
The sense of God, or whatso’er is dim
Or vast in its own being … (1805 Prelude, lines 66-73)

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Later that night, Wordsworth reflects on his experience. The means by which ‘Nature’ transforms the mist into an ‘ocean’ (line 44), a vision of grandeur effacing the majesty of the ‘real sea’ (line 47), resembles the creative power of the imagination: that ‘glorious faculty / Which higher minds bear with them as their own’ (lines 89-90). Mind and nature, that is, are united in their ability to ‘mould’, ‘abstract’ and ‘combine’ the ‘outward face of things’ into images ‘awful and sublime’ (74-9; passim).” (Philip Shaw) (see more at: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/wordsworth-and-the-sublime#sthash.3dKdNG2M.dpuf AND SEE Wordsworth’s experience (1805)

[my own experience in an aspen grove at Deer Lakes near Lake City Colorado was sublime.  Late in October 2022, I was in an aspen grove as the sun rose.   Suddenly I was immersed in a brilliant golden yellow light that felt like some primal event that was both threatening and exhilerating and was drawing me into some kind of dangerous transcendence.  Do I let go? Wordsworth came to mind.  Then an enthusiasm to share the experience… ] 

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Reflecting on experience ?  SUBLIME.  FREE ASSOCIATION: A poignant but powerful expression of the mixed message of the aesthetic sublime:

Whoah and I know a man, he came from my hometown

He wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown

He said Dolores, I live in fear

My love for you’s so overpowering, I’m afraid that I will disappear

 

[Chorus:]

Slip sliding away, slip sliding away

You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away

–Paul Simon