Chapter 11. The Sublime. Introduction and Notes on the Translation of Kant s Observations. 1. A New Concept of Beauty Neoclassicist school- Beauty as quality of the object that we perceive as beautiful. Fell back on Classical definitions: Unity in variety Proportion Harmony 18 th century certain terms became popular: genius, taste, imagination and sentiment: a new concept of Beauty was coming into being. Genius and Imagination: - qualities of those who invent/produce a beautiful Thing Taste- quality of those capable of appreciating it Disposition of the Subject rather than the Object What do we mean by subject/object? Prior: concepts such as: ingenuity, wit, agudeza and esprit But in the 18 th century: the rights of the subject began to play a full part in the experience of Beauty. From Rules of Production to a consideration of the affects that it produces Dominant in 18 th century circles: Beauty is bound up with the senses, recognition of a pleasure Congruently, in diverse philosophical circles, the idea of the Sublime was becoming popular 2. The Sublime Is the Echo of a Great Soul Pseudo Longinus (1 st century a.d.) first to talk of the Sublime His treatise on the Sublime was reconsidered in the 17 th century onward but wasn t vigorously examined and expanded upon until the 18 th century. For Longinus: Sublime expressed by grand and noble passions That bring into play the emotional involvement of the creator and perceiver of the work of art Sublime: animates poetic discourse Transports the listener or reader into a state of ecstacy Sublime is reached through art and an affect of art Reading: Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime p.279
These are, one may say, some five genuine sources of the sublime in literature, the common groundwork, as it were, of all five being a natural faculty of expression, without which, nothing can be done. The first and most powerful is the command of full-blooded ideas- I have defined this in my book on Xenophon- and the second is the inspiration of vehement emotion. These two constituents of the sublime are for the most part congenital. But the other three come partly of art, namely the proper construction of figures-these being probably of two kinds, figures of thought and figures of speech- and, over and above these,, nobility of phrase, which again may be resolved into choice of words and the use of metaphor and elaborated diction. The fifth cause of grandeur, which embraces all those already mentioned, is the general effect of dignity and elevation. congenital adjective 1 congenital defects inborn, inherited, hereditary, innate, inbred, constitutional, inbuilt, natural, inherent. See note at inherent. antonym acquired. Write down what is universal and what is acquired/relative according to Longinus 4. The Sublime in Nature At this point in the 18 th century: Sublime bound up within art, not nature Nature: a bias toward formlessness, suffering, and dread (different from the supposed Classical thought of nature having order and therefore form) In the course of the centuries it was recognized: Beautiful and agreeable things Terrible, frightening, and painful things Art can make beautiful through portrayal or imitations of: Ugliness, formlessness, and terror, monsters or the devil, death or a tempest. Aristotle, Poetics: tragedy, in representing horrific events, has to call up fear and pity in the spectator The emphasis is placed on the process of purification (carthasis) through which spectators liberate themselves from those passions The various means of purifying the abject- the various catharses- make up the history of religions, and end up with that catharsis par excellence called art, both on the far and near side of religion. Seen from that standpoint, the artistic experience, which is rooted in the abject it utters and by the same
token purifies, appears as the essential component of religiosity. That is why it is destined to survive the collapse of the historical forms of religions. -Julia Kristeva In the 17 th century some painters were appreciated for their portrayals of ugly, foul, maimed, and croppled creatures, or for their cloudy and stormy skies, but no one said that a tempest, a stormy sea, or something threatening and devoid of any definite form could be beautiful in itself - Eco In this period the world of aesthetic pleasure split in two: Beauty and Sublime (though not entirely separated) As well as: (Beauty and Truth, Well and Good, Beauty and Utility, and Beauty and Ugliness) 18 th century period of travel (not of conquest as prior) To savor new pleasures and new emotions: development of a taste for the exotic, interesting, curious, different, and astounding. Birth of: Poetics of mountains Read: Thomas Burnet, Telluris theoria sacra 1681 p. 284 4. The Poetics of Ruins 2 nd half of eighteenth century Appreciation of disproportional, irregular and formless showed itself through the interest in ruins Renaissance passionate about ruins of ancient Greece wanted to imitate them in their completeness 18 th century- appreciated for their incompleteness, the marks that time had left upon them, that wild vegetation had covered 5. The Gothic Style in Literature Gothic novel arose in 18 th century literature: dilapidated castles, monasteries, and disquieting cellars, which lent themselves to nocturnal visions, dark crimes and ghosts Graveyard Poetry parallels this: as well as funeral elegies- mortuary eroticism Horror could give pleasure Reading: Friedrich von Schiller: On Tragic Art, 1792 p 289 Writing: Pick out the Universal 6. Edmund Burke
A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and beautiful Contributed to the spread of the theme of the sublime more than any other 1756, 1759 Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the Sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. -Edmund Burke Burke opposed Beauty to the Sublime: Beauty acts on the mind through the senses. Against the idea that Beauty consists in proportion and harmony- meaning? at odds with centuries of aesthetic culture) Typical aspects of Beauty: variety, smallness, smoothness, gradual variation, delicacy, purity, and fairness of color, grace and elegance Is this view of the Sublime Subjective or Objective? Sublime: Vastness of dimensions, ruggedness and negligence, solidity, even massiveness and darkness. Unleashes passions of terror, flourishes in obscurity, calls up ideas of power, emptiness, solitude, silence, infinity Difficult to find a unifying idea: his categories are influenced by his personal taste Accoustic Sulblime: the noise of vast cataracts, raging storms, thunder or artillery, the loud cries of animals The sudden emotion of a sound of considerable intensity with regard to which a single sound of some strength but of short duration and repeated in intervals (Beethoven s 5 th ) How can terror be pleasant? When it does not press too closely upon us Detatchment from the causes of fear Same attitude in previous centuries associated with Beauty Remember? Beauty is that which produces a pleasure that does not engender the desire to possess or consume its object Horror bound up with Sublime- horror of something that cannot possess uscannot harm us In this lies the deep relationship between Beauty and the Sublime- Eco
7. Kant s Sublime Defined with greatest precision the differences and affinities between Beauty and the Sublime Characteristics of the beautiful: disinterested pleasure, universality without concept, and regularity without law Question- what aspect of these three things can we compare to Burke? Which one can we compare to Longinus? Experience of the Sublime: Vija Celmins Night Sky #17 1.) Mathematical- Starry sky What does this relate to? Something that goes far beyond our sensibilities and we are induced to imagine more than we see. Our reason forces us to postulate an infinity that is not only beyond the grasp of our senses but also beyond the reach of our imagination. We sense the magnitude of our subjectivity, our incapability of comprehension. 2.) Dynamic- Storm Julius Ibbetson, European; British, 1759 1817 A Storm on the Isle of White What shakes our spirit is not the impression of infinite vastness, but of infinite power: sensible nature is again left humiliated, powerless against the forces of nature Romanticism was nourished by these ideas 18 th century: New twist to Sublimity How we feel about nature, not art Romantics: How to portray artistically the impression of sublimity we feel upon witnessing the spectacles of nature? Paint scenes of tempests, of boundless reaches, of mighty glaciers Friedrich- pictures of people observing, we look through them, become one of them