The Sublime as we understand it today wasn’t conceptualized until the 18th century. Up until this point it had been scantly examined and was understood apart from the aesthetic context of which it is now inherently linked. During the 18th century, perhaps precipitated by the enlightenment agenda, examination of the Sublime garnered the attention of many prominent philosophers and intellectuals of relevant disciplines. The foremost contributors were philosophers Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. Both offered unique interpretations, which, though momentarily conflict, are for the most part mutually supportive and concerted.
The primary distinction they agreed upon, and that which is contemporarily most attributed to the notion of the Sublime, is its dissimilarity with beauty. Despite the likeness of the pleasure they induce, beauty and the Sublime are distinct from each other. Whereas beauty is the result of form, continuity and limitation, sublimity is the result of chaos, uncertainty and infinity. The sublime has a power incomprehensible to the observer in both range and force. This uncertainty elicits a particular terror, akin to the pleasure incited by beauty.
Kant and Burke, however, do differ on additional points of emphasis. Burke believes the observer’s particular terror is simply a heightened sense of fear in the face of something far more powerful than himself. Kant focuses not on the individual’s physical awareness, but on her spiritual awareness. He says that when people are confronted with the sublime, their resultant fearfulness stems from the sense of an unrestrained, unintentional magnificence,. This sense of unhindered might is due to the absence of an artist. Therefore, Kant’s Sublime can only be natural, not synthetic. The observance of manmade objects can’t but be affected by the artist’s intent. The observer simply can’t help but infer the artwork’s purpose. It’s purposefulness in the absence of intended purpose that elicits fear within the observer of the sublime. Therefore the sublime is strictly subjective. The observer instinctively assumes purpose in something so immense and grand, in spite of the absence of an actual creator. This condition engenders fearfulness in the observer, but it’s not a physical fear; it’s a spiritual one.
After perusing Anna Laetitia Barbauld's “A Summer Evening’s Meditation” and Edward Young’s“Night Thoughts,” which understanding of the Sublime would you attribute to each author?
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I think for both Barbauld and Young, what they are experiencing is more The Kantian sublime than the Burkian sublime, although I'm confused, because Burke's sublime includes both the spiritual sublime AND the physical sublime, right? It's just that Kant considers only those things without a creator to be truly sublime. But both pieces describe religious elements, the kinds of things that extend beyond human capacity. The two authors are trying to describe these things to the reader. Interestingly enough, however, it seems as if these two authors are trying to give the reader a sense of the sublime, and in doing so, they can only convey to us the physically sublime, aka Burke's sublime. Because the poem has a creator, the reader gets a sense of the author's perception and creation of their sense of the sublime. No matter how breath-taking the literature may be, there is a sense that this sublime is limited by the author's description. It's like going on a roller coaster, and being thrilled, but at the same time you might remember that you're harnessed into a seat, sitting on a contraption that took years to design to ensure your safety. Yes, it's outrageously fun, but not quite the same as jumping off of a 50 foot cliff. But if you don't really realize those things (about the roller coaster of the poetry) you can experience Burke's sublime just the same.
After reading both poems, I think "Night Thoughts" by Edward Young ascribes more to Kant's conception of the sublime. Young writes, "Look down -- on what? a fathomless abyss. A worm! a God! I tremble at myself, and in myself am loft! at home a stranger" (4). These lines seem to indicate the speaker is overwhelmed by the "fathomless abyss." This natural wonder causes fear for the speaker, but the fear is more spiritual to physical. He mentions his soul as though it has exited his body traveling in "ceaseless flight." This out of body experience is subjective as Kant defines it. In "A Summer Evening's Meditation," Barbauld also ascribes to the Kantian definition of the sublime. The poem describes a spiritual experience void of physicality. The experience isn't manifested tangibly, rather the speaker is overcome by what is natural occurring.
I feel Young’s “Night Thoughts” is more like Burke’s understanding of the Sublime. One small section seemed to fit this understanding perfectly. “I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost! At home a stranger, thought wanders up and down, surpriz’d, aghast, And wond’ring at her own –“. In this bit, the person seems to be overwhelmed, unable to comprehend at all. It is just the overwhelming factors that seem to bring him down, not where it comes from. While the bit begins with a reference to God, it does not seem to make this about spiritual awareness still. It is just physically too much, nothing more.
I found Barbauld's work to be a particularly fitting representative of Kant's notion of the sublime. The author seems awestruck by the magnitude of the cosmos, musing on the splendour of the ancient gods of Greek mythology. At the end of the poem, she writes, "Let me here / Content and grateful, wait th' appointed time / And ripen for the skies: the hour will come / When all these splendours bursting on my sight / Shall stand unveil'd, and to my ravished sense / Unlock the glories of the world unknown" (Barbauld 118-123). The language is very strong here, using words like "ravished" to describe the effect that such awesome powers could have on the author. I get the feeling that there is a sexual connection to be made here, since one generally thinks of ravishing in a salacious context. The sensory overload brought on by the natural world, then, is an overwhelming experience, but not necessarily a good one; rather, I feel that this poem is an affirmation of the intellectual ravishing that the vastness of existence gives to a previously unenlightened mind.
I believe that "Night Thoughts" coincides more with the Burkian view of the sublime. Burke's view of the sublime takes action. In this excerpt, the author utilizes physically active statements, such as "push eternity," "buries his thoughts," and "ripen for the just." Just as KMS stated, Young is less spiritually overwhelmed as much as he is physically taken aback by the sublime elements surrounding him. All of the emotions and experiences he encounters cause his language to literally take action, using verbs to fully describe how in awe of his surroundings he truly is. His spiritually, too, takes on physicality on the last page of the excerpt, where Young says, "Here buries all his thoughts; Inters celestial hopes, without one sigh." His spirituality is not merely experienced, but is physicalized and taken into the sole as if it were an object.
At first I thought that Young's poem had more to do with Burke's idea of the sublime, given that the poem mentions of sleep and the body: the first line, "Tir'd nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!" and toward the end, "While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spreads;" and immediately I thought there was a lot going on with physical response and fear. But I missed all of the content between those parts where there is heightened fear about death, about nothingness, about immortality and the existence of an afterlife. The lines, "The bell strikes One. we take no note of time,/ But from its loss...It is the signal which demands dispatch:/ How much is to be done! my hopes and fears/ Start up alarm'd and o'er life's narrow verge/ Look down--on what? a fathomless abyss" made me consider that there is something spiritual and mental happening, wherein thought, the mind and reason seem connected with the soul. This now makes me think there are more of Kant's ideas in this poem, however there is no strong reliance on nature. Here man is a "pris'ner of earth," not exactly an admirer of its unfabricated quality. So, currently I am not sure how to categorize Young's poem and hopefully after class today I will understand it better.
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