The Sublime

Philip Shaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317508861
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Related to ideas of the great, the awe-inspiring and the overpowering, the sublime has been debated for centuries amongst writers, artists, philosophers and theorists and has become a complex yet crucial concept in many disciplines.

In this thoroughly updated edition, Philip Shaw looks at:

• Early modern and post-Romantic conceptions of the sublime in two brand new chapters

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• The legacy of the earliest classical theories, through those of the long eighteenth century to modernist, postmodernist and avant-garde conceptions of the sublime

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• Critical Introductions to major theorists of the sublime such as Longinus, Burke, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Lacan and Žižek

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• The significance of the concept through a range of literary readings, including the Old and New Testaments, Homer, Milton and writing from the Romantic period to the present day

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• How the concept of the sublime has affected other art forms such as painting and film, from abstract expressionism to David Lynch's neo- noir

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• The influence of the sublime on recent debates in the fields of politics, theology and psychoanalysis.

Offering historical overviews and explanations, this remarkably clear study is essential reading for students of literature, critical and cultural theory.

1
Before (And After) Longinus

Ecstasy and Instruction

Peri hypsous, an incomplete Greek manuscript, supposed to have been authored by Longinus in the first or third century CE (see Doran 2015: 30–1 and Heath 1999), is widely acknowledged to be the first properly theoretical discussion of the sublime. Combining the preposition περί (peri), meaning on, about, or concerning, and the noun ὕψος (hypsos), meaning height, peak, or crown, the treatise, sometimes referred to as On Great Writing (Longinus 1957), is more commonly known in English as On Sublimity or On the Sublime (see Longinus 1899; Longinus 1964; Longinus 1965; Longinus 1965a; Longinus 1995), a title derived from the Latin sublīmis, an adjective denoting up to (sub) the lintel or threshold (līmin/līmen) of a building, but with connotations of the heavenly, the exalted, and the noble (Costelloe 2012: 2–6).

The question of how, precisely, the original Greek noun ὕψος came to be translated as sublime, a neologism based on the transformation of a Latin qualifier into a substantive noun, has, as we shall see, implications that reach beyond philology. To advance this question further it is helpful to consider the nature and purpose of the treatise. Most scholars agree that Peri hypsous is conceived as a work of rhetorical instruction, intended to be used by politicians and lawyers seeking to inform, persuade, or influence an audience (see Longinus 1899: 23; Longinus 1964: ix; Walker 2000: 36). What distinguishes Peri hypsous from this tradition, however, is its exclusive focus on the lofty or grand style of rhetoric that Cicero, in the Orator (46 BCE), had defined as the most powerful. In his Institutio Oratoria (95 CE) Quintilian elaborates on Cicero’s definition, arguing that the grand, as opposed to the plain (suitable for imparting information) and the flowery (useful for charming or for conciliation) styles,

is the sort of river that whirls rocks along, ‘resents bridges,’ carves out its own banks; great and torrential, it will carry along even the judge who tries to stand up to it, forcing him to go where he is taken. Such an orator will raise the dead to speak . . . will come near to bringing the gods themselves down to meet and talk to him . . . He will inspire anger and pity; and as he speaks the judge will grow pale, weep, follow tamely as he is snatched in one direction after another by the whole gamut of emotion.

(Russell and Winterbottom 1972: 414)

‘No mortal’, continues Quintilian, ‘can compete with such an orator: people will look on him as a god. This is the force and swiftness that Eupolis admires in Pericles [and] that Aristophanes compares to thunderbolts. This is the capacity for real oratory’ (414). The effect of grandeur in speech is thus more powerful than what merely persuades or pleases. The grand style, Quintilian affirms, is a discourse of domination; it seeks to overwhelm the audience so that a weighty conception may be instilled in the mind without any bothersome appeal to reason or justice.

The effects of hypsos in Longinus’ account appear to be virtually synonymous with this notion:

For grandeur produces ecstasy rather than persuasion in the hearer; and the combination of wonder and astonishment always proves superior to the merely persuasive and pleasant. This is because persuasion is on the whole something we can control, whereas amazement and wonder exert invincible power and force and get the better of every hearer. Experience in invention and ability to order and arrange material cannot be detected in single passages; we begin to appreciate them only when we see the whole context. Sublimity, on the other hand, produced at the right moment, tears everything up like a whirlwind [or ‘scatters everything before it like a thunderbolt’; 1965a: 100], and exhibits the orator’s whole power at a single blow.

(Longinus 1965: 2)

But where Longinus departs from Quintilian is in his insistence that hypsos reveals itself not in the ‘whole context’ of a speech but in a single word or phrase, the effect of which is likened to a whirlwind or thunderbolt. Productive of ekstasis (ecstasy, literally to go outside oneself), the violent eruption of sublimity within discourse is linked by Longinus with an experience ‘resembling or analogous to mystical religious experience’ (Doran 2015: 41). The full implications of this claim will be explored in due course. For now, it is sufficient to note that Longinus’ insistence on the extra-discursive origins of sublimity has radical implications for the idea of the sublime as a formal, teachable style. For if, as Longinus goes on to explain, sublimity originates in ‘the power to conceive great thoughts’ and in ‘strong and inspired emotion’ (Longinus 1965: 8), then it is easy to conclude that Longinus secretly regards his subject as formally unteachable, for how can a mode of expression identified as ‘the echo of a noble mind’ (9) be reduced to a set of rules?

Longinus’ highlighting of an innate capacity for the sublime certainly chimed with the aesthetic concerns of his seventeenth-century French translator, Nicolas Despréaux Boileau. While the titles of most early modern editions of Peri hypsous formulated hypsos (height, grandeur) as a trait belonging to, of or from language (consider, for example, the Latin titles de altitudine & granditate orationis [anonymous and undated, c. sixteenth century] and de grande, sive sublimi orationis [Francis Robortello, 1554]; for detailed discussion see Weinberg 1950), Boileau’s decision to render the original Greek noun as a Gallicized Latin substantive in his Traité du sublime ou de merveilleux dans le discours (1674) helped advance an idea of the sublime ‘as an essence or independent existence expressed in and through language’ (Costelloe 2011: 4–5; Martin 2011: 201; Doran 2015: 103). Boileau’s claim in the preface to his translation that ‘by sublime, Longinus does not mean what the orators call sublime style, but this extraordinary and the marvellous that strikes in discourse, and what in a work elevates, ravishes, and transports’ (Boileau 2007: 318; trans. Costelloe 2007: 4) has had a profound and lasting influence on subsequent accounts of Peri hypsous. Thus, D. A. Russell in his 1964 edition and commentary maintains that while the work is undoubtedly a ‘how to’ rhetorical manual, its emphasis on rote learning is qualified by a fascination with a notion of the sublime as a ‘product not of technique but of character’ (Longinus 1964: ix). Similarly, for Jean-François Lyotard, ‘the sublime cannot be taught . . . [it] is not linked to rules that can be determined through poetics’: it requires a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to detect the presence of this ‘inexplicable’ and ‘hidden’ phenomenon; it takes a ‘genius’ to master its use (Lyotard 1989: 201).

The privilege afforded by Longinus to ‘the power to conceive great thoughts’ (1965: 8) would appear to suggest that the sublime is a product of nature rather than of art. Yet, as Longinus points out in his prefatory remarks, although ‘nature is on the whole a law unto herself in matters of emotion and elevation, she is not a random force and does not work altogether without method’ (1965: 2). Feelings, in other words, may arise in nature, but art is required to give them shape and coherence. The author goes on to describe a number of devices that may be employed to sublime effect, a list that includes hyperbole, periphrasis (circumambulatory or roundabout speaking), comparisons, similes, and metaphor. The emphasis on categorisation fails however to elide the fundamental sense in which the sublime escapes the grasp of its teacher; one can use hyperbole, for example, without inducing the sublime and the same is true of all the devices Longinus cites. All that remains essential to the sublime is a state of feeling, which may be loosely described as wonder, awe, rapture, astonishment, ecstasy or elevation, terms that rest uncomfortably with the increasingly functional nature of public speech (see Auerbach 1965: 194–5), or for that matter, with the protocols of didactic instruction.

It is in this latter respect that Longinus differs from his great Augustan precursor, the poet and critic Horace (65–8 BCE). In his verse epistle Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry, c. 10 BCE), Horace lays great store on the idea of ars as a ‘practiced mastery of craft, as a systematic knowledge of theory and technique, and as a capacity for objective self-criticism’ (Leitch 2001: 122). For Horace, great thoughts and strong emotions must be subordinated to the rules of ‘decorum’, to ‘the discernment and use of appropriateness, propriety, proportion, and unity in the arts’ (123). Whilst Longinus agrees with Horace on a number of points, for example on the use of imitation, he is critical of the idea that technical accomplishment should count for all. As noted above, a passage that demonstrates sublimity is a manifestation of ‘the mental grandeur of the individual who produced it . . . rhetorical technique is thus subordinate to the thought it conveys, even if they are ultimately indissociable’ (Doran 2015: 62). The relations between genius and sublimity are therefore delicate and complex. The genius does not learn to have sublime thoughts; rather, greatness of mind is a product of the ‘dignity or nobility of his or her character’ and is not attained by system or method (62). Yet, by the same token, genius is not entirely divorced from instruction, for in order to express sublimity in speech or writing one must learn to cultivate a capacity for greatness. As Longinus goes on to state: ‘[Nature] is herself in every instance a first and primary element of creation, but it is method that is competent to provide quantities and appropriate occasions for everything, as well as perfect correctness in training and application’. Genius, moreover, ‘is particularly dangerous when left on its own, unaccompanied by knowledge, unsteadied, unballasted, abandoned to mere impulse and ignorant temerity’ (Longinus 1965: 2). Drawing on a ‘dialectical conception of the nature/art opposition’, Longinus thus affirms the ‘primacy of nature and the autonomy of the genius’ while insisting on the importance of method (Doran 2015: 51). As Longinus concludes: ‘the very fact that some things in literature depend on nature alone can itself be learned only from art’ (1965: 3).

But if genius needs ‘the curb as well as the spur’ (Longinus 1965: 2), it is important to bear in mind that Longinus remains highly critical of the notion that sublimity is an effect of technical excellence alone. Thus, whilst a ‘faultless and pure writer’ such as the orator Lysias may show more decorum than the philosopher Plato, the latter, for all his faults, is more inspired and thus more sublime (1965: 39). For Longinus, ‘intensity’ is greater than sobriety, ‘living emotions’ are higher than ‘good breeding’, ‘speed . . . vehemence and power’ compensate for lack of ‘fluency, smoothness’ and ‘charm’. Flawed genius, that is, ultimately triumphs over technically perfected mediocrity. Thus the orator Demosthenes ‘redeems all his mistakes many times over by a single sublime stroke’ (43). Hyperides, Bacchylides, Lysias, and Ion may be ‘impeccable, uniformly beautiful writers’ (42), but for Longinus the electric shock of sublimity is all.

Rhetoric and Nobility

A wayward genius, then, is preferable to a faultless pedant. But in privileging the expression of elemental human passions Longinus does not favour a return to aesthetic primitivism. His genius is not the wild-eyed, raving bard of Romantic imaginings, but a cultivated, noble, and urbane poet, aware of the distinction between the exhibition of raw, untutored feeling and the measured expression of weighty thoughts. Sublimity is thus, as we have seen, ‘the echo of a noble mind’ and in many instances occurs ‘apart from emotion’ or even ‘verbal expression’. In Longinus’ view ‘a mere idea . . . is sometimes admired for its nobility – just as Ajax’s silence in the Vision of the Dead [from Homer’s Odyssey, scroll 11. 563] is grand and indeed more sublime than any words could have been’ (1965: 9).

Longinus’ interest in the sublimity of the noble mind extends, then, even to the concealment of its slavish dependence on the materiality of words. ‘A figure’, he argues, ‘is generally thought to be best when the fact that it is a figure is concealed’ (26). In the treatise, this point is exemplified in a startling analysis of the words of Dionysius the Phocaean in Herodotus’ (c. 480–425 BCE) History: ‘“Now, for our affairs are on the razor’s edge, men of Ionia, whether we are to be free or slaves . . . so if you will bear hardships now, you will suffer temporarily but be able to overcome your enemies”’. Here, Longinus notes, the ‘natural order’ would have been: ‘Men of Ionia, now is the time for you to bear hardships, for our affairs are on the razor’s edge’. The inverted order of expression, which appears so natural, lends urgency to the situation and creates an impression of power and authority, so that the Ionians are effectively seduced into obeying the commander’s will. ‘The result’, Longinus concludes, ‘is that he seems to be giving not a premeditated speech but one forced on him by the circumstances’ (29–30).

To grant further support to his argument, Longinus looks back to ancient Greek models, in particular to Homer and the great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey (c. 800 BCE). Key to Homer’s ‘pure’ sublime is the sense in which rhetorical devices are effaced by the sheer power of the sublime style. As Erich Auerbach points out, however, Longinus is not averse to recasting the Iliad in order to support his theory. Thus, the passage in On Sublimity that reads, ‘The high mountains and the wood, the peaks and the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaens shook beneath the immortal feet of striding Poseidon’ (Longinus 1965: 11; trans. Auerbach 1965: 225–6) is based on a conflation of Iliad 13 (lines 18–19) and 20 (line 60). The sentence that continues the quotation is taken from Iliad 13, lines 27–9: ‘He guided the chariot over the waves; below him the sea monsters sprang from their clefts on all sides and recognized their lord; joyously the sea parted; but they [the steeds] surged onward . . .’. According to Auerbach:

Longinus has made the scene even more grandiose and long-rolling than it is in Homer by skipping the relatively tranquil interruption in which the palace, the horses, Poseidon’s garment and scourge, are described; probably not by design but unconsciously in his enthusiasm for the sublime, he has ignored in the wording, which in the first lines refers plainly to a journey on foot and in the others to a chariot ride.

(1965: 226)

The ideal conception of the sublime, as presented by Longinus, is the product of a radically altered text. By omitting Homer’s ‘tranquil interruption’, the emphasis falls exclusively on the delayed verb ‘shook’ in line 19 and on the rapid transition from the roused sea monsters of line 28 to the parted sea of line 29. Longinus claims that the passage ‘represent[s] divinity as genuinely unsoiled and great and pure’ (1965: 11). Yet this claim is acceptable only with the cutting of the middle lines, along with the surrounding context of the passage, referring to Poseidon’s passionate enthusiasm for the Achaens and his anger against Zeus.

But there is a more serious point to make here. Earlier on in the treatise Longinus states that the orator Demosthenes conceals the figures in his speech ‘by sheer brilliance . . . As fainter lights disappear when the sunshine surrounds them, so the sophisms of rhetoric are dimmed when they are enveloped in encircling grandeur’ (1965: 26; cited by Hertz 1985: 17). The method of concealment, Neil Hertz points out, is, however, ‘itself a figure, a simile using the language of light and darkness’ (17). Longinus’ frustration with the ineluctable materiality of language is expressed elsewhere via comparisons with the ‘filthy and contemptible’ parts of the body. Just as nature conceals ‘the private parts’ of the body, ‘so as not to spoil the beauty of the creature as a whole’, so sublimity works to hide its shameful dependence on the stuff of language (1965: 50). As the contemporary French poet and essayist Michel Deguy comments, this no doubt explains Longinus’ enthusiasm for the silence of Ajax: a silence that is more sublime than any speech (1993: 24).

The distrust of figures may be extended to Longinus’ comments on genius. Like the ‘pure’ divinity of Poseidon, Longinus seems to believe that ‘the ideas and emotions of the genius precede . . . linguistic “ornamentation...