Some images of the sublme;
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I would argue that the aesthetic of the sublime is closely related to
our senses of the infinite, linearity and the colour of light.
This is a view shared, in part, by Edmund Burke, who's "Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and the Beautiful", is an important analysis of the concept of
the sublime;
"Another source of the sublime is Infinity...", Section IX, Infinity.
"but as, in this discourse, we chiefly attach ourselves to the sublime
as it affects the eye, we shall consider particularly why
a successive disposition of uniform parts in the same right line should
be sublime,...", Section XIII, The Effect of Succession
in Visual Objects Explained.
The above images appeal to our idea of the infinite, in the
manifestation of the vastness of nature and water, and to our sense
of linearity, in the straight contours formed by waves, clouds,
skylines, the
horizon, the coastline, paths, rivers and the light of
the sun striking the sea. Although not particularly dark, some images
have been slightly
tinted
and polarised, in order to counteract
the warming effect of direct sunlight, similar to the effect of
sunglasses.
This, perhaps,
relates our notion of the sublime to what is
"cool". There are some images which involve linear light effects,
landscape and
rivers,
another source
of the
sublime. Some of the
light effects are linked to our idea of beauty or harmony,
particularly in the form of
the sun, see also here
. Another important
commentator on aesthetics, George Ruskin, in "The Seven Lamps
of Architecture", denied the existence of concatenations of
lines
in nature, attributing mass and weight as the
main sources of the sublime. However, although Ruskin's naturalism is
an excellent
aesthetic critia, I would argue that he
discounts the importance of "ocean views".
Coleridge uses images of the sublime in "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner", referring to the albatross;
In mist or cloud, on
mast or shroud,
It perched for
vespers nine;
Whiles all the
night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white
Moon-shine.'
The wedding guest cannot understand the unhappiness of the mariner, who
shoots the albatross, after which catastrophe
befalls the rest of the sailors.
'God save thee,
ancient Mariner!
From the fiends,
that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou
so?'—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
The image of the albatross and the cross-bow is an allusion to the
death of Christ, but he emphasises the sublime and spiritual
aspect in the poem, and the relationship with water. In his book
"Shelley and the Sublime", Leighton argues that
"Coleridge's
attitude to the sublime tends to be allied to an attitude of religious
faith...He defines the sublime in nature very much as an
index
of faith, faith in something one and indivisible.", quoting Coleridge's
Letters, "No object of sense is sublime in
itself, but only so
far as I can make it a symbol of the idea. The circle is a beautiful
figure in itself, it becomes sublime, when I
contemplate eternity
under that figure. The Beautiful is the perfection, the Sublime the
suspension, of the comparing power,...nothing that has
a shape
can be sublime except by metaphor". I agree with Coleridge's two ideas
that eternity or infinity, and the sense of reconciliation
with infinity, are parts of the notion of the sublime. The use of
geometry to emphasise part of his view, occurs again in the
following quote;
And straight the Sun
was flecked with bars,
(Heaven's Mother
send us grace!)
As if through a
dungeon-grate he peered
With broad and burning face.
where the figure of the circle is concatenated with lines. You can find
more about the aesthetics of the sublime and its relation with
geometry and linearity in my book available here. Linearity seems to be
connected with an aesthetic idea of symmetry, as the
intelligence required to define it, involves the idea of reflections
and rotations, only lines being preserved under both
transformations.
The following grove walk is in a segmented line;
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