Art and the Sublime
by Robert Balla
Immanuel Kant looking sublime
I (and I’m sure you have experienced this as well) have often been struck dumb, in awe, when experiencing something truly wonderful. You know, the feeling you get when you hear a particular piece of music or see a painting or read a passage in a book that takes your breath away. It stirs something in your soul. Philosophers through the ages have tried to explain this, to find the source of this mystical effect. They have referred to it as experiencing the sublime, or sublimity, and it is precisely this sublimity that is the source of the greatest works of art. For when we experience truly great art, the observer and the observed cease to exist as discrete entities and conflate into one new unit, which is both more and different from a simple union or merger. As this happens, the rest of existence, or at least our perception of it, ceases to be. We only become aware of this process after the experience has ended and we are released from the grasp of the sublime.
In his Critique of Judgment, Emanuel Kant says, “We call that sublime which is absolutely great.” It is important to note that Kant makes a clear distinction between what is beautiful and what is truly sublime by noting that beauty “is connected with the form of the object” in that it fits nearly perfectly our definition of what the general category of the object should be. In other words, a beautiful flower is one which most or almost perfectly fits our definition of what a flower is. Kant’s belief is that the source of this categorical ideal is outside of the human sphere, a type of a priori knowledge. However, the sublime “is to be found in a formless object,” where the object transcends the categorical ideal and achieves “boundlessness.” Here we can picture the human being experiencing something. Then the mind tries to assign this experience the appropriate category (this is the cognitive process by which we can identify all dogs as dogs, or flowers as flowers, or symbols as symbols without having to experience every single dog, flower, or symbol). Sublimity then occurs, according to Kant, when the mind is unable to put the experience or object into a category because it exceeds the bounds of the category; it is beyond perfection. When this happens, the mind goes into a kind of overdrive as it struggles to categorize, and this leads to the euphoric feeling that accompanies the sublime.
If Kant’s Critique of Judgment provides an explanation of the feelings we have when we experience the sublime, then On the Sublime, attributed to the 1st Century C.E. Greek/Roman philosopher Longinus, uncovers the sources of or the foundational elements of sublimity. Interestingly, the first question Longinus seeks to answer is not what sublimity is (and Kant does a better job of this anyway), but rather if it is an art (by which he means craft) that can be trained, improved, or even mastered. If so, then the art of sublimity is something of great use to all artists from poet to painter because “the amazement and wonder [generated by the sublime] exert invincible power and force and get the better of every hearer” or viewer.
Longinus states that the five primary sources or components of sublimity are (1) “the power to conceive great thoughts” which have an emotional effect on the composer, (2) “strong and inspired emotion,” (3) figures or tropes, (4) metaphor, and (5) arrangement. The first two are prima fascia emotion, while others seek to generate emotion. Thusly, the sublime occupies a strange middle ground where it is both divinely inspired and a trainable and learnable craft as 1 and 2 are natural and seemingly beyond the control of the artist or aspiring artist, and 3, 4, and 5 are developed and hopefully perfected through practice. But even in Longinus’s first source there is room for human influence because as he writes, “Even if [natural greatness] is a matter of endowment rather than acquisition, we must, so far as is possible, develop our minds in the direction of greatness and make them always pregnant with noble thoughts.” That is to say, while the lightning strike of inspired thought comes from outside of the self, the true artist must make the vessel ready to accept it in order to be capable of producing something which is truly sublime.
When Longinus does attempt to define the sublime or sublimity, he falls short of Kant’s clarity. Instead he moves towards a discussion of how we can differentiate between something which is truly sublime and worthy of the highest praise and something which is merely aesthetically beautiful. Like Kant, Longinus draws clear distinctions between the two, and we as modern artists or consumers of art can and should do the same. In this way we welcome the art which moves us on a deep, emotional level. It is this sublime art that has the power to make audiences receptive to large, society sharing ideas. This is Picasso’s “Guernica” and Ginsburg’s “Howl” which both moved generations to grand political action. Conversely, allowing ourselves this distinction between the sublime and the aesthetic is where we open ourselves to seeing the value of and enjoying the aesthetic beauty of a catchy pop song by Katie Perry or a cheesy watercolor with happy bunnies and mountains by Bob Ross without having to justify our guilty pleasures.
Longinus says of sublimity that it “is a kind of eminence or excellence of expression. It is the source of the distinction of the very greatest of poets and prose writers and the means by which they have given eternal life to their own fame.” And isn’t this what artists strive to achieve? Shakespeare concludes Sonnet XVII with:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The Bard knew of the sublimity of his love and of his own words.
It is through this excellence of expression, whereby the audience connects with the true mind of the artist, that communication goes beyond the limitations of base words, or paint, or clay, or music, or movement, and the connection becomes one of two minds. For although we are unable to physically see the sublime beauty that he experienced, his words, imbued with the sublimity of his subject, become sublime in their own right. Thusly we experience the sublime beauty by sharing a mind with the artist.
And what of the “eternal life” of the artist’s fame? According to Longinus, the truly sublime never loses its power over the audience, its effects are never dimmed by time or repeated inspection, for the TRULY sublime is fully universal and all observers, in all nations, from all times will be awestruck by it. Living in a post-modern world, it is easy to scoff at the eternal nature of the sublime, but consider the seemingly eternal grandeur and appeal of Shakespeare’s best sonnets, or that of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, or Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor. There are canonical figures and works for a reason. While we may argue on specifics and about what exactly should be included, every artistic field has its hallowed ground, its sacred figures that no matter what opposition arises will be revered as the pinnacle of expression. Often we find the arguments about the cannon are about what else to include, not about what is no longer worthy.
The sublime is there. It has an effect. It can be discovered. It can be created but never destroyed. It can be augmented but never reduced. The sublime is the way that artist and audience become one. We experience it, and when we do, we are enriched by it.
