In this third video on Edmund Burke we're going to zoom in now to his concept
of the sublime. He defines the sublime as a form of astonishment.
He writes [that] the sublime is "that state of
the soul in which all its motions are suspended with some degree of horror." You
remember that terror is a really big part of the
sublime, so we are astonished by something and Burke points out that in
Latin "attonitus," the word where this comes from actually means thunderstruck.
It's as if we've been hit by lightning, and that's an image that also Longinus,
the classical writer on the sublime, uses as well. So to describe them --
the various features that make up the sublime and cause it -- I have here for you
a couple of paintings and also a photo. Now the first painting here is called
"The Third of May, 1808," by Francisco Goya, and it shows a number of Spanish
soldiers who have rebelled against the the French forces occupying their
country. They're being executed here. Our second image is called "Seashore by
Moonlight." It's by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, and it's
from around 1835-1836. And then our last image (in this case a photo) is of the
Parthenon, the Greek temple. As we go through this, then, we'll look at each of
these, and we'll try to figure out what are some of these essential aspects of
the sublime that Burke talks about. Now the first of these obviously is terror
and fear. When we experience these from a distance, as long as we're somewhat safe
ourselves, then we can experience the sublime. Burke points out that animals
are often terrifying. He also points out that the ocean can be terrifying because
we don't know what's underneath the surface, right, and in this this painting
by Friedrich even the clouds above the ocean are kind
of scary, and looming, and ominous. Another feature of the sublime is power. So power
is very important. In our painting here we see the power of the state, and Burke
talks a lot about tyrants and kings that can impress us with their power -- the more
unpredictable, the more arbitrary, the scarier it is. Again, animals can be
powerful too, and so can God, and it's fascinating that Burke tends to reduce
God to one attribute, that He's primarily known in terms of his awe-inspiring power.
Burke here reduces God quite a lot. He doesn't talk much about goodness and
love, and things like that. Maybe that's a feature of the time.
So in the Enlightenment God is often seen as reason, right, and when you look
at the Romantics later, they tend to follow Burke in describing God as
perhaps arbitrary, perhaps cruel, because of his power.
So Milton's Satan, then, as we said before, becomes the hero of the poem because
he's rebelling against a God who is primarily powerful. Nobody loves a
tyrannous king, so you can see how the French Revolution plays into that as
well. I we're kind of getting carried away here, but there's a lot of
significance to this depiction of the sublime as being inspired by power.
Do we find powerful and tyrannous governments more awe-inspiring than good
ones? I I sure hope not! Another feature is obscurity, darkness, and this can come
in many different forms. You can see it in these first two paintings quite
clearly. There's a lot of darkness here. For Burke things like temples, churches
,nighttime -- if there's darkness and obscurity this can add
the sublime effect, although he does point out that light itself can be
sublime, especially if we are entering from the dark outside world into a space
that's entirely lit up (like a room full of lights). That can be quite sublime.
Other things that have an aspect of obscurity are words. Words are not super
clear at representing the real world.
So there's obscurity there. And also concepts like eternity, for instance.
If the concept is obscure and hard to fathom (what is eternity?), then that
can be sublime as well. A fairly minor feature of the sublime is what we might
call potential, and we see potential all over the place. We see it, for instance, in
the seasons. When it's springtime and the flowers are growing, we see the potential
that's there. And summer is going to be the fruition of that potential. We see it
in young people, and perhaps in this painting where these young people are
dying, we see the loss of that potential, which obviously is quite tragic. An
unfinished sketch for this reason can also be sublime, and that's why in art
you see a lot of pieces that are actually left unfinished intentionally,
because it creates that kind of sense of potential, and perhaps also the sublime.
Burke likes his colors kind of on the dark side. He likes browns and black and,
you know, purple and things like that. Not too bright, not too cheery, at least
when it comes to the sublime. When it comes to the beautiful, he likes his
colors more vibrant and so on. Another feature is privation. Privation is
where we are deprived of experiences, and in our second example we can really see
this. So here we experience things like emptiness, loneliness, solitude, silence.
Privation, then, is a big part of the sublime. Another feature is vastness --
the size of things. You can see with the ocean, the way it stretches on
for a long time, or long ways. We see it with the
Parthenon here, that these pillars go on, and again the notion of potential is
here as well. Burke suggests that what architects
should do is give the impression of things going on. These pillars don't go
on ad infinitum, but they go on far enough that we get the impression of
infinity. So infinity is a feature of the sublime, and we can't express or describe
all of infinity. We just give the merest impression of it. Related to this then
with these pillars is the notion of succession and uniformity.
Burke writes that if you have pillars alternating -- like one is round
one is square, and so on -- that doesn't work quite as well. The the eye doesn't
get the same pattern all the way through (or the repetition of a
uniform section) and so the eye doesn't get that sense of infinity in the same
way. As an aside here, Burke also talks about churches having this pattern so if
you look at the side of a church (I'll just draw a quick church here, [and] we'll add a cross) ...
when you look at the side of it you see all these flying buttresses, right,
going on and on. That creates a very pleasing effect too, although one thing
that Burke complains about is that often with a church it has the shape of a
cross. Okay, this is from the top down. And if you're looking along the side then
your view gets interrupted because this part of the building is sticking
out, and it interrupts your view. So Burke doesn't really like that, and in
fact he hates angles. No angles please! He says this again and
again. He doesn't like angles in architecture. Make things smooth and
stylistically pleasing: don't don't give me so many angles! Alright, a
few last features here to talk about. So we've talked about vastness. He also
mentions magnitude, which is a similar kind of thing. That's also
important to him. He mentions magnificence, and by this he
means something like a great profusion of things. If you look up at the stars at
night, then ... well they're not in this painting because the clouds are in the
way, but if you look at the stars at night there's so many of them that their
profusion, their magnificence, is awe-inspiring.
One thing that we haven't mentioned yet is difficulty. For instance, the
difficulty of building the Parthenon or even the difficulty of painting a really
inspiring piece. Burke mentions that Stonehenge is awe-inspiring just because
we can't fathom how primitive people could have built such an immense
structure like that. Sounds can be amazingly sublime as well. Now the
kinds of sounds that are sublime are ones that are dramatic: so if you think
of the sound of guns going off. They are scary sounds. There are also sounds that
surprise us, so for instance a sound in the night, like a foghorn going. If we
start to anticipate the pattern we listen for it and then it still
surprises us. These are the kinds of things that Burke finds sublime. I think
we've mentioned most of the causes. There might be some other ones like smells and
so on that Burke talks about, but this should give you a very accurate
sense of how Burke understands the sublime as a form of astonishment and
then how he goes through all these different aspects to kind of fill in the
details.