Sublime: The Aesthetics & Origins of Romanticism

I found this video on You Tube that has made connections with ideas I have been looking at such of the work of Burke but extended it dramatically. 

It goes back to look at how poets used this idea such as Wordsworth with again takes me back to when I was researching poetry in regards to mountains. 

This strips back the origin of the word sublime, taking me back to look at language. It takes me so close to when I began researching language, when I was thinking about french slang in the area I lived by showing how certain words in Latin but also old french, make up with word. 

Mark Sundaram also talks about the development of language such as how Latin (middle ages) branched off into a variety of languages (romance languages) such as French which came from romanice (in the local vernacular) which was in contrast with latine (in Latin) which was the language of the church. Romanice referred to vulgar Latin after being influenced by other local languages such as the Germanic language of the Franks, origin of the word French. It was a way of differentiation the new language from the older "purer" form of the language. I like that this video compares it to the way youth used language today though text speak as youth culture is something I have an interest in. He added this to the video: 

It's quite a lot to process when he begining talking about the romantic and romantics. Going into the origin of the word from Roma, taking it to Germanic barbarian tribes such as Vandals (the origin of today's word form vandalism) and Goths. It takes us all the way through to looking at the Gothic novel with its use of terror and then down to sentimentalism and sensibility with its high emotions, which then bring us back to the romantics. 

They likes to include medieval themes and imagery in their work especially imagery of ruined Gothic architecture. He explains that the romantics where into emotions and medieval fantasy but where also particularly moved by sublime imagery who's vastness and power made the viewer feel small.

Sublime and the Gotic are all about 'looking up'.

Mind Map attempting to take note of important fact from the video.

Still from video showing imagery and poetry of Mont Blanc and Tintern Abbey.

I was curious to find this poem on Mont Blanc as you can't really read it in this presentation and it is not specified who it is by. I found out that it is a poem by Percy Shelly and the section featured here is bellow, the whole poem can be viewed here.

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

                                    I 

The everlasting universe of things 

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 

Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— 

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 

The source of human thought its tribute brings 

Of waters—with a sound but half its own, 

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume, 

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river 

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 

Through attempting to find the origin of the image of Mont Blac seen in the video, I came across the blog post from the author of this video, explaining a little bit more about it. This can be viewed here. Sundaram notes the drive to "differentiate oneself from what went before" and goes on to mention cultural movements, which he talks about in the video. In this post, he talks about the phrase "from the sublime to the ridiculous", which apparently is a known phrase but I have never heard it. Sudram writes: "The expression seems to derive from The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, the great 18th century English-American thinker and revolutionary (who certainly had an antagonistic relationship with Edmund Burke): “The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.”.

What ridiculous/ sublime would look like and recapping on a few of the key points picked up from the video such as the idea that sublime imagery was so vast and powerful that it made the viewer feel small. 

I did manage to find the image shown in the video on Welcome Library. Turns out it's a lithograph by J. Arnout after G. Loppé. 

The Glaciers des Basin, Mont Blanc, from the Montanvert to Chamonix. Colour lithograph by J. Arnout after G. Loppé. (Loppé, n.d.)

Whilst looking for this image, I came across others that caught my eye.

 Mer de Glace, painting, Carl Hackert, 1781

I found this here and on this page it goes through the "Myth and the Mountain" from Mary Shelly's 'Frankenstein', this work being mentioned in the video. On the site is written "The Alps, as seen by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein, the creature, and the geologists like Saussure, were an awe inspiring, sublime, and often frightful sight in nature." (Bennett, 2002).

On this page, Bennett also quotes lines from Frankenstein in regards to the mountains:

"As Victor Frankenstein said of the Alps, "whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings" (Shelley, 78), these mountains were supreme and magnificent, and at the same time frightening, in fact terrifying. "The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the crashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise" (Shelley, 78)."

I could look into quotes from other work that has been mentioned from this or continue to look at imagery that was considered sublime and more importantly, attempt to find imagery that could be said to be sublime currently. Can certain images still give us the powerful, negative pleasure like the did to those during Shelly's time? 

Bibliography 

Alliterative. (2016). Sublime: The Aesthetics & Origins of Romanticism. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au-z2jVaTNk

Bennett, A. (2002). Myth and the Mountain. Retrieved from https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist257s02/students/Anna/GeologyAlps.htm

Hackert, C. (1781). Mer de Glace. Retrieved from https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist257s02/students/Anna/Merdeglace.htm

Loppé, G. & Arnout, J. (n.d.). The Glacier des Bains, Mont Blanc, from the Montanvert to Chamonix. Colour lithograph by J. Arnout after G. Loppé. Retrieved from http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1201671

Poetry Foundation. (n.d.). Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45130/mont-blanc-lines-written-in-the-vale-of-chamouni