Sublimity and other questions

Response to “Perspectives” - I was amused by Dorothy Wordsworth’s recounting of the incident between Coleridge and another tourist at the Falls of the River Clyde and less so when I read Coleridge’s “reimagining” of the moment. It’s irritating to have the man in the anecdote changed to a woman, and to what purpose? Only, it seems, to be able to poke fun at silly women who are intellectually incapable of discerning the nature of the sublime.

Another point that caught my attention was the use of a Claude glass by those in pursuit of the picturesque. It seemed very like our modern practice of taking pictures on our phones, more preoccupied with sending a post to Facebook or Instagram rather than enjoying what is before us. The use of the Claude glass and the tinted glasses to define and appreciate the picturesque in nature reminded me of what some of the critical readings were saying about the way we package and consume nature. The travel guides and “favored observation points” work together to create and promote a “proper” way to appreciate or be affected by the natural environment. The idea that there must be somewhere within the scene “an interesting object” to “prompt ruminations on personal and historical mutability” served to reinforce the artificiality of these trips. It made me think of people who watch sappy movies because they enjoy crying at the happy endings. Bah!

In reading the Kant and Burke selections on the sublime I noticed that Kant says that “the sublime is not to be looked for in things of nature, but only in our own ideas” (45). I’m wondering why that is? Burke’s idea of the sublime seems to be tied to emotion and this sense of excess, of overflowing but Kant’s ideas seem more tied to rationality. Even if I’m on the right track that still doesn’t explain why. Kant says that the sublime is “absolutely great” and that “reason demands absolute totality”, so is this why sublimity is tied to reason for him? Since he believes that reason has a point of absolute and nature does not, maybe because nature has the connotation of being imperfect, reason would be the true vehicle of the sublime? Although as I read and re-read the Kant section I think I’m understanding his version of the sublime as “residing” in our minds because even though nature is great and has power over us, nature is only sublime in that it forces us to think? The last line of the penultimate paragraph on p. 46 is driving me crazy, especially this part: “of those cases in which the mind can make itself sensible of the appropriate sublimity of the sphere of its own being”. I feel like I have a handle up to that point but after that it doesn’t make sense to me. What is the sphere of the mind’s own being? Is that the aforementioned Reason? And what is the mode or measure of the “appropriate sublimity” of the mind’s sphere? I think I’m going to let these questions about the sublime percolate before I try to take on the picturesque. I’m going to take a break with Wordsworth’s Preface.