Sublimity and Alienation

In his chapter on “Sublime Nature,” Cosgrove describes the reaction of artists in the Romantic period against the increasing mechanization of England, as it was being transformed by capitalist production.  These artists began to privilege the organic and natural over the mechanical and manufactured.  Suffering alienation in society due to the capitalist order of production, they sought to flee society altogether and find integration in a natural, moral order.  This led them to more and more wild and remote places, which seemed to exemplify some essential moral order, which was being corrupted by the man’s greed.  As Cosgrove observes, “Romanticism seeks divinity in the mountains and sermons in the stones” (232).  This tendency is clearly evident in John Muir’s description of his stay the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the summer of 1869.  Like Turner and Ruskin, Muir’s emotional responses to nature are intimately connected to his careful and learned observation of plants, animals, rocks, and all kinds of natural phenomena.  Indeed, what Cosgrove says of Ruskin could be applied to Muir: “It is the duty of every individual to observe and seek to understand the messages written by divinity into natural forms and of that individual’s life and work to submit to them” (249).  Close observation of nature could also one to “see into the life of things,” that is, perceive the moral and providential significance of nature.

Alone in the wilderness, Muir does not feel alone. Deep in the mountains above Yosemite Valley, he paradoxically feels close to his friends and family: “The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends” (81).  Nature offers him an unalienated existence, but he can only experience it when he is separated from society and other people.  However, one must have the sensitivity and perception to see and feel the beauty and meaning  of nature, for he earlier had noted that the shepherd in California, “seeing nobody for weeks or months …finally becomes semi-insane or wholly so” (19).  Muir, on the other hand, attempts to read God’s writing in the pine trees: “Definite symbols, divine hieroglyphics written with sunbeams. Would I could understand them!” (18). He can also hear the “sermons” in the stones. The animals and plants seem to call to him, “Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song” (44).  The particulars of nature reveal the very being of the divine: “Every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator” (94). 

Many of us might have a tendency to look down upon such beliefs and such raptures as Muir expressed.  They must be self-induced, we say.  And indeed they might, since it is impossible to know the truth of his subjective experience.  However, the positivism -- “with its separation of subject and object and its search for causal laws modeled upon Newtonian physics” -- that came to dominate in the 18^th century is not more valid as a schema for understanding the phenomenal world (252).   Cosgrove effectively argues that causal reasoning was an ideology tied to the rise of capitalism: “The shift from analogical to causal reasoning is logically related to changes in social organization between pre-capitalist and capitalist formations” (252).  Thus as a hegemonic ideology, this form of reasoning cannot bring us closer to “truth” than previous forms of reasoning. 

I was troubled, however, by some elitist implications in Muir’s book.  He says that the shepherd Billy is “asleep, or smothered and befogged beneath pleasures and cares” because he does not want to see Yosemite Valley (90).  Billy considers the valley “a lot of rocks” where one would be exposed to the danger of falling.  Similarly, the Native Americans are seen as degraded, unappreciative of nature’s beauty: “A strangely dirty and irregular life these dark-eyed, dark-haired, half-happy savages lead in this clean wilderness” (124).  He’s most troubled by their uncleanliness, which he interprets as a sign of their unnaturalness, since “nothing truly wild is unclean” (135).

He goes into nature to escape alienation.  In the wilderness, he can experience his ecstasies and raptures before its divine beauty.  But he cannot tolerate those who don’t have the same sensibility as his, and so he experiences another kind of alienation: “To prefer the society of squirrels and woodchucks to that of our own species must surely be unnatural” (132).

Maps from Cosgrove's Introduction

Jane's picture is the best illustration I've seen of the paradoxical perspective of the romantic poet/narrator (romantic irony?), who attempts to subsume nature until he realizes that he is subsumed by it, the same path as our gaze. This reminds me of two maps in Cosgrove's introduction, which I downloaded from the Internet, that show how ideology dramatically influences our view of the environment. The top sketch represents the world as it was visualized by the English during Medieval times, and the bottom one depicts the nineteenth century English visage. Notice that the mapa mundi is centered on the holy city of Jerusalem and shows Europe, Asia, and Africa as world islands enclosed by a ring of ocean. Note also hierarchical layout of heaven and the underworld. The map of the British imperial world, on the other hand, shows England in the center, flanked by its colonial possessions.

                                        Click on the map to enlarge it.

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Romantic Paintings, Sublime Landscape

Cogrove’s article, “Sublime Nature: Landscape and Capitalism,” outlines the 18^th century British Romantic movement as a response to the expanding industrial capitalism of the British state. As land and natural resources like wind, water, and fossil fuels were now being utilized for commercial production, Romantics regarded this as a degradation of the natural environment. Cities grew, and the liberal laissez-faire philosophy of Adam Smith failed as a concept in the midst of capitalist drive. In pushing for the most efficient means of production, which included the use of natural resources, business owners essentially alienated the masses from nature. According to Dr. Jan Oosthoek, “people and nature were objectified and reduced to commodity status.”

In response, the Romantics opted to view nature as an essential source of spirituality and renewal. Cosgrove argues, “In seeking to escape the alienation implied by the isolation of the individual, Romantics failed to locate its origins in the new social relations of production…because they could not accept society as ‘organic.’ Therefore, no resolution was open to in the social order; it had to be found in the natural, moral order which harmonized the individual soul with unspoiled external nature.” In the Romantic sense, land became synonymous with self-preservation and survival instinct, two abstracts that Burke stressed as being individual as opposed to social.

The most accessible means through which Romantics could view sublime nature was the sense of sight. “If the sublime could be apprehended through the senses,” says Cosgrove, “then it could be seen, not directly, but through the sight of those objects which excite the passions of self-preservation.” Romantic painters, therefore, communicated “exalted” ideas of the human experience through the humanized representation of landscape.

I came across this painting in my research, and I find that it embodies a majority of Romantic elements explained in Cosgrove’s article.

It's titled "The Wanderer Above the Sea and Fog," painted by Casper David Friedrich in 1818. It not only illustrates the grandeur and terror so closely associated with the sublime, but it also represents the alienation of man from the natural experience. The subject of the painting stands high above on the rocks overlooking the dark, foggy sea, emphasizing man’s foreign subjectivity in nature. The dark colors enhance feelings of awe and fear associated with the inconceivable greatness of nature, and the fog symbolizes the mystery of the landscape’s sublimity. However, the location and vantage point of the man also suggests human superiority over nature, and thus, the painting as a whole depicts the Romantic conflict between society and the natural world.

Landscaping Gothic Allusions in Cosgrove’s England: Prospects, Palladianism and Paternal Landscapes

      In 1737 James Dormer took up residence at his estate, Rousham, about ten miles north of Oxford. The property included rolling lawns, clusters of trees, and long walks. The design of the many grandiose architectural and natural features, crafted by Charles Bridgeman, encompassed Dutch, English, Italian, and French influences. The paddock, with the help of the ha-ha, or sunken ditch, “allowed for grazing cattle to appear within the bounds of the immediate area of the house, uniting productive and aesthetic land uses” (199). Yet this design was drastically altered to resemble picturesque landscaping that mimics the composition, mainly in terms of gardens and views, of a landscape painting. William Kent redesigned the property with a Gothic influence that employed Gothic bridges, flying buttresses, ruined arches, and sculptures of violent creatures. Like the origins of Gothic literature, the Gothic elements of the property stood in stark contrast to the unadorned English country side just as the juxtaposition between antithetical principals of Roman authority and Gothic liberty. Nature was endowed with a false freedom to shape the landscape only within the confines of carefully manicured grounds. Even the likes of Horace Walpole commented that Dormer’s property illustrated that “all nature is a garden…the inversion of art and nature is compete [within the garden] and reveals stability and perfection in English society” (qtd. in Cosgrove).

            Rousham requires the viewer to “create nature as a picture—literally and theoretically—because all is an illusion” (204). Nature had a profound impact upon the development of the Gothic genera in terms of the psychological mystification of both the characters and the readers. If we take stock in David Hume’s theory that “all reasoning is nothing but a species of sensation” then nature and our interpretation of our emotions can confuse the distinction between reality and fantasy (qtd. in Cosgrove). The surroundings in Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto” almost seem to come alive. In the tale, an ancient prophesy states, “the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it" (Walpole 11). This prophesy comes to light upon the death of the soon to be married Prince Conrad. A marriage between Conrad and Princess Isabella would have dramatically changed the composition of the ruling powers of the castle. The very nature or essence of the castle seems to work against the marriage when the large helmet of a statue crushes Conrad. The events of the story, while embodying elements of the Gothic, also depict a perversion of nature and its affects upon humans. Just as Dormer manipulated his property by manicuring and manipulating nature, so too does nature or architecture seem to manipulate the characters in Walpole’s story. There is a deeply rooted connection between the composure of natural surroundings and the psychological state of the individual that is exposed as casual in the Gothic where humans lack complete control. The efforts of Dormer to cultivate an estate that exuded opulence and perfection ultimately presented an illusion or perversion of nature akin to the skewed reality localized in the Gothic genera.           

                

Landscape Ideology

Landscape Ideology

Cosgrove’s chapter on English landscapes is a fine historical analysis of the complex inter-relationship between society, aesthetics, economics, and politics. He is also sensitive to the changes and revaluations that occur when ideas pass from one cultural context to another, in this case from Italy to England. One aspect of his analysis I found very interesting is the process by which a society hides a reality, whether social, economic, or cultural, with an artificially constructed image or conception of itself. With this conception, the ruling class attempts to deceive itself and the rest of society.

The reality for England in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, according to Cosgrove, is that it was becoming a mercantilist, capitalist state, rather than an absolute monarchy. This was due to the strength of its navy, the influence of Parliament, and the commercial occupations of many of the landowners. The effect of this on landscape design was that no imposing imperial palace was built to symbolize absolutist control over society. Instead, the landscaping symbol of England became the country house: “A well-managed country house and its lands form a self-sufficient world, a microcosm of the mercantilist state” (196).

Whereas in 16^th century Venice Palladio’s neoclassicism represented a desire to legitimate Venice’s imperialism, in England it evoked “the moral and political perfection” of republican Rome – which seems to indicate some anxiety about England's own emerging empire. In country houses the Palladian neoclassicism combined with Gothic touches to create a union of “Roman authority and Gothic liberty” (203). This liberty is only for the “lord,” the landowner who controls the layout, management, and production of the land. The controlling, neoclassical design applied to the landscape was disapproved of by the older aristocracy. They instead had an idea of a “natural” landscape -- not an overly modified one -- intended for use, in which the the lord cared for the peasant as for his children. Obviously, this paternalistic feudal fantasy of “merry England” never existed. The newer, commercial aristocracy was more concerned with maximizing the profits from their land. They imposed a formal neoclassical design on the land, which they could view as a painting from the commanding vantage-point of their house. The peasants’ dwellings were removed to clear the view, thus making invisible the major factor in the estate’s wealth. Nature was a garden that reflected “the stability and perfection of English civilization” (204). As England was moving to capitalist relations of production with cities as the centers of wealth and power, the image the ruling class used to represent the nation was the country house, whose aesthetically pleasing landscape design was considered “natural.”

Even in the cities, where the squalor of concentrated poor workers was impossible to ignore, there was an attempt to treat the city as the country. The design of London was structured by parks which held country houses. This amounts to a “denial of the role of the city as an increasingly autonomous center of capitalist accumulation, market control and ultimately production, organizing the life of the countryside” (217). Treating London as the country with landscaped parks and villas reveals an anxiety about the reality of England's capitalist development, and about the resulting discontented poor workers. Cogrove calls the imposition of landscape design, in the cases of England and Venice, a “landscape ideology” (222). In Venice this ideology involved “linear perspective, the logic of urban aesthetics, and urban visual control”; its aesthetics attempts to hide Venice's shift toward a “second feudalism”(221,222). In England “colore and aerial perspective, the logic of rural aesthetics and visual control over the countryside” obfuscate England's progression toward urban industrial capitalism (221). Thus aesthetics can serve state power not only by openly glorifying it but also by disguising its actual operations.