Lectures on Art by Washington Allston
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It is still the unattainable, the _ever-stimulating_, yet
_ever-eluding_, in the character of the sublime object, that
gives to it both its term and its effect. And whence the conception of
this mysterious character, but from its mysterious prototype, the Idea
of the Infinite? Neither does it matter, as we have said, whether
actual or supposed; for what the imagination cannot master will master
the imagination. Take, for instance, but a single _passion_, and
clothe it with this character; in the same instant it becomes sublime.
So, too, with a single thought. In the Mosaic words so often quoted,
"Let there be light, and there was light," we have the sublime of
thought, of mere naked thought; but what could more awe the mind with
the power of God? Of like nature is the conjecture of Newton, when he
imagined stars so distant from the sun that their coeval light has not
yet reached us. Let us endeavour for one moment to conceive of this;
does not the soul seem to dilate within us, and the body to shrink
as to a grain of dust? "Woe is me! unclean, unclean!" said the holy
Prophet, when the Infinite Holiness stood before him. Could a more
terrible distance be measured, than by these fearful words, between
God and man?
If it be objected to this view, that many cases occur, having the same
conditions with those assumed in our general proposition, which are
yet exclusively painful, unmitigated even by a transient moment of
pleasure,--in Despair, for instance,--as who can limit it?--to this we
reply, that no emotion having its sole, or circle of existence in
the individual mind itself, can be to that mind other than a
_subject_. A man in despair, or under any mode of extreme
suffering of like nature, may, indeed, if all interfering sympathy
have been removed by time or after-description, be to _another_
a sublime object,--at least in one of those suggestive forms just
noticed; but not to _himself_. The source of the sublime--as all
along implied--is essentially _ab extra_. The human mind is not
its centre, nor can it be realized except by a contemplative act.
Besides, as a mental pleasure,--indeed the highest known,--to
be recognized as such, it must needs be accompanied by the same
_relative character_ by which is tested every other pleasure
coming under that denomination; namely, by the entire absence
of _self_, that is, by the same freedom from all personal
consideration which has been shown to characterize the true effect of
the Three leading Ideas already considered. But if to this also it be
further objected, that in certain particular cases, as of
personal danger,--from which the sublime emotion has often been
experienced,--some personal consideration must necessarily be
involved, as without a sense of security we could not enjoy it; we
answer, that, if it be meant only that the mind should be in such a
state as to enable us to receive an unembarrassed impression, it seems
to us superfluous,--an obvious truism placed in opposition to an
absurd impossibility. We needed not to be told, that no pleasurable
emotion is likely to occur while we are unmanned by fear. The same
might be said, also, in respect to the Beautiful: for who was ever
alive to it under a paroxysm of terror, or pain of any kind? A
terrified person is in any thing but a fit state for such emotion. He
may indeed _afterwards_, when his fear is passed off, contemplate
the circumstance that occasioned it with a different feeling; but the
object of his dismay is _then_ projected, as it were, completely
from himself; and he feels the sublimity in a contemplative state:
he can feel it in no other. Nor is that state incompatible with a
consciousness of peril, though it can never be with personal terror.
And, if it is meant that we should have a positive, present
conviction that we are in no danger, this we must deny, as we find it
contradicted in innumerable instances. So far, indeed, is a sense of
security from being essential to the condition of a sublime emotion,
that the sense of danger, on the contrary, is one of its most exciting
accompaniments. There is a fascination in danger which some persons
neither can nor would resist; which seems, as it were, to disenthral
them of self;--as if the mysterious Infinite were actually drawing
them on by an invisible power.
Was it mere scientific curiosity that cost the elder Pliny his life?
Might it not have been rather this sublime fascination? But we have
repeated examples of it in our own time. Many who will read this may
have been in a storm at sea. Did they never feel its sublimity while
they knew their danger? We will answer for ourselves; for we have been
in one, when the dismasted vessels that surrounded us permitted no
mistake as to our peril; it was strongly felt, but still stronger was
the sublime emotion in the awful scene. The crater of Vesuvius is even
now, perhaps for the thousandth time, reflecting from its lake of fire
some ghastly face, with indrawn breath and hair bristling, bent, as by
fate, over its sulphurous brink.
Let us turn to Mont Blanc, that mighty pyramid of ice, in whose shadow
might repose all the tombs of the Pharaohs. It rises before the
traveller like the accumulating mausoleum of Europe: perhaps he looks
upon it as his own before his natural time; yet he cannot away from
it. A terrible charm hurries him over frightful chasms, whose blue
depths seem like those of the ocean; he cuts his way up a polished
precipice, shining like steel,--as elusive to the touch; he creeps
slowly and warily around and beneath huge cliffs of snow; now he looks
up, and sees their brows fretted by the percolating waters like a
Gothic ceiling, and he fears even to whisper, lest an audible breath
should awaken the avalanche: and thus he climbs and climbs, till the
dizzy summit fills up his measure of fearful ecstasy.
Now, though cases may occur where the emotion in question is attended
with a sense of security, as in the reading or hearing the description
of an earthquake, such as that of 1768 in Lisbon, while we are safely
housed and by a comfortable fire, it does not therefore follow, that
this consciousness of safety is its essential condition. It is merely
an accidental circumstance. It cannot, therefore, apply, either as a
rule or an objection. Besides, even if supported by fact, we might
well dismiss it on the ground of irrelevancy, since a sense of
personal safety cannot be placed in opposition to and as inconsistent
with a disinterested or unselfish state; which is that claimed for
the emotion as its true condition. If there be not, then, a sounder
objection, we may safely admit the characteristic in question; for
the reception of which we have, on the other hand, the weight of
experience,--at least negatively, since, strictly speaking, we cannot
experience the absence of any thing.
But though, according to our theory, there are many things now called
sublime that would properly come under a different classification, such
as many objects of Art, many sentiments, and many actions, which are
strictly human, as well in their _end_ as in their origin; it is not to
be inferred that the exclusion of any work of man is _because_ of _its
apparent origin_, but of its _end_, the end only being the determining
point, as referring to its _Idea_. Now, if the Idea referred to be of
the Infinite, which is _out_ of his nature, it cannot strictly be said
to originate with man,--that is, absolutely; but it is rather, as it
were, a reflected form of it from the Maker of his mind. If we are led
to such an Idea, then, by any work of imagination, a poem, a picture, a
statue, or a building, it is as truly sublime as any natural object.
This, it appears to us, is the sole mystery, without which neither
sound, nor color, nor form, nor magnitude, is a true correlative to the
unseen cause. And here, as with Beauty, though the test of that be
within us, is the _modus operandi_ equally baffling to the scrutiny of
the understanding. We feel ourselves, as it were, lifted from the earth,
and look upon the outward objects that have so affected us, yet learn
not how; and the mystery deepens as we compare them with other objects
from which have followed the same effects, and find no resemblance. For
instance; the roar of the ocean, and the intricate unity of a Gothic
cathedral, whose beginning and end are alike intangible, while its
climbing tower seems visibly even to rise to the Idea which it strives
to embody,--these have nothing in common,--hardly two things could be
named that are more unlike; yet in relation to man they have but one
end: for who can hear the ocean when breathing in wrath, and limit it in
his mind, though he think not of Him who gives it voice? or ascend that
spire without feeling his faculties vanish, as it were with its
vanishing point, into the abyss of space? If there be a difference in
the effect from these and other objects, it is only in the intensity,
the degree of impetus given; as between that from the sudden explosion
of a volcano and from the slow and heavy movement of a rising
thunder-cloud; its character and its office are the same,--in its awful
harmony to connect the created with its Infinite Cause.
But let us compare this effect with that from Beauty. Would the
Parthenon, for instance, with its beautiful forms,--made still more
beautiful under its native sky,--seeming almost endued with the breath
of life, as if its conscious purple were a living suffusion brought
forth in sympathy by the enamoured blushes of a Grecian sunset;--would
this beautiful object even then elevate the soul above its own roof?
No: we should be filled with a pure delight,--but with no longing to
rise still higher. It would satisfy us; which the sublime does not;
for the feeling is too vast to be circumscribed by human content.
On the supernatural it is needless to enlarge; for, in whatever form
the beings of the invisible world are supposed to visit us, they are
immediately connected in the mind with the unknown Infinite; whether
the faith be in the heart or in the imagination; whether they bubble
up from the earth, like the Witches in Macbeth, taking shape at will,
or self-dissolving into air, and no less marvellous, foreknowing
thoughts ere formed in man; or like the Ghost in Hamlet, an
unsubstantial shadow, having the functions of life, motion, will,
and speech; a fearful mystery invests them with a spell not to be
withstood; the bewildered imagination follows like a child, leaving
the finite world for one unknown, till it aches in darkness,
trackless, endless.
Perhaps, as being nearest in station to the unsearchable Author of
all things, the highest example of this would be found in the
Angelic Nature. If it be objected, that the poets have not always so
represented it, it rests with them to show cause why they have not.
Milton, no doubt, could have assigned a sufficient reason in _the
time chosen for his poem_,--that of the creation of the first man,
when his intercourse with the highest order of created beings was not
only essential to the plan of the poem, but according with the express
will of the Creator: hence, he might have considered it no violation
of the _then_ relation between man and angels to assign even the
epithet _affable_ to the archangel Raphael; for man was then
sinless, and in all points save knowledge a fit object of regard, and
certainly a fit pupil to his heavenly instructor. But, suppose the
poet, throughout his work, (as in the process of his story he was
forced to do near the end,)--suppose he had chosen, assuming the
philosopher, to assign to Adam the _altered relation of one of his
fallen posterity_, how could he have endured a holy spiritual
presence? To be consistent, Adam must have been dumb with awe,
incapable of holding converse such as is described. Between sinless
man and his sinful progeny, the distance is immeasurable. And so, too,
must be the effect on the latter, in such a presence; and for this
conclusion we have the authority of Scripture, in the dismay of the
soldiers at the Saviour's sepulchre, on which more directly. If there
be no like effect attending the other angelic visits recorded in
Scripture, such as those to Lot and Abraham, the reason is obvious in
the _special mission_ to those individuals, who were doubtless
_divinely prepared_ for their reception; for it is reasonable
to suppose the mission had else been useless. But with the Roman
soldiers, where there was no such qualifying circumstance, the case
was different; indeed, it was in striking contrast with that of the
two Marys, who, though struck with awe, yet being led there, as
witnesses, by the Spirit, were not so overpowered.
And here, as the Idea of Angels is universally associated with every
perfection of _form_, may naturally occur the question so often
agitated,--namely, whether Beauty and Sublimity are, under any
circumstances, compatible. To us it seems of easy solution. For we see
no reason why Beauty, as the condition of a subordinated object or
component part, may not incidentally enter into the Sublime, as well
as a thousand other conditions of opposite characters, which pertain
to the multifarious assimilants that often form its other components.
When Beauty is not made _essential_, but enters as a mere
contingent, its admission or rejection is a matter of indifference. In
an angel, for instance, beauty is the condition of his mere form; but
the angel has also an intellectual and moral or spiritual nature,
which is essentially paramount: the former being but the condition, so
to speak, of his visibility, the latter, his very life,--an Essence
next to the inconceivable Giver of life.
Could we stand in the presence of one of these holy beings, (if to
stand were possible,) what of the Sublime in this lower world would so
shake us? Though his beauty were such as never mortal dreamed of,
it would be as nothing,--swallowed up as darkness,--in the awful,
spiritual brightness of the messenger of God. Even as the soldiers
in Scripture, at the sepulchre of the Saviour, we should fall before
him,--we should "become," like them, "as dead men."
But though Milton does not unveil the "face like lightning"; and
though the angel Raphael is made to hold converse with man, and the
"severe in youthful beauty" gives even the individual impress to
Zephon, and Michael and Abdiel are set apart in their prowess; there
is not one he names that does not breathe of Heaven, that is not
encompassed with the glory of the Infinite. And why the reader is not
overwhelmed in their supposed presence is because he is a beholder
_through_ Adam,--through him also a listener; but whenever he is
made, by the poet's spell, to forget Adam, and to see, as it were in
his own person, the embattled hosts....
If we dwell upon Form _alone_, though it should be of surpassing
beauty, the idea would not rise above that of man, for this is
conceivable of man: but the moment the angelic nature is touched, we
have the higher ideas of supernal intelligence and perfect holiness,
to which all the charms and graces of mere form immediately
become subordinate, and, though the beauty remain, its agency is
comparatively negative under the overpowering transcendence of a
celestial spirit.
As we have already seen that the Beautiful is limited to no particular
form, but possesses its power in some mysterious _condition_,
which is applicable to many distinct objects; in like manner does the
Sublime include within its sphere, and subdue to its condition, an
indefinite variety of objects, with their distinctive conditions; and
among them we find that of the Beautiful, as well as, to a _certain
degree_, its reverse, so that, though we may truly recognize their
coexistence in the same object, it is not possible that their effect
upon us should be otherwise than unequal, and that the higher law
should not subordinate the lower. We do not deny that the Beautiful
may, so to speak, mitigate the awful intensity of the Sublime; but it
cannot change its character, much less impart its own; the one will
still be awful, the other, of itself, never.
When at Rome, we once asked a foreigner, who seemed to be talking
somewhat vaguely on the subject, what he understood by the Sublime.
His answer was, "Le plus beau"; making it only a matter of degree. Now
let us only imagine (if we can) a beautiful earthquake, or a beautiful
hurricane. And yet the foreigner is not alone in this. D'Azzara,
the biographer of Mengs, speaking of Beauty, talks of "this sublime
quality," and in another place, for certain reasons assigned, he says,
"The grand style is beautiful." Nay, many writers, otherwise of high
authority, seem to have taken the same view; while others who could
have had no such notion, having used the words Beauty and the
Beautiful in an allegorical or metaphorical sense, have sometimes been
misinterpreted literally. Hence Winckelmann reproaches Michael Angelo
for his continual talk about Beauty, when he showed nothing of it
in his works. But it is very evident that the _Bella_ and
_Bellezza_ of Michael Angelo were never used by him in a literal
sense, nor intended to be so understood by others: he adopted the
terms solely to express abstract Perfection, which he allegorized as
the mistress of his mind, to whose exclusive worship his whole life
was devoted. Whether it was the most appropriate term he could have
chosen, we shall not inquire. It is certain, however, that the literal
adoption of it by subsequent writers has been the cause of much
confusion, as well as vagueness.
For ourselves, we are quite at a loss to imagine how a notion so
obviously groundless has ever had a single supporter; for, if a
distinct effect implies a distinct cause, we do not see why distinct
terms should not be employed to express the difference, or how the
legitimate term for one can in any way be applied to signify a
particular degree of the other. Like the two Dromios, they sometimes
require a conjurer to tell which is which. If only Perfection, which
is a generic term implying the summit of all things, be meant,
there is surely nothing to be gained (if we except _intended_
obscurity) by substituting a specific term which is limited to a few.
We speak not here of allegorical or metaphorical propriety, which is
not now the question, but of the literal and didactic; and we may
add, that we have never known but one result from this arbitrary
union,--which is, to procreate words.
In further illustration of our position, it may be well here to notice
one mistaken source of the Sublime, which seems to have been sometimes
resorted to, both in poems and pictures; namely, in the sympathy
excited by excruciating bodily suffering. Suppose a man on the rack
to be placed before us,--perhaps some miserable victim of the
Inquisition; the cracking of his joints is made frightfully audible;
his calamitous "Ah!" goes to our marrow; then the cruel precision
of the mechanical familiar, as he lays bare to the sight his whole
anatomy of horrors. And suppose, too, the executioner _compelled_
to his task,--consequently an irresponsible agent, whom we cannot
curse; and, finally, that these two objects compose the whole scene.
What could we feel but an agony even like that of the sufferer, the
only difference being that one is physical, the other mental? And this
is all that mere sympathy has any power to effect; it has led us to
its extreme point,--our flesh creeps, and we turn away with almost
bodily sickness. But let another actor be added to the drama in the
presiding Inquisitor, the cool methodizer of this process of torture;
in an instant the scene is changed, and, strange to say, our feelings
become less painful,--nay, we feel a momentary interest,--from an
instant revulsion of our moral nature: we are lost in wonder at the
excess of human wickedness, and the hateful wonder, as if partaking of
the infinite, now distends the faculties to their utmost tension; for
who can set bounds to passion when it seizes the whole soul? It is as
the soul itself, without form or limit. We may not think even of the
after judgment; we become ourselves _justice_, and we award a
hatred commensurate with the sin, so indefinite and monstrous that we
stand aghast at our own judgment.
_Why_ this extreme tension of the mind, when thus outwardly
occasioned, should create in us an interest, we know not; but such is
the fact, and we are not only content to endure it for a time, but
even crave it, and give to the feeling the epithet _sublime_.
We do not deny that much bodily suffering may be admitted with effect
as a subordinate agent, when, as in the example last added, it is made
to serve as a necessary expositor of moral deformity. Then, indeed,
in the hands of a great artist, it becomes one of the most powerful
auxiliaries to a sublime end. All that we contend for is that sympathy
alone is insufficient as a cause of sublimity.
There are yet other sources of the false sublime, (if we may so call
it,) which are sometimes resorted to also by poets and painters; such
as the horrible, the loathsome, the hideous, and the monstrous: these
form the impassable boundaries to the true Sublime. Indeed, there
appears to be in almost every emotion a certain point beyond which we
cannot pass without recoiling,--as if we instinctively shrunk from
what is forbidden to our nature.
It would seem, then, that, in relation to man, Beauty is the extreme
point, or last summit, of the natural world, since it is in that that
we recognize the highest emotion of which we are susceptible from the
purely physical. If we ascend thence into the moral, we shall find its
influence diminish in the same ratio with our upward progress. In the
continuous chain of creation of which it forms a part, the link above
it where the moral modification begins seems scarcely changed, yet the
difference, though slight, demands another name, and the nomenclator
within us calls it Elegance; in the next connecting link, the moral
adjunct becomes more predominant, and we call it Majesty; in the next,
the physical becomes still fainter, and we call the union Grandeur; in
the next, it seems almost to vanish, and a new form rises before us,
so mysterious, so undefined and elusive to the senses, that we turn,
as if for its more distinct image, within ourselves, and there, with
wonder, amazement, awe, we see it filling, distending, stretching
every faculty, till, like the Giant of Otranto, it seems almost to
burst the imagination: under this strange confluence of opposite
emotions, this terrible pleasure, we call the awful form Sublimity.
This was the still, small voice that shook the Prophet on
Horeb;--though small to his ear, it was more than his imagination
could contain; he could not hear it again and live.
It is not to be supposed that we have enumerated all the forms of
gradation between the Beautiful and the Sublime; such was not our
purpose; it is sufficient to have noted the most prominent, leaving
the intermediate modifications to be supplied (as they can readily be)
by the reader. If we descend from the Beautiful, we shall pass in like
manner through an equal variety of forms gradually modified by the
grosser material influences, as the Handsome, the Pretty, the Comely,
the Plain, &c., till we fall to the Ugly.
There ends the chain of pleasurable excitement; but not the chain of
Forms; which, taking now as if a literal curve, again bends upward,
till, meeting the descending extreme of the moral, it seems to
complete the mighty circle. And in this dark segment will be found the
startling union of deepening discords,--still deepening, as it rises
from the Ugly to the Loathsome, the Horrible, the Frightful,[1] the
Appalling.
As we follow the chain through this last region of disease, misery,
and sin, of embodied Discord, and feel, as we must, in the mutilated
affinities of its revolting forms, their fearful relation to this
fair, harmonious creation,--how does the awful fact, in these its
breathing fragments, speak to us of a fallen world!
As the living centre of this stupendous circle stands the Soul of Man;
the _conscious Reality_, to which the vast inclosure is but the
symbol. How vast, then, his being! If space could measure it, the
remotest star would fall within its limits. Well, then, may he tremble
to essay it even in thought; for where must it carry him,--that winged
messenger, fleeter than light? Where but to the confines of the
Infinite; even to the presence of the unutterable _Life_, on
which nothing finite can look and live?
Finally, we shall conclude our Discourse with a few words on the
master Principle, which we have supposed to be, by the will of the
Creator, the realizing life to all things fair and true and good: and
more especially would we revert to its spiritual purity, emphatically
manifested through all its manifold operations,--so impossible
of alliance with any thing sordid, or false, or wicked,--so
unapprehensible, even, except for its own most sinless sake. Indeed,
we cannot look upon it as other than the universal and eternal witness
of God's goodness and love, to draw man to himself, and to testify
to the meanest, most obliquitous mind,--at least once in life, be it
though in childhood,--that there _is_ such a thing as _good
without self_. It will be remembered, that, in all the various
examples adduced, in which we have endeavoured to illustrate the
operation of Harmony, there was but one character to all its effects,
whatever the difference in the objects that occasioned them; that it
was ever untinged with any personal taint: and we concluded thence
its supernal source. We may now advance another evidence still more
conclusive of its spiritual origin, namely, in the fact, that it
cannot be realized in the Human Being _quoad_ himself. With the
fullest consciousness of the possession of this principle, and with
the power to realize it in other objects, he has still no power in
relation to himself,--that is, to become the object to himself.
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