Experiences of the Sublime
Ian Roberts in his YouTube video Understanding Your Muse tells a compelling version of the Greek myths surrounding the Muses. In
Greek mythology Mnemosyne is a daughter of Zeus and mother to the muses; all
are goddess that preside over the creative arts of mankind. Mnemosyne is also
the goddess of memory (where we get the word mnemonic from) and she resides in
the underworld near the Pool of Memory.
When one dies, in the ancient Greek understanding, they are taken to the Pool
of Memory all bound up with worldly experience, ego, ambition, tragedy and
fear. They drink from the pool and remember completely all of their unbound
human potential. What a moment that must be! But that we must wait to die to
experience it. But there is a related belief that when one is in the creative
throes and in touch with one’s muses then there may be a moment where you can
drink from the Pool of Memory and experience briefly your full
potential. This is our connection with the sublime through
art.
The Greeks were uncanny at understanding the human aesthetic condition in this
way. But they were not alone. In the book 1491 by Charles C .
Mann[1] there is a reference to
translations from codices of the ancient civilization formerly known as the
Aztecs in central Mexico (They are now called the Triple Alliance). From one
tribe, the Nahuatl, survives a poem that directly addresses the question of
human existence. (Attributed to the tlatoani/philosopher Nezahualcoyotl
(1402-1472))
Not forever on earth, only a little while here.
Be it jade it shatters.
Be it gold, it breaks.
Be it quetzal feather, it tears apart.
Not forever on earth; only a little while here.
This gives some sense of that culture’s view of mortality. It reminds me of
the Western ars longa, vita brevis (art is long but life is short). Another verse states this more plainly, also
attributed to Nezahualcoyotl…
Like a painting we will be erased.
Like a flower we will dry up here on earth.
Like plumed vestments of the gracious bird,
That precious bird with the graceful neck,
We will come to an end.
According to the Mexican historian Leon-Portilla the
15th century Aztec poet Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin describes by
metaphor the contact with the sublime by invoking the coyolli bird which has a
bell-like song. [metaphorical interpretations follow in square braces]
He goes his way singing, offering flowers. [flowers - poetry, the highest art]
And his words rain down
Like jade and quetzal plumes. [something of great value]
Is this what pleases the Giver of Life?
Is that the only truth in life?
In Leon-Portilla’s interpretation the song of the coyolli symbolizes the
aesthetic inspiration. That Ayocuan suggests there is a time when the human
can contact the enduring truths underneath our short lives. Ayocuan goes
on…
From whence come the flowers that enrapture man? [flowers - artistic
creations]
The songs that intoxicate, the lovely songs?
Only from His home do they come, from the innermost part of
heaven. [‘His’ refers to Ometeotl Aztec god of creative energy]
Here one can now see this same idea of being in touch with the sublime through
artistic creation.
This idea is universal and is in part what motivates an artist. The experience or anticipation of that inspiration that we know not the source of, but the Greeks attributed to the Muses. That when we find it, we feel a kind of rapture of having experienced or touched something that transcends our ourselves and our daily existence.
Fear
Ian Roberts in the same video goes on to speak of ugly (as well as beauty). Ugly deriving from a Norse word for 'dread'. Dread of that same unbound potential. That we anesthetize ourselves to the unbound potential. And anesthetize means to numb or deaden ourselves to beauty. If we take the Greek word 'aisthēsis' which means 'Perception from the senses, feeling, hearing, seeing' and the word 'an-' which is a Greek prefix to mean 'not' or 'without'.
Ian goes on to propose that we identify too closely with our ambitions, grievances, and our hurt. My father would say we are feeling sorry for ourselves, something he is loathe to do, or he would say you sometimes have ‘sit on your blisters’. That is you have been punished in some way rightly or wrongly and now have to live with it.
Interestingly some trace the word fear to a Proto-Indo-European root word 'per' that means try or risk. That would say that we should think of fear as something we should engage with, but somehow over time we have learned to think of fear as something to shrink or retreat from.
From an artistic perspective this is an important idea as we often deal with a fear or reluctance in the creative process such as attempting something new or difficult.
The Sublime
Here Ian goes on to assert that the word sublime derives form the idea of coming up against a limit. Here we have a possible etymology of the word 'coming up to the lintel' where 'sub' means to 'up to' and 'limen' is a threshold or sill and where we get the word 'limit' from. Taken in conjunction with fear we see a try or risk involved in coming to a limit of what we are and what our full potential is. Ian calls it 'aesthetics of fear'. Here he invokes events in the natural world that stun us and create perhaps a small opening in our perception of ourselves to reveal a larger interior.
For me personally I see this in an image I made a few years ago. Where I live on the edge of the Fens, a vast extremely flat landscape. I found this image while driving to an arboretum. The day was dark and moody and the flat bleakness the more emphasized. I had just passed a sugar refinery billowing vast powerful clouds of steam into the dark sky; an image of a 'satanic mill'. I called this image 'We are Small in the Eye of God', to me this invokes that idea of the sublime of revealing something about that opening in our perception that we have something larger inside.
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| We are Small in the Eye of God |
I was recently reading a book called 'Mountains of the Mind', a gift from my brother-in-law a climber. Robert MacFarlane the author, himself a mountaineer, discusses the origins of mountaineering in Europe. For ages mountains were places nobody would intentionally visit as they were places of danger, fear, and discomfort. Only over time there evolved a different more romantic view of mountains, places of sublime beauty and also places to test oneself and confront fear.
In one chapter Mr. MacFarlane discusses Edmund Burke's perception of the sublime and here he invokes much of what Ian discusses. Burke wrote 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful' (Edmund Burke (1729-1797)). He was interested in the way we reacted to things that were huge, powerful, violent, and perhaps difficult to comprehend. To Burke these were sublime sights; a waterfall, an anxiety-inducing precipice, a storm, a roiling river; a mix of terror and pleasure. He contrasted the idea of beauty which he characterized as regular, with visual proportions, and predictability. Beauty relaxes the 'fibres' of the body, and the sublime tightens them. He says...
...that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime, that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion.
In Burke's words the sublime creates a terror that 'always produces delight when it does not press too close.'
In this way we come full circle about how we think of the sublime as related to our pursuit of beauty.
Postscript
If you found this interesting (and made it this far) I strongly encourage you to watch Ian Robert's video that inspired this article. Indeed, I recommend his full series of 'The Search for Beauty' . He is a compelling speaker and a talented artist with a great ability to communicate.
[1] This section on Aztec
aesthetics is based on the writings of Charles C. Mann in his book '1491'.
Pages 137-140
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