Mary Brooks

February 28, 2005

In the Space Between Rests the Sublime

American Romanticism often defines the sublime as a combination of pleasure and pain mixed on a grand scale.  The sublime in literature manifests itself in such emotions as astonishment, fear, and power.  These emotions are often invoked when describing nature as magnificent in its scale and beauty yet at the same time somehow forbidding.  These descriptions have also been applied to depictions of a higher power or God who although divine and good can also inflict unimaginable suffering.  Each of these descriptions and emotions is prevalent in the pre-romantic and romantic period depictions of nature and a higher power or God.  In our readings thus far, we have encountered this aspect of Romanticism several times in such pre-romantic period texts as those of Rowlandson, Irving, and Edwards.  The representations of the sublime in these texts eventually converge in The Last of the Mohicans to make the novel a clear and obvious representative of the sublime in American Romanticism.   

Mary Rowlandson’s  Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration is a quintessential American tale that depicts one woman’s sublime struggle with evil and virtue while a captive of Indians.  Rowlandson depicts the Indians as sublimely evil describing the Indians as “… black creatures of the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell”.  Once she believes that the Indians and their actions are dictated by something beyond human comprehension she no longer has to consider the possibility that any of their actions can be merciful.  That her captors could be motivated by anything other than their devilish intentions is simply incomprehensible to her.  Any deviation from the Indians evil ways is of course simply attributed to God acting through the Indians and not representative of the Indians natural tendencies.  According to Ms. Le Blanc’s midterm, “…because of the fact that Rowlandson conceptualizes her captors as being sublimely evil, she need not attribute motivation or provide explanation for their actions; their acts are simply beyond the scope of human understanding”.  This depiction of the ultimate evil as a manifestation of the Indian is certainly sublime as is Rowlandson’s reliance on God to bring her through the trouble and pain of her captivity.  Even though Rowlandson feels she is in the depths of hell she is still relying on her faith and the ‘divine intervention of the Lord’ to pull her through.  When she manages to survive she attributes it to the sublime nature of “…the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit,…”.  Rowlandson believes that the entire experience of her captivity is on such a grand scale that it can not be attributed to anything but a divine hand that she manages to come out of the experience relatively unscathed.  The sublime occurrences in the narrative manifest themselves in combinations of opposing emotions and grand scales that lead to it becoming sublime Romanticism.

Washington Irving also used the sublime in Rip Van Winkle when he discussed nature’s beauty as being so vast it became threatening.  Irving described a valley as being “…a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun”.  A description that clearly relates the vastness and beauty of the place, yet it surely describes a place that you would not wish to venture into.  The grand wilderness of America certainly when examined by Europeans, who had not seen such vast expanses of untamed nature, lends itself quite easily to these sublime depictions.  Irving uses the sublime when he describes a mountain as “…something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe, and checked familiarity”.  Awe or astonishment is a common emotion used in the sublime of the Romantic period and is also used to this day to describe those things whether natural or manmade that defy the human imagination to comprehend.  Nature is described quite easily in the sublime because of its inherent vastness, beauty and cruelty.  Those who have ascended Mt. Everest will attest to the fact that the experience at the top is sublimity at its most beautiful and painful.

Jonathan Edwards uses a combination of the sublimity of nature and the sublimity of God in his Personal Narrative.  Edwards describes his experience of finding God’s presence in nature’s “… majesty and meekness joined together: it was sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; high and great, and holy gentleness”.  God being all encompassing is often equated with nature because human comprehension requires that even a vast entity without form be visible. Edwards managed to find his religious peace and center in nature’s plethora of vistas and phenomena.  Edwards uses the sublime to describe nature’s phenomena such as thunderstorms as “…scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightening…and hear the majesty and awful voice of God’s thunder…”.  As often happens with nature’s fury, it is so vast and incomprehensible that a religious component is often added to explain seemingly random events as signs of the sublime in God and nature.  Nature and God in Edwards’ narrative are inseparable.  Edwards finds his sublime religious meaning from being alone in the vastness nature and from encountering all the vast array of phenomena that nature has to hold. 

With the understanding of these pre-romanticism texts we can then encounter and examine James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans as a definitive example of the sublime in Romanticism.  Cooper’s entire novel is couched in the sublime with the beauty of nature on one hand and the brutality and selflessness of his characters.  Cooper’s world in the novel is a world that embraces the vastness of nature and often pushes its beauty aside to portray the brutal natures of those within nature.  Copper describes nature in his novel as the characters rest “Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled…Duncan stood for many minutes, rapt observer” after the massacre at Fort William Henry in a very sublime manner.   Duncan’s attitude of rapt attention to the wilderness around him is very much like Edwards descriptions of the sublime awe one experiences when observing that which is to vast to be fully comprehended.  Cooper’s novel takes many cues from Rowlandson’s narrative, things such as the captivity drama and the super natural abilities of the characters that allow the captives to survive almost every encounter with captivity.  Their rescue is not based on the powers of God but on the vastly sublime powers of Hawkeye and Uncas in finding the captive’s trail in what would otherwise be considered to be an impossible trail to follow.  Cooper describes the characters disposition while waiting in the waterfall as “Their anxious and eager looks were baffled by the deceptive light…nothing to be seen but the gloom and quite of a lovely evening”.  Cooper’s description of the evening as both gloomy and lovely is a sublime representation of the environment and emotions as the characters waited for the Indians to make their appearance.  Cooper also uses many descriptions of nature that are reminiscent of Irving's sublime representations of the wilderness.  Cooper describes a water fall in the beginning of the novel as “These rocks are full of cracks, and in some places, they are softer than at othersome, and the water has worked deep hollows for itself…until the falls have neither shape nor consistency”(54-55).  Nature as described by Cooper seems to consist of forces that have been at work forever.  Cooper combines the sublime in nature and in the supernatural much like Edwards Cooper’s goal however, is not the spiritual enlightenment Edwards seeks more of a commentary on the nature of race, the wilderness, and camaraderie. 

Cooper uses the sublime to describe his characters as well.  Hawkeye is described as having “The frame of the white man” and “…garments of the Indian”.  This mixture of cultures represented in Hawkeye being of the white race and yet follower of Indian ways makes Hawkeye a sublime character who encompasses these opposing dispositions with honor and truth.  Uncas, as the last of a noble race of Mohicans, is described toward the end of the novel as having “ his own beautiful proportions”.  Uncas is also described earlier in the novel as having eyes that are “ alike terrible and calm”.  Both descriptions are sublime in their ability to combine opposing attributes in the same character whose lack of limitations in both physical and mental characteristics allows him to assume the mantle of the sublime.  The characterizations in The Last of the Mohicans contribute to the overall natures of the characters as beings without physical limits to their abilities such as stamina, tracking, or shooting they accomplish it all with little effort.  All the characters travel from one situation to the next whether in the clutches of Indians or the company of whites with the ability to adjust without worry and solve their problems effortlessly.  Hawkeye and Uncas are superb examples of the sublime hero whose abilities and accomplishments are so vast as to be incomprehensible and unattainable in the real world.  Cooper’s novel combines all the characteristics of the sublime in its characters, environment, and action to make it a clear example of the sublime in American Romanticism.

American Romanticism and Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans use Edmund Burke’s definition of the sublime as being “…sublime objects are vast in their dimensions…” as seen in Cooper descriptions of the wilderness and the abilities of his characters.  Edmund Burke’s definition of the sublime also includes the ability to “…excite the ideas of pain and danger…” which Cooper does to great effect throughout The Last of the Mohicans many action scenes and events.  Even the title of the novel is sublime in the grand scale that references not only the last of some great and worthy nation of Indians but end of an entire way of life for the Indians.  Cooper’s novel is a grand example of the sublime as it includes the sublime in every aspect of its narrative from the action to the characters themselves making it a classic representation of American Romanticism.