Tanya Stanley

October 13, 2008

Experiencing the Sublime: A Checked Familiarity

Before the semester began, the word Romanticism signified the image of William Wordsworth and the concept of someone being one with nature; however, now I have been introduced to multiple concepts connected with Romanticism.  Objective one of the American Romanticism course is “to identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.”  I am familiar with desire and loss, rebellion, idealism, the individual in nature, and being separate from the masses as aspects linked to Romanticism, but I was unsure how nostalgia, the gothic, and the sublime were associated.  During the lectures and class discussions, the concept of the sublime captivated me.  Previously, I thought the sublime described the most beautiful of the beautiful or the best of the absolute best.  I was not aware that the sublime “is a phenomenon whose beauty is mixed or edged with danger or a threat—usually on a grand or elevated scale. For an audience, experiencing the sublime involves a powerful mixture of pleasure and pain” (“The Sublime”).  I also did not realize the spectator sometimes cannot describe the moment in which the sublime occurs.  The sublime can also consist of an experience outside the familiar.  Elements of the sublime describe the ultimate human experience, a dualism of pleasure and pain felt simultaneously.  While experiencing this dualism, the protagonist can escape from reality and experience a feeling of transcendence.  Washington Irving’s protagonist in “Rip Van Winkle,” his protagonist and citizens within “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and James Wright’s persona in “The Blessing” share the desire to escape from the here and now into a moment of transcendence—a separation from the masses—as a result of the sublime which suggests the connection between the sublime and Romanticism. 

Rip Van Winkle desires to escape the reality of his wife’s constant harassment and the unsuccessful labors of his land (458, 459).  When Rip Van Winkle becomes tired during his journey to the Catskill mountains, he finds himself simultaneously surrounded by a majestic scene and a dangerously steep rock formation:  “From an opening between the trees, he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland…the lordly Hudson...moving on its silent but majestic course…On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs…” (459).  Rip Van Winkle’s position is between two opposing and extreme scenes.  The spectacle of the woods creates a pleasurable feeling while the terrifying view of the precipices and long narrow valley invokes an uneasy sensation—a sublime panorama upon which Rip Van Winkle meditates.  Rip Van Winkle experiences a moment beyond reality, a moment of extraordinary proportion which he pauses reality to transcend within the sublime.  During the seminar I learned that the Europeans’ horrors usually stem from enclosed areas such as castles and Americans’ horrors typically derive from expansive areas such as forests, which contrasted the two sources of continental horror and was quite intriguing. 

            Rip Van Winkle not only experiences the sublime that nature creates on the Catskill mountains, but he also finds himself on a sublime journey up a narrow passage between the mountains (460).  The narrator describes Rip Van Winkle’s expedition with exaggerated language.  Rip Van Winkle and the stranger travel through areas “surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impeding trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud” (460).  Rip Van Winkle and the stranger travel in silence admiring “something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe, and checked familiarity” (460).   At first, the narrator cannot describe the landscape of Rip Van Winkle’s journey which signifies Irving’s use of the sublime.  The narrator’s next description, inspired awe, denotes amazement and powerlessness—pleasure and pain—another characteristic of the sublime.  A further example of the sublime is a checked familiarity, which Rip Van Winkle experiences transcendence as his conception of reality changes.  After Rip Van Winkle encounters the sublime, he notices the sublime nature of the men who are bowling:  “What seemed particularly odd to Rip, was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed” (460).  The melancholy pleasure denotes the sublime, and Rip Van Winkle’s transcendence allows him to witness the phenomenon of the sublime, which links the sublime with Romanticism.

            Like “Rip Van Winkle,” Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” reveals elements of the sublime.  The narrator expresses the sublime while describing Sleepy Hollow as a place that “holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie.  They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air” (1).  Not only are the habitants engulfed in an essence of tranquility and an escape from reality, but they also indulge in the “local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions”—a mixture of pleasure and pain (1).  According to the narrator, if he desires to leave the here and now—an element of Romanticism—he knows of no better place to go to other than Sleepy Hollow (1).  Sleepy Hollow can also be described as the biblical Garden of Eden.  The narrator says Sleepy Hollow is “one of the quietest places on the whole world”—a place in which a whispering brook runs throughout the landscape calming everyone to unvarying serenity (1).  Sleepy Hollow represents a Utopia by existing as a place of escape and by providing tranquility for its inhabitants.  The sublime occurs as the inhabitants experience the simultaneous dualism of feeling pleasure in an oasis and feeling pain accompanied by the dreadful legends Sleepy Hollow entails.

            The people of Sleepy Hollow indulge in the sublime unconsciously. The inhabitants remain unchanged in their “population, manners, and customs…” (2).  Their unwillingness to change with the “incessant changes in other parts of the restless country, sweeps by them unobserved” (2).  The citizens of Sleepy Hollow partake in a pleasure of remaining traditional in their ways of life, but they experience the pain of toiling their lands without mechanical advancements used by the people of the innovative society.  They remain unaware of the advancements, partaking in the physical pain of manual labor, but disregard the advancements by sweeping the changes under their rugs.  Ichabod Crane indulges in aspects of Romanticism and the sublime as he reads Cotton Mather’s tales of witchcraft while resting among the clover field, being one with nature and separated from the masses during his haunting read.  “No tale was to gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow…Then, as he wended his way, by swamp and stream and awful woodland…every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination…” (3).  Ichabod Crane escapes reality by reading Mather’s gothic material, but the pleasure he feels while reading the material entices his imagination as he walks home during the witching hour” (3).

            James Wright’s poem “The Blessing” represents the sublime through the eyes of the persona.  The persona describes two Indian ponies whose eyes “Darken with Kindness.” (4).  Western culture consists of a dualism between light and dark in which the appearance of light represents good and the appearance of dark represents evil.  The ponies eyes turn dark with compassion instead of turning dark with malice. Wright creates a sublime feeling for many of his Western readers.  At the end of the poem, the persona transcends into a state outside reality in which he realizes if he steps out of his body, he “would break / Into blossom.” (22-24).  The speaker becomes enthralled with the black and white pony who touches his hand, and he feels elated to the point of achieving ultimate satisfaction if only he could break through his body, he would blossom into spiritual transcendence in the essence of a flower, experiencing pleasure and pain.  The persona experiences a “uniquely all-consuming, yet satisfying, human experience…one that cannot be replicated or sought within the normalcy of everyday life” (Sharon Lockett, Midterm 2006).  Like Lockett, I believe those affected by the sublime experience an inimitable human experience—an uncommon experience. 

Rip Van Winkle, the people of Sleepy Hollow, and Wright’s persona experience the sublime during their Romantic escape from reality into moments of transcendence.  The sublime consists of content and style combining to create an atypical human experience in which the spectator feels pleasure while simultaneously feels pain, sometimes cannot describe the spectacle or the experience he feels during the moment, sometimes uses exaggerated language to describe the scene he witnesses, and sometimes believes he transcends from reality to the unfamiliar.  The Romanticism web post describes one element of Romanticism as “a nostalgic past or dramatic future… a dream desired, denied, but not forgotten . . .” (“Romanticism”).  This past summer I was intrigued with the concept of nostalgia and its connection to immigrants.  This semester I have read more immigrant narratives in which the immigrants dreams have been denied countless times by their oppressors, but they refuse to forget about their dreams.  I am interested in reading examples of how the sublime, nostalgia, and Romanticism intertwine.