Jane Ftacnik
Literature 5535
11 November 2000  

"…But while a proper pervert knows what he wants, the healthy pervert must find enjoyment inadvertently; in the abject or the sublime, in duty and reason, in the obligations of a "fun morality (Foster 5)." When Freud called perversion the opposite of neurosis he meant that the pervert finds a way to enjoy what the neurotic must repress, to pursue what he wants while the normal neurotic turns away (Foster 3). Literature is one of the vehicles that the normal neurotic utilizes to experience the sublime. In American Romanticism, the sublime surfaces and provides a socially acceptable way for people to experience their repressed desires. The dark side of American Romanticism provides a way for readers to enjoy the sinister and the beautiful simultaneously. Specifically, the sublime is achieved through the works of Cooper and Poe. A definition of romanticism and the sublime will precede the analysis of the aforementioned texts.

Romanticism in American literature reflects the abstractions of idealism, rebellion, and the longing for what one does not have. Romanticism is the primitive, the untutored, it is youth, life, the exuberant sense of life of the natural man, but it is also pallor, fever, disease, decadence, the maladie de siecle, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the Dance of Death, indeed Death itself (Berlin 17). For example, in the novel The Last of the Mohicans, individualism and rebellion are represented in the characters of Cora and Magua. In the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, death and psychological realms are explored within the definition of romanticism. Romanticism is "the strange, the exotic, the grotesque, the mysterious, the supernatural, ruins, moonlight, enchanted castles, hunting horns, elves, giants, griffins, falling water, the old mill on the Floss, darkness and the powers of darkness, phantoms, vampires, nameless terror, the irrational, the unutterable (Berlin 17)."

To define something is to restrict it and explains what it includes. The sublime can be best explained by what it is not. It is not an actual representation of any one thing. It is beyond this world, and not merely in it. For example, when we hear the theme song to the movie "Jaws," we anticipate something horrible happening. As the song escalates, so do our fears. But we are not afraid that something will happen to us directly, for we are experiencing fear for the next victim of the shark. When this occurs, the sublime has been experienced. It can also be compared to a roller coaster ride. The riders of a roller coaster know that they will not be harmed, but still subject themselves to hurling down hills in small carts at speeds exceeding ninety miles per hour. It is the possibility that something bad could happen to the riders that causes them to seek the thrill. As the rider in the front seat knows, the worst feeling is when the coaster is creeping down the first part of a hill only to suddenly jerk forward at full speed. And, the riders put their lives into the control of machines, which causes more fear. There is no control over the ride, so that the idea that the rider cannot stop the ride poses the threat of more danger. It is the loss of control and the threat of danger that must be experienced in order to enjoy the sublime. Now that the sublime and American Romanticism have been defined, a work from Cooper will be analyzed to show how the sublime is depicted.

Within the novel The Last of the Mohicans, the characters Magua and Cora exemplify the sublime. Magua embodies the idea of the terrible and the beautiful. When Magua is introduced, he is described as having a "sullen fierceness mingled with the quiet of the savage, that was likely to arrest the attention of much more experienced eyes, than those which now scanned him, in unconcealed amazement." Within his character, he possesses the possibility of danger and therefore hints that there may be more to his story than was initially revealed. By showing that Duncan is admiring Magua, Cooper impresses upon his readers that Magua is a force that must be recognized.

The character of Magua is developed through the comments and reactions from other characters. His lineage is criticized by the scout, when he says of the Hurons, "they are a thievish race, nor do I care by whom they are adopted; you can never make any thing of them but skulks and vagabonds…(Cooper 37)" Magua evokes sympathy and fear in Cora. She looks at him with "pity, horror, and admiration, as her dark eye followed the easy motions of the savage." Cora has just experienced the sublime as she appreciates his appearance but also is horrified by it. Cooper describes Magua as one who has just exerted himself and did not have time to repair the damage. He describes the scars he received from the beatings by Cora’s father, and his body is both beautiful and horrible as it is a mixture of pain, grace, and strength. The threat of evil within Magua and his physical beauty renders him sublime.

The character of Cora conveys the idea of the sublime through her background and her appearance. She may have been even more sublime for readers in the late nineteenth century because of her dark hair and mixed heritage. She has a hint of African blood in her. As Cooper describes her, "…The tresses of this lady were shining and black, like the plumage of the raven. Her complexion was not brown, but it rather appeared charged with the colour of the rich blood, that seemed ready to burst its bounds…a row of teeth that would have shamed the purest ivory…" Note that Cooper mentions the word "brown," but then assures his readers that she does not have the appearance of a mulatto, but that somewhere in her ancestry includes Africans. Cooper achieves the sublime with Cora because she defies all expectations. In other words, after he describes her hair as black, it would be expected that her complexion would be very pale in contrast to the dark hair. But Cooper does not fulfill the expectation of his readers, and he may have shocked some readers when he depicts Cora as a person of mixed-blood, and that effect makes her otherworldly and sublime.

The next author that represents the dark side of American Romanticism is Poe. The sublime is exemplified in both "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia." The darker side of American romanticism is represented by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, who share a series of romantic characteristics: a marked interest in the strange and mysterious, a dark, symbolical imagination, and a certain elusive ambiguity in style and content (Serafin 971). This is evident in "The Fall of the House of Usher," when the psyche of the narrator is reflected onto the surroundings so that nothing is real and no distinction is made between the tangible world and the imagined world. As the narrator states in the story, "upon the bleak walls-upon the vacant eye-like windows-upon a few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium-the bitter lapse into common life-the hideous dropping off of the veil (Poe 717). The house merges with the psyche of the narrator. The narrator admits that if the surroundings were different, his presence of mind might have been different. He describes this as "It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of this picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression…" If this narrator is unreliable, as he plainly seems to be, the reader is not going to escape from his haunted consciousness while the tale is being told (Harding 51). This shows that the narrator cannot separate himself from the world around him.

In the "The Fall of the House of Usher, the sublime is achieved by the repetitive effect of the details of the story which create an aura of depression and gloom. The reader is not sure what is real and what may be figments of the narrator’s imagination. For example, the title implies that some form of evil will occur with the "fall" of the house of Usher. And, as the narrator is approaching the House of Usher, he talks about the weather and the countryside. And he states, "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House Of Usher." As Poe describes the outside of the house, he provides such details as "…minute fungi overspread the exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves." The sublime is achieved here because of the details of a spider-web of mold over the house. As he describes the night, Poe uses the wind to show there is another powerful force beyond this world. As he narrates, "The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty." The sublime is represented through the details of the descriptions of the settings within the story.

The sublime is also exemplified through the characters within "The Fall of the House of Usher." Poe creates a terror within the imaginations of his readers and they are enjoying this terror as it permits them to secretly entertain their perverse desires. In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke had not only argued that terror is the source of the sublime emotion but had also insisted that the power of the sublime lay in its effectiveness in robbing the mind of its powers of reasoning (Harding 51). For example, when the narrator describes "the lady Madeline" as identical to Roderick, he is exemplifying the sublime. She is not just his sister, but she is an actual twin of Roderick. The narrator says that she resembles Roderick in all ways, and as he says this when he looks at Roderick, he "…had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears." Moreover, here Poe is suggesting that there is something perverse about the relationship between Roderick and Madeline. He is implying that Roderick may have had more than normal brotherly affection for his sister. This of course only heightens the combination of horror and wonder in the story. When the narrator describes the burying of the Lady Madeline, he makes her seem as though she might still be alive and mocking them. He states, "the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible death." The idea that Madeline has color in her face and perhaps a smile on her lips makes her seem otherworldly and eternal. Even when introducing a compulsory character as the valet, Poe creates an aura of evil. As he states, "a valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master." The character of the valet is developed with only a few words, but he is clandestine and mysterious and that is precisely what makes him sublime. Poe’s effective use of the characters to illustrate the sublime is proven with each character, however minor.

The plot is another device that Poe uses to fabricate the idea of the sublime. After the lady Madeline is buried, Roderick gets progressively worse in his malady. But this is no surprise as the title foreshadows that the house of usher will "fall" eventually. Poe does indicate in the beginning of the story that there may be structural flaws within the house. As he describes the house, he states, "Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn." The idea that the house has cracks in it imposes the threat of danger upon the house. As lady Madeline is buried, and Roderick moves closer to death, the climax of the story occurs in the final paragraphs. Roderick admits that he has heard the Lady Madeline as she was moving in the coffin. And he frantically calls the narrator a "madman" as he tells him that "she now stands without the door!" Lady Madeline then appears and kills Roderick by falling on him and killing him. The sublime is created when the impossible occurs and this is when Lady Madeline rises from the dead and ultimately kills her own brother in a dramatic embrace as they fall together to the floor. The final act is when the house finally "falls" into the tarn. But the sublime is here again because the crack has widened and the house is swallowed into the murky waters of the tarn as the narrator recounts:

While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened-there came a fierce breath of the

Whir-wind –the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight-my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rush asunder-there was a long tumultuous shouting as sound like the voice of a thousand waters-and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."

It is almost impossible to conceive that a building would sink down into a pond along with the sound effects that make the pond seem like an ocean. The idea of the House of Usher falling into the tarn seems plausible because the eeriness of the House of Usher has been developed since the first paragraph. And, of course, leave it to Poe to develop a small crack into a large fissure that ultimately causes the house to sink. The awesome effect of the sinking house contributes to the effect of the sublime.

Poe also achieves the sublime with the story "Ligeia." Poe possessed a somber, brooding imagination that inclined to the eerie and supernatural and to all that was strange and remote to the conventional world (Serafin 971). Poe uses the descriptions of Ligiea to achieve the sublime. For example, when he first describes Ligeia, he again seems to be trapped in his own imagination. The narrator describes Ligeia as a disease that has penetrated his soul. As he states, "Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering: or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low, musical language, made their way into my heart by paces, so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown." Poe achieves the sublime with his "romantic pursuit of idealized beauty of a highly refined variety often associated with death and melancholia, notably in stories such as "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher. (Serafin 971).

As Poe sets the tone of the story, he combines horror and beauty. There is the impression that he is mentally unstable when he describes his own mind as "feeble." He cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. The conventional standards of beauty include chiseled cheeks and some representation of color, but Ligeia’s face is lacking bones. It would be more probable to compare a female lover’s voice to that of a flute, but the narrator describes the voice of Ligeia as "low and musical." This contributes to the sublime effect of her description. This is not a normal love affair, as Ligeia has slowly crept into his soul. The use of the word "stealthily" implies that Ligeia has been sneaking into his psyche. He continues to describe Ligeia as having "strangeness" in connection to her beauty, and even achieves the sublime by stating what Lord Bacon said, "There is no exquisite beauty, without some strangeness in the proportions." He describes Ligeia as "Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of classic regularity, although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed "exquisite," and felt that there much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity, and to trace home my own perception of "the strange."

Ligeia is more beautiful than any other woman, but also any other human. She has qualities, which make her sublime as she transcends this world. He narrates, "…every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene, and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin-and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek, the contour which the God Apollo revealed but in a dream to Cleomnes, the son of the Athenian." Here is where Ligeia becomes otherworldly and seems to be a Greek goddess. Poe uses her chin to explain the sublime. He transforms an ordinary part of the body and elevates it into a part of Greek mythology.

The eyes of Ligeia become a source of fear for the narrator. Poe mixes beauty and terror and fear within the eyes of Ligeia. When Poe first describes her eyes, he describes them as "…far larger than the ordinary eyes of our race." Her eyes are a source of psychological torture for the narrator. He says of her eyes, "Not for a moment was the unfathomable meaning of their glance, by day or night, absent from my soul…And thus, how frequently in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of the secret of their expression-felt it approaching-yet not quite be mine-and so at length utterly depart." He is constantly trying to know what her eyes see. And this foreshadows the conclusion of the story, which will be discussed later.

As Poe develops the character of Ligeia, he also exposes the psychological weaknesses of the narrator. Her education surpasses the knowledge of most living beings. She is fluent in ancient languages and knows the sciences also. As the narrator describes her, "Where breathes the man who, like her, has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, natural, and mathematical science?" He asks the question, "…have I ever found Ligeia at fault?" He is lost without her, and describes himself as a child without her. He questions whether he is deserving of her love. Ligiea represents the perfect love, and the love of a child to his mother. She is his teacher, his doting mother, and the living ideal of beauty. Poe captures the essence of the sublime with the development of Ligeia.

The conclusion of the story reveals the narrator’s fears. The last line is the narrator expressing horror at seeing the eyes of Ligeia. "Here then at least, I shrieked aloud, "can I never-can I never be mistaken-these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes of the lady-of the lady Ligeia(Poe, 717). The eyes are a sublime representation of beauty and terror as they terrorize the narrator. They are an eternal force that will continue to penetrate the soul of the narrator.

The realm of the sublime has been analyzed through the works of Cooper and Poe. The characters of Magua and Cora are equally sublime as they transcend the boundaries of human nature. Poe achieves the sublime in many fictional works, and he uses details to create an aura of mystery and evil. His stories are horrible but pleasurable. As human beings continue to use art, films, and literature as socially acceptable forms to enjoy their repressed desires, the realm of the sublime will reign forever.

Works Cited

Baym, Nina. The Norton Anthology of American Literature . New York:

W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Berlin, Isaiah. The Roots of Romanticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Cooper, James. The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Penguin Books, 1826.

Foster, D. Sublime Enjoyment On the Perverse Motive in American Literature. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Harding, B. (1982). American Literature in Context II New York: Methuen & Co.

Serafin, S. (1991). Encyclopedia of American Literature. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company