Fig. 1. The Indian Widow (Wright of Derby, 1734-97). An example of the pathetic sublime: the Indian warrior's widow, set in a formidable hostile landscape, alone and in stoic calm while the storm rages round her. Rousseau's noble savage, the noble simplicity and silent grandeur that Winckelmann found in classical art and Burke's "sublime" all in the one composition. (Derby Art Gallery)
Burke (b. Dublin, 12 Jan. 1729; d. Beaconsfield, 9 July 1797) began the
Philosophical Enquiry whilst a student at Trinity College, Dublin (1743-8). It was his first major published work and it proved to be immensely influential. Some fourteen separate English printings have been identified dating from Burke's lifetime, together with French (Paris 1765) and German (Riga and Leipzig 1773) translations.(1)The work divides into five parts. The first identifies the various passions and suggests how it is that passions which are aroused by the sublime can none the less be a source of delight. The second treats of the various manifestations of the sublime, and the third, of beauty. The fourth examines the ways in which the sublime and the beautiful make an impact on the emotions, whilst the fifth and final section centres on the verbal arts.
Kant, who devoted much attention to the concepts of beauty and sublimity, thought sufficiently highly of Burke's study to single it out for special comment in his
Kritik der Urteilskraft (see p. 154). Whereas Burke was principally concerned with the psychology of aesthetic perception, Kant sought to determine standards whereby beauty and sublimity could be judged, and from there he went on to explore the relationship between the moral life and aesthetic sensibility. In this respect Kant was critical of Burke: "Empirical investigation [he wrote] can only show us how we judge; it cannot tell us how we ought to judge", for "if the pleasure in some object is utterly and completely invested in the attraction it has or the emotional effect it arouses, then no one may commit anyone else to his own aesthetic judgements, for each person would merely depend on the evidence of his own sense organs".(2) Schlegel was also critical, arguing that empirical judgements--if they were to have any authority -- would require the weight of majority opinion the determination of which would be an impossible task.Burke differs markedly from Longinus in his concept of the sublime (see Boulton's editorial introduction). Both agreed that the emotional impact of the sublime was intense -- even violent. Longinus's sublimity was man-made and morally uplifting. Burke's however was overwhelming, terrifying, painful; it could he man-made but was as likely to stem from the action of purely sensible phenomena on the imagination, phenomena drawn from nature, not as she ought to be, but as she is.
During the second half of the century, artists, writers (even musicians) were opening up new avenues of aesthetic experience in which Burke's sublimity is in some form or other present, whether in Anton Koch's mountainscapes, Friedrich's romantic nature scenes, Goya's visionary grotesques, Piranesi's prison studies, Goethe's novels (and above all his
Faust), Weber's operas or Beethoven's symphonies.As far as the ear is concerned, Burke seems to reserve the category of the sublime for sounds, rather than for composed music, but in fact he sets out an effective system that could be applied directly to composition (see, for example, Michaelis, pp. 202-4).
If black and white blend, soften, and unite,
A thousand ways, are there no black and white?
If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes found united, does this prove that they are the same; does it prove that they are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite and contradictory? Black and white may soften, may blend; but they are not therefore the same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each other, or with different colours, is the power of black as black, or of white as white, so strong as when each stands uniform and distinguished.
The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended with some degree of horror.(3) In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence and respect.
And ever against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs;
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out;
With wanton herd, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding surface, the unbroken continuance, the easy gradation of the beautiful in other things; and all the diversities of the several senses, with all their several affections, will rather help to throw lights from one another to finish one clear, consistent idea of the whole, than to obscure it by their intricacy and variety.
To the above-mentioned description I shall add one or two remarks. The first is, that the beautiful in music will not bear that loudness and strength of sounds which may be used to raise other passions, nor notes which are shrill or harsh or deep; it agrees best with such as are clear, even, smooth and weak. The second is that great variety and quick transitions from one measure or tone to another are contrary to the genius of the beautiful in music. Such transitions often excite mirth or other sudden and tumultuous passions but not that sinking, that melting, that languor which is the characteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards every sense. The passion excited by beauty is in fact nearer to a species of melancholy than to jollity and mirth.(5) I do not here mean to confine music to any one species of notes or tones, neither is it an art in which I can say I have any great skill. My sole design in this remark is to settle a consistent idea of beauty. The infinite variety of the affections of the soul will suggest to a good head and skilful ear a variety of such sounds as are fitted to raise them. It can be no prejudice to this, to clear and distinguish some few particulars that belong to the same class and are consistent with each other, from the immense crowd of different and sometimes contradictory ideas that rank vulgarly under the standard of beauty. And of these it is my intention to mark such only of the leading points as show the conformity of the sense of hearing, with all the other senses in the article of their pleasures.
We have observed that a species of greatness arises from the artificial infinite, and that this infinite consists in an uniform succession of great parts: we observed too that the same uniform succession had a like power in sounds. But because the effects of many things are clearer in one of the senses than in another, and that all the senses bear analogy to and illustrate one another, I shall begin with this power in sounds as the cause of the sublimity from succession is rather more obvious in the sense of hearing. And I shall here once for all observe that an investigation of the natural and mechanical causes of our passions, besides the curiosity of the subject, gives, if they are discovered, a double strength and lustre to any rules we deliver on such matters. When the ear receives any simple sound, it is struck by a single pulse of the air which makes the ear-drum and the other membranous parts vibrate according to the nature and species of the stroke. If the stroke be strong, the organ of hearing suffers a considerable degree of tension. If the stroke be repeated pretty soon after, the repetition causes an expectation of another stroke. And it must be observed that expectation itself causes a tension. This is apparent in many animals who, when they prepare for hearing any sound, rouse themselves and prick up their ears: so that here the effect of the sounds is considerably augmented by a new auxiliary, the expectation. But though after a number of strokes we expect still more, not being able to ascertain the exact time of their arrival, when they arrive they produce a sort of surprise which increases this tension yet further. For I have observed that when at any time I have waited very earnestly for some sound that returned at intervals (as the successive firing of cannon), though I fully expected the return of the sound, when it came it always made me start a little; the ear-drum suffered a convulsion and the whole body consented with it. The tension of the part thus increasing at every blow by the united forces of the stroke itself, the expectation and the surprise [are] worked up to such a pitch as to be capable of the sublime; it is brought just to the verge of pain. Even when the cause has ceased, the organs of hearing being often successively struck in a similar manner, continue to vibrate in that manner for sometime longer; this is an additional help to the greatness of the effect.
NOTES 1. See Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, ed. J. T. Boulton (London 1958). 2. Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed. G. Lehmann (Stuttgart 1966). 3. Burke pt 1, sections iii, iv and vii -- eds. 4. L'Allegro, line 135. 5. I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet musick. Shakespeare.