A British Literature homework assignment: respond to A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, by Edmund Burke. All quotations are his.
The ocean entrances me and speaks fear into every ebb and flow of my thoughts. If left alone in its center, I suppose I would die of fear before thirst. In small, restrained doses, the ocean may show itself as somewhat docile, even lovely, but as a whole, as I will show, the ocean is an epitome of the sublime. I do not mean to say that all snippets are at all times sublime, or that each of those is sublime to the utmost extent when it is sublime. I mean to say that the ocean, if it gives its tourist a certain unabashed view of itself, can have wrapped around it certain sublimity “not preferred to death.”
The head that raises itself to me first is that encompassing, unending power in the waters. Power looks at me and boasts, and though I have yet to be its helpless victim, the sober truth of my fragility is unchangeable. “I know of nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power.” Is not the ocean powerful? Are not liners and cities and entire coasts destroyed by furious fists of waves? The idea of rag-doll helplessness amidst the waters causes a passionate astonishment, full of horror. If one were forced to tilt his head upward to take in the scale and foreboding might of a towering wave (the last thing he would ever see), he would agree with Burke:
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. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other.
One’s view of the imminent wave gloating before and racing toward him would implant that impassioned astonishment. I daresay the thought of escape would not enter the mind, not because escape is impossible, but because thoughts unrelated to death, drowning, or destruction would be absent. Everything is suppressed. He could only look in astonishment and wait.
Further, the ocean’s obscurity is cause for a meek step backwards. “To make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary.” Look down over a deck’s railing. Stare into black waters. What wetted monsters swarm below? Quick and hungry, we are but meals to them; at best, we are but pets or toys. And of the waters themselves, the time of their stirring and the advent of the squall are unknown to us, obscure. We are but patients laying in deathbeds, awaiting the cold and unknown black. But contrarily, take your mind to clear, warm shallows. A tropical wade erases doubt and washes fear. Through the waters, we can count our toes in the foreground of the white sand canvas. “When we know the extent of any danger, [and in the clear shallows there appears to be none]… a great deal of apprehension vanishes… How greatly night adds to our dread.” And depth is as night! When deep enough, the purest water is as the darkest night.
Regarding the ocean’s vastness, “Greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime.” Equally true is the purport that “height is less grand than depth; and… we are more struck at looking down from a precipice,” which in this case is our lonely ship’s deck. Again, look over the railing. Contemplate a dropped coin, sinking through the depths. A day could pass before it hit the floor (and even there, creatures lie in wait!). Dancing and drifting slowly, it is helpless, at the mercy of subsurface torrents. As to the ocean’s length, look to the hazy horizon. See the actual curvature of our unending sphere! From our west coast, say a hello to the Orient and wait the eighteen long hours for a response (provided two strong voices). Though not actually so, the ocean seems infinite. We can not always see its end, nor, turning on heel, its beginning. Clear or murky, we cannot see its bottom. “Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime.” In this infinity, our ship is a thimble, and our bodies, grains of sand. But truest and most intimidating: the ocean does not know the fear that we know all too well.
As I said earlier, the ocean does not always show itself as sublime, nor is it sublime to the highest degree when it is in fact sublime. The ocean may be beautiful and lovely at a small, beached vista or a cove imposing restriction of sight on either side. “The objects of love are spoken of under diminutive epithets.” We may go to a little strip of beach and enjoy a picnic, but I would be hard-pressed if, in the immense expanse of unknown depths and crashing gales and unseen edges, I could grin and enjoy much of anything. Similarly, given that our little strip of beach has calm waters, beauty could be seen. Its smooth tide comes in. Gradual waves float onto the shore. “Beautiful bodies are not composed of angular parts.” But it is not so, the further one moves away from shore and into the ocean’s enraged heart. There, there is tumult. We feel the sharp spray of waves broken upon our smooth hull. And even at rest, the surface is flat, unchanging, with no variation, let alone gradual variation. It is endless expanse.
“The torments which we may be made to suffer, are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than an pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest.” And so the terror of the storm is more moving than a hundred picnics on a short stretch of sunny beach. The ocean is the sublime. Oh, to condense all our images of oceans into a palpable vision! with their solid faces of rage, their deep secrets divulged only to the angry leviathans and unscrupulous sirens, and their sheer, unrelenting tempests. I could not bear such concentration. “There are very few pains… which are not preferred to death.” The ocean is one such pain.
