Boundaries and Sublimity

[Ron Price]

THE BIRTH OF SUBLIMITY



Beautiful works of art serve our underlying purposes in both cognition and morality in a way uniquely characterized by the freedom of the imagination. When it comes to the sublime in art there always lurks the abyss of the unsayable, the larger sea of the ungraspable and great discontinuities between what can’t be expressed and what can. With the sublime there also exists a tension between reason and irrationality; the stick of fear and submission, of a chastening and humility, complementing the carrot of consolation, a celebration of what is essential to human nature and a movement of the mind within and from sublimity’s complex intensity, in contrast to a restful, simple feeling aroused in the contemplation of the beautiful. -Ron Price with thanks to Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality, Cambridge UP, 1993.



This poem was written after reading several essays on aesthetics and the concepts of the sublime and the beautiful. At the back of my mind, as I wrote this poem, I had the image of the Baha’i gardens on Mt Carmel and the developments that have taken place there during the last half century. -Ron Price, 8:30 pm, Christmas Day, 1996.



The disposition of my soul is evoked

by what engages my reflective faculty,

here, making me feel sublimity, a power

that can override nature itself, a power

in my own mind that seems to drift beyond

imagination’s limitless boundaries, found

in my own autonomy, a ground for true

noble pride and humility, strengthening

the bonds of society in the realm of feelings,

of taste and of aesthetic integrity, expressed

here in nameless and inexplicable elegancies

which appeal, if I am successful, wholly

to your fancy, the enchantress of your soul,

and to my own soul where it1 is born

from depths of being.



Ron Price

25 December 1996



1 the power of sublimity

 

[Ciel]

Ron, thank you. It is beautiful.
Your words reflect as liberation in soul sense of highest form.

Beauty beyond knowing,
Beyond comparison.
Striking the heart of man
Into new revelation.
This is aliveness of truth.
Birth of reformation of subtle illumination
Pure sense of formative value and transcendence.
Progression of language revealed of the present moment.
Beautiful in exquisiteness
As a snowflake melting on the fingertips of experience.

 

[Ciel]

It resonates still;

".........a ground for true noble pride and humility.........."

".........a restful peaceful feeling aroused in contemplation of the beautiful...."

 

[Blue]

A beautiful piece of writing, Ron.

You unite the external domain of the cognitive and rational with the affective personal domain of self. The poem delineates a clear response in the soul as a result of the setting and your individual affective nature and nurture which you emphasise throughout.

It is a pity we cannot retain these feelings for very long after the experiences/perceptions that lead us to these feelings. Your poem helps in that for you, and communicates it to us.

Many thanks for sharing.

I cannot but agree with:

Beautiful works of art serve our underlying purposes in both cognition and morality in a way uniquely characterized by the freedom of the imagination. When it comes to the sublime in art there always lurks the abyss of the unsayable, the larger sea of the ungraspable and great discontinuities between what can’t be expressed and what can. With the sublime there also exists a tension between reason and irrationality; the stick of fear and submission, of a chastening and humility, complementing the carrot of consolation, a celebration of what is essential to human nature and a movement of the mind within and from sublimity’s complex intensity, in contrast to a restful, simple feeling aroused in the contemplation of the beautiful.

I would say that great Art always unites the affective and cognitive, the personal responses of the heart and the objective realities beyond self.

One without the other seems always to be of lesser value.

Aesthetics is a much misunderstood aspect of metaphysical thinking in general.

 

[Ciel]

Blue,
When you as you, and I as I, and as two very different and diverse people are touched by the same, as this, it is beautiful. And without argument.

 

[Blue]

Very true, Ciel.

 

[Ron Price]

Re: Boundaries and Sublimity: A Second Look

Thank you both for your generous responses to my poem. Sublimity is not a subject that has occupied my prose-poetry directly and consciously as a subject very frequently, only occasionally in the 25 years of my writing. But in appreciation for your kind and thoughtful replies I post this item below which I hope you enjoy:
____________
EXPLORER

Price sees himself as an explorer of spiritual immensities in the context of the everyday, his everyday, life. He likes to peer at these mysteries, contemplate the eternities and hurl them into his readers’ realms for them to grasp, to play with. He is not unlike a mountain-guide on the lookout for the trail of a star. He stops, concentrates his attention, describes the star, sets it in some analytical setting and moves on. He is trying to lead his readers and himself toward the law of oneness. He paints his discoveries with a wide variety of colours which he has at hand: cosmic, religious, human, sensuous, philosophical, sociological, psychological, et cetera. He records the inevitable struggle that is life, his life, lives and what his experience suggests. His heart knows, with Voltaire, that man seriously reflects when left alone. He reflects in the framework of a wondrous chain of being that is subject to one law. Price places things tenderly, quietly, into his readers’ minds for them to see, to understand, as simply as he can. But his readers must be quiet and alone, if serious reflection is to take place; these conditions are not always easy to attain. For some, though, it would seem that these are not the prerequisites for reflection at all.-Ron Price with thanks to Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata: The Majority and Other Writings, W.W. Norton and Co. NY, 1970(1961), pp.11-12.



My muse calls for a deeper feeling,

perhaps some susceptibility, unknown;

some primal impulse, inspirational matrix,

some excellence to be reflected here,

some richer vitality drawn from my own being

or thought: some of the visions of men

down through history’s ages, kindred spirits and souls

of great measure, a music given to humankind,

a sublimity of sympathy, subtle mysteries,

thoughts that shift, combine and separate

like clouds with a ray of celestial beauty,

a spark of genius and a germ-plasm of creativity.



Ron Price

28 July 2000