Twenty-first Century Sublime

by Steve Neumann

Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 

—William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

The sublime ain’t what it used to be. The word used to designate those human experiences that were best described by words like exalted, elevated, majestic, magnificent, glorious — a sampling from my Merriam-Webster dictionary. In times past, the feeling for the sublime was evoked by the myriad phenomena of nature: mountains, oceans, landscape vistas, atmospheric cataclysms, large exotic animals, etc. But where is our feeling for the sublime today? Surely many of us still find it in the aforementioned phenomena, but our modern wonderment at nature may have become somewhat tempered by the ubiquity of scientific explanations. 

So it seems to me that our feeling for the sublime, if it is to happen at all, will have to come more and more from culture. Of what does our twenty-first century culture consist? For the majority of Americans, at least, culture is primarily the products of, and engagement with, the entertainment industry: popular music, movies, television, etc. [1] In the following sections, I want to examine certain aspects and permutations of the sublime, one example of where I’ve personally found it in popular culture, and what a positive relationship to a newly-conceived notion of the sublime might look like for us. 

I. The Sublime 

In contrast to our experience of beauty, which includes a pronounced element of pleasure, our experience of sublimity also involves a significant feeling of fear. And whereas pleasure is associated with familiarity, desirability, predictability, etc., fear carries connotations of risk, uncertainty, and aversion. 

The sense of fear normally arises due to the dangerousness of the object evoking it: for instance, we can easily drown in the vast, tumultuous ocean; and that great white shark circling us can easily tear us to pieces. In other words, we are both drawn to the otherness of the shark — where our sense of curiosity, or the anticipated satisfaction of that curiosity, elicits a feeling of pleasure — and repelled by the mortal peril its enormous jaws and razor-fine teeth represent for us. The danger involved is a danger to our continued bodily existence, which plays into the “flight” part of our fight-or-flight instinct. 

In addition to the rational fear of impending physical harm noted above, and the irrational fear of the unknown that a sublime object or experience presents us with, there is another type of fear that can be perceived, though perhaps at a near-subconscious level: the loss of our sense of Self; and this is a psychological fear, which manifests itself as a less imminent and intense version of the physical fear. Though, within a naturalistic worldview, the duality of the physical / psychological is, at bottom, the same fear: the fear of nonexistence. And what I mean by the “loss of our sense of self” is not that which is identified as the goal of the spiritual practices of Hinduism or Buddhism, but that Self which is experienced as inopportunely nullified after having experienced itself favorably as a more or less stable and unified entity up until that point.

Innumerable poems, myths and spiritual memoirs have all delivered a common yet curious message with regard to the sublime: the incorrigible indifference, the intractable independence, irritates us like a grain of sand in the craw of an oyster. And if the human being persists in contemplating the sublime object, eventually she may reach a point where her own sense of coherence is thrown into doubt. She comes to understand, or is forced to understand, that she is not the center of the universe; and that, not only has the universe likely existed for an infinity before her, it will likely continue existing for an infinity after her. And while she may possess a good comprehension of her own embodied boundaries and limitations, her lack of comprehension of the apparent boundlessness of the universe unsettles her, at least initially. 

In the relevant spiritual disciplines, this state of being is intentionally sought out; and once it is achieved there may be an overwhelming sense of resignation and peace. But the effect of a fortuitous encounter with the sublime tends to elicit more existential dread than Nirvana-like equanimity. I think this is mainly because our family environment, our educational system, our social milieu, the larger popular culture — all of them collude to erect in each individual a cogent, consistent and persistent identity; in other words, a strong sense of Self. Society has a vested interest in having its members being stable and (relatively) predictable selves. 

II. The Sublimation of the Sublime

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche describes what he considered the defining two aspects of classical Greek culture: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The latter is represented as the kind of “will to life” Schopenhauer described: a blind, incessantly groping, irrational will; whereas the former aspect is the form-giving tendency that seeks to create a harmony out of the chaos. Nietzsche argued that Classical Greek culture was born of the conflict of these two opposing forces. What does this have to do with the sublime? I propose that the Dionysian “will to life” itself can be experienced has a sublime phenomenon; and what’s more, that the perpetual clash of the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies in and around us offers us an opportunity to sublimate the sublime.

Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, realize that what we call our will, whether free or not, is in constant motion. I’m not talking about our “willpower”; I’m talking in a more general sense here. As an example, anyone who has tried to practice mindfulness meditation immediately realizes how nearly impossible it is to focus on only one thing without the constant chatter of the mind forcing itself into one’s awareness. The human mind is restless, a cheeky monkey; even when unconscious in a sleeping state our mind is active. Whether we are engaged in our work, trying to pay attention to our partner or family, or even when driving — our mind involuntarily wanders. So we don’t control our will in the way we believe we do. In a sense, it controls us. It’s not my intention here to get into the endlessly forked path of human agency and philosophy of mind — that would take us too far afield of the main topic of this post. But hopefully I gave you an idea of the nature of the will I’m talking about. 

This Dionysian will, being something we don’t control, can therefore be acknowledged as something other, and as something other working through us. And it’s the combination of this feeling of otherness (and the proximity of this otherness) and lack of control that disquiets us. And though I described this will as a “will to life,” I think a more accurate description is Nietzsche’s phrase “will to power,” where power is understood as expansion, incorporation — in a word, growth — and not mere domination of the weaker by the stronger. 

The Dionysian will, possessing a persistent independence and indifference, can then be conceived of as a sublime object, akin to the great white shark I mentioned previously. And if we conceive of the Dionysian will as a will to power as defined above, it contains the duality of pleasure and fear that is characteristic of our response to sublime phenomena: it simultaneously attracts and repels us. On the one hand, we begin to be vaguely uneasy about the source and intentions of this will; while on the other hand we are delighted by the feeling of power and excited by the possibilities that power represents. 

If the Dionysian will is the Energy that William Blake speaks of in the epigram to this post, then the Apollonian tendency in us is our ability to reason. Essentially, it’s the age-old dichotomy of Reason vs. Impulse. But it’s the integration of the Apollonian and Dionysian in us that is the goal of the sublimation of the sublime. I’m using the term “sublimation” in what I believe to be Nietzsche’s sense: human reason arranging and employing the chaos of impulses in a way that gives the human being an unaccustomed power over herself, and not an extirpation of the impulses. The Dionysian provides the flow of life and the Apollonian provides the direction, like water through a sluiceway. Energy may be the essence of life, with the potential for both creation and destruction, while Reason is the defining, limiting and containing boundary of that force. Energy is the splitting of an atom; Reason is the nuclear reactor. So it’s the wise exploitation of this partnership that redeems life for us. 

When we truly experience the sublime, our sense of weakness and vulnerability is brought into stark relief. We realize how impotent we really are, how small, how insignificant in the big picture of things. Additionally, for those of us who have extricated ourselves from a religio-moral interpretation of the world, our previous values seem insufficient or even worthless. This is the experience of nihilism, as defined by Nietzsche:

Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in [aimlessness] and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. Nihilism appears at this point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any “meaning” in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.

—The Will to Power, section 55

The vital question, therefore, is: how does one overcome this nihilism? How do we now redeem life? According to Nietzsche, the Greeks had their art of tragedy, where the Greek spectator was able to viscerally experience the turbulent vicissitudes of life brought about by the Dionysian will, but within the shielding structure of the performance of the tragedy on stage. A rough analogy might be witnessing the awesome power of an atomic bomb from a safe distance. But what do we moderns have? We still have tragedy, I suppose, in our plays, films and TV shows; but it lacks the requisite profundity. Or is it that we have become sort of desensitized to the healing effects of tragedy through the sterilized ubiquity of the tragic art form in our entertainment industry? And is the sublime today more akin to shallow beauty, or even a cheap hedonism?  

If we take culture to consist primarily of the sum of the plastic arts, visual arts and music; and if we consider the sublimation of the sublime to be the prime means of putting the power of redemption back in our earthly hands, then we must make a concerted effort to recognize, accept and exploit the relevant aspects that can elevate life for us if we are to experience an enduring sense of triumphant living, of living heroically as vulnerable embodied beings in a natural world. We simply have to stand in a different relation to culture. It is this desire to have a positive relationship to the sublime that animates Religious Naturalism:

... Religious Naturalism (spiritual naturalism) includes the idea of a sound emotional life... We sense and appreciate an essence, a grandeur and a magnificence in Nature, in which we take great joy. We are awed by its vastness and complexity. We revere these qualities but do not worship them. Nature is the interrelated conditions and processes for our emergence as living and thinking beings. We respect this context and are committed to an environmental ethic that honors it. 

I generally chafe at the idea of organized movements, so I don’t identify myself as a Religious Naturalist. But it’s this notion of participation mystique that is similar to Nietzsche’s conception of what the Greek spectator experienced while watching the Greek tragedies. While I stated before that when one contemplates a sublime object one feels the foundation of one’s being tremble and shake, this losing oneself in the appreciation of the magnificence of the sublime can also paradoxically serve to bolster the feeling of synthetic unity with the natural world that Religious Naturalists and others seek. 

It’s the emotional response here that is decisive. We tend to experience both positive (pleasure) and negative (fear) emotions in the face of the sublime. Concurrently, the continual cycle of the Apollonian / Dionysian clash also produces a mixture of emotions, where the Dionysian will may be judged negatively because of the strife it tends to cause, while the Apollonian shaping may be judged positively since it brings order to the chaos. But it’s the distinguishing characteristic of this sublime interplay that, when harnessed, creates the difference between merely living and living powerfully. The idea of sublimating the sublime is the greatest stimulus of life par excellence.

III. The Music of the Sublime

I’ve been drawn to the sublime since before I knew what it was. From a young age, I was very in tune with the natural world, constantly outside exploring in all seasons. Though I was of course impressed by natural phenomena like mountains, oceans and storms, I was particularly drawn to birds, especially birds of prey. But I’ve found the sublime, as I’ve defined it in this post, in a most unlikely place: the music of Led Zeppelin, and specifically in their live performances. I’ve been fortunate enough to have access to dozens of their live shows when they were at the height of their power. I’ve been listening to them for about twenty-five years now; it’s the element of the sublime in their performances that sustains that interest. 

I realize it may seem improbable or difficult to understand or even identify what in their performances was “sublime,” so let me give a little background. The founder of the group, and the genius behind the music, Jimmy Page, has always been notoriously press-shy; but there are some tidbits of insight into his artistic philosophy that can be gleaned from the few interviews that are out there. An art school student, he often talked about Led Zeppelin’s music in terms of “light and shade.” As the famous rock journalist, Cameron Crowe recounts:

At Page’s home, [Page and Plant] explored each other’s tastes by playing favorite records — everything from Buddy Guy to the Incredible String Band to Muddy Waters and Elvis. Then Page broke out an odd choice. It was Joan Baez’s dramatic version of the ballad, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” Page outlined a plan for a band that could play a song like that. “I’d like to play it heavy,” he said, “but with a lot of light and shade.”

And Robert Plant recently opined: “So for every big, strong, flamboyant moment, there would be, within it and around it, some kind of subtlety that set us apart.” Here’s Plant describing the genesis of what is arguably the most recognizable song in rock n’ roll history, “Stairway to Heaven”:

“Yeah, I just sat next to Pagey while he was playing it through. It was done very quickly. It took a little working out, but it was a very fluid, unnaturally easy track. It was almost as if–uh-oh–it just had to be gotten out at that time. There was something pushing it, saying ‘you guys are okay, but if you want to do something timeless, here’s a wedding song for you.”

In addition to Plant describing the preternatural feeling of necessity in creating that song, he also exemplifies the Dionysian will working through the artist when he says things like “I can’t stand to see the grass grow under any artist’s feet, I want them to constantly create and recreate.” 

While the band’s studio recordings exhibit the yin-yang light and shade dynamic that drove its members, their live performances were alchemical crucibles of experimental improvisation. The relentless nature of the Dionysian will was on nightly display. They never played the same song in exactly the same way. To be fair, sometimes this experimentalism went awry — whether it was due to drug use or the rigors of their exhausting touring schedule, who knows. But most of the time it worked, and it worked gloriously. 

What’s abundantly evident in the best of these performances, and what excites me the most, is the dynamic battle between the lavishly fecund Dionysian creativity constantly bumping up against the Apollonian structure of each song. It’s visceral, and you can feel it play out as it threatens to burst apart at one moment only to coalesce in the next. It’s like a herd of wild animals scattering anarchically over the plains, only to be reigned in again into a coordinated whole. And the vitality and fluidity of the improvisation between the four elements of the band — the drums, bass, guitar and vocals — generates a discordia concors that lifts it out of the context of a mere musical performance and into a novel cultural experience of the sublime. Page describes it thusly:

The motto of the group is definitely ‘ever onward.’ If there ever is to be a total analysis, it’s that. The fact is that it’s like a chemical fusion… there’s so much ESP involved in it. It sounds pretentious, but it’s true. That’s just what it is. When there are three people playing on stage, instrumentally, and I’m in the middle of a staccato thing, and [Bonham] just for some unknown reasons happens to be there doing the same beats on the snare drum… that sort of thing is definitely a form of trans-state… it is sort of communication on that other plane.

IV. The Twenty-first Century Sublime

In a way, what has traditionally been called “spirit” can be re-conceived as being born of the conflict between the Dionysian will to power and the Apollonian desire for structure and harmony: wholehearted engagement with this conflict moves one beyond mere bodily demands and concerns and propels one into a transfigured state of being. So the encounter with the sublime doesn’t have to be merely an experience that happens to us; it can be the defining experience of our lives, discoverable in our common culture, and can fortify and redeem life by allowing us to live creatively in auspicious consonance with the inevitable adversities of that life. 

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[1] For simplicity’s sake, I am also including “social technologies” like social media, online gaming, and the Internet in my conception of culture.