Blake conveys this great fearful presence is by repetition in the first line: ‘Tyger, Tyger’. ‘The Tyger’ by Blake is an example of a sublime Romantic poem that produces terror in its subject matter.

Lets focus on a Romantic poem that everyone knows very well. First and foremost is ‘terror’, which is described as the ‘ruling principle of the sublime’. The reason that art is able to create and communicate the sublime is because it is at the distance necessary for ‘terrible objects’ to be delightful instead of dangerous.Ī wild animal in a painting or poem is able to inspire fear and awe is elicited on the part of the viewer or reader because they can appreciate the danger and power it possesses without being susceptible to harm (other than the occasional paper cut perhaps).īurke attributes the satisfaction one gains from sublime art to the consideration that what we are observing ‘is no more than a fiction’ but the ‘nearer it approaches the reality, and the further it removes us from all idea of fiction, the more perfect is its power’.īurkey-boy categorizes the sublime in various ways. ‘Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.’ Pay particular attention to the last clause: Here’s Burke’s definition of the sublime. The sublime then arises from a confrontation of ‘danger or pain’, as long as they are at ‘certain distances’ and with ‘certain modifications’, at which point it is regarded as ‘delightful’. My man Burke argues that the highest degree of pain is more affecting than the highest degree of pleasure. ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich is sublime as fuck. It sounds like a hefty tome but it’s actually a really enjoyable read and one of the few books I sleep with under my pillow (along with my dagger and a piece of the true cross). Edmund Burke nailed the definition in his work A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). The best definition of “sublime”, and one that influenced many of our favourite Romantic poets, comes from a bloke named Burke. You know, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and all that good shit. We’re talking about the period of time in literature from around 1800 to 1850. And by ‘Romantic poetry’, we’re not talking about the sappy stuff that teenage girls write in pink ink. “That picture’s sublime.” “That doughnut was freaking sublime.” “Darling, wasn’t that orgy simply sublime?” But what does “sublime” really mean? Is it really just an adjective for “very good?” Well, not really… Let’s take a quick look at what sublime really means in the context of Romantic poetry.

Sublime sublime