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Toward an Ecological Sublime
Author(s): Christopher HittSource: New Literary History, Vol. 30, No. 3, Ecocriticism (Summer, 1999), pp. 603-623Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057557 .
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Toward
an
Ecological
Sublime
Christopher
Hitt
I
In his recent essay "The Trouble with Wilderness," William Cronon
offers
a
provocative critique
of
the
contemporary
inclination
to
idealize wild
nature,
an
inclination
that,
as
he
righdy
notes,
is
largely
indebted
to
the
aesthetic of the
sublime
popularized
by
European
Romanticism.1
Calling
into
question
the
"habits of
thinking
that
flow
from this
complex
cultural construction
called wilderness"
(TW 81),
Cronon
suggests
that
in
the sublime
tradition
nature comes
to
represent
an
enticing
"flight
from
history":
"the
false
hope
of
an
escape
from
responsibility,
the
illusion that
we can
somehow
wipe
clean
the
slate of
our
past
and
return
to
the
tabula
rasa
that
supposedly
existed before
we
began
to leave our marks on the world. The dream of an unworked
natural
landscape
is
very
much
the
fantasy
of
people
who have
never
themselves had
to
work the land
to
make
a
living"
(TW 80).
For
Cronon,
the
fundamental
problem
with
the
concept
of
sublime
wilderness
is
that
it
depends
on
and
reinscribes
the
notion
of
nature's
otherness,
of
the
separation
between the
human
and
nonhuman
realms.
Although
Cronon
supposes
his
environmentally-conscious
readership
will find
his
view
"heretical"
(TW
69),
his
impulse
to
critique
the
sublime
is
hardly
new.
Indeed,
it
has
been
the
overwhelming
tendency
of
literary
criticism
over
the
past
few
decades
to
evaluate
the
aesthetic
of
the
sublime
primarily
as
an
expression
of
asymmetrical
power
relationships:
between
human and
nature,
self and
other,
reader
and
text,
male
and
female,
conqueror
and
oppressed.
Thus,
historically-oriented
critics
such
as
Laura
Doyle
and
Sara
Suleri
have
posited
a
relationship
between
the
ideology
of
the
sublime
and
eighteenth-century
British
imperialism;
the
Marxist
Terry Eagle
ton
has
exposed
the sublime
as an
instrument of
the
bourgeois subject;
and
feminist
critics such
as
Patricia
Yaeger,
Anne
Mellor,
and
Barbara
Claire
Freeman
have
indicted
the
sublime
for
its
endorsement
of
masculine
power.2
Even
those
writing
from less
overtly
political perspectives acknowledge that the discourse of the sublime has
operated
to
confirm the
authority
and
autonomy
of
a
subject
over
and
against
a
threatening
other.
Paul
de
Man,
though
his
eventual
aim
is
to
New
Literary
History,
1999,
30:
603-623
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604
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
show how such
descriptions
are a function of their
linguistic
structures,
notes
that
in
Kant's formulation
of
the
sublime,
the
imagination
"takes
on
the
form
of
a
reconquered
mastery,
a
reconquered
superiority
over
a
nature
of
which
the
direct
threat is
overcome."3
Responding
to
(but
also
writing
in
the tradition
of)
this
deconstructionist
reading,
Frances
Ferguson
makes
a
similar observation: "the
sublime,"
she
declares,
"establishes
nature
as
the instrument for
the
production
of
individual
ity."4
And
Neil
Hertz,
in
an
essay
informed
by
psychoanalysis,
concludes
that
the
experience
of
the
sublime
can
be
seen
as
a
"strateg[y]
designed
to
consolidate
a
reassuringly operative
notion
of the
self."5
This
brief
sampling
of
scholarship,
while
far
from
exhaustive,
is
generally
represen
tative
of
the
tenor
of
recent
literary
criticism
on
the
sublime.
Still,
as
a
sustained
critique
of
sublimity
from
a
position
of environ
mental
advocacy,
Cronon's
analysis
has
few
precedents.
Perhaps
the
only
literary
critic
to
consider
explicitly
and
at
some
length
the
relationship
between
the
ideology
of the sublime and
our
conception
of the natural
environment
is
Donald
Pease,
writing
in the
mid-1980s,
before
eco
criticism
had
begun
to
crystallize
into
a
coherent
field.
His
essay
"Sublime
Politics"
argues
in
part
that the sublime
as
it
was
understood
in
the nineteenth-century United States served to authorize a policy of
environmental devastation:
"Through
the subtle
turns
of
the
American
sublime,
the liberal
in
taking
axe
and
hammer
to
the
virgin
land
could,
with
childlike
innocence,
proclaim
that
only
through
destruction
of
Nature's
bounty
could he
feel
by
doing
what
nature
commanded
as
if
he
were
truly
in
touch
with nature's
will."6
If
we
accept
Cronon's
premise
that the Romantic
aesthetic of the sublime continues
to
inform
our
present-day conceptions
of
the natural
world,
then
critiques
like
Pease's
would
seem
all
the
more
essential
to
ecocriticism,
a
discourse
that
generally
professes
(along
with,
for
example,
feminist
and Marxist
studies)
a self-conscious interest in its relevance to "real"
contemporary
political
issues.
Yet
ecocritics,
even
those
(few)
who
also
identify
themselves
as
scholars of
British
Romanticism,
have had
surprisingly
little
to
say
about
the sublime.
Jonathan
Bate
makes
virtually
no
mention of
it in his book
Romantic
Ecology:
Wordsworth
and
the Environmental
Tradition;7
likewise
Karl
Kroeber,
in
his
Ecological
Literary
Criticism: Romantic
Imagining
and
the
Biology
of
Mind,
entirely ignores
the sublime
except
to
register
his
complaint
that it is
undeserving
of
the
generous
critical
attention
it
receives:
critics'
"fascination"
with
it,
he
muses
in
a
footnote,
"seems
to
me
another manifestation
of the Cold
War
mentality,
particularly
in
its
excluding
serious consideration
of
beauty."8
This
dismissal
of the
sublime
is
in
fact
consistent with
Cronon's
stance,
a
point
that is
more
clear
in
Kroeber's
protest
that,
"[c]ontrary
to
the
claims of these
en
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TOWARD
AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
605
thusiasts of
'the
sublime,' romantic poets
at
their best.
.
.
were
neither
seekers after
an
unattainable transcendence
nor
anxiety-ridden
proph
ets
of
nihilism"
(ELC2).
Regardless
of whether
we
accept
Kroeber's
apparent
association of
sublimity
with Cold War
polemicism
and
world-denying
"nihilism,"
the
reluctance of ecocritics
to
engage
literary
representations
of
the sublime
seems even more
like
a
shortcoming
when
we
consider
the
centrality
of
nature's role
in these
representations.
Nature,
indeed,
seems
inextrica
bly
woven
into
the fabric
of
the sublime
as
presented by
its
two most
influential
eighteenth-century
theorists,
Edmund
Burke
and
Immanuel
Kant. Burke, in his
Philosophical Enquiry
into the
Origin of
Our Ideas
of
the
Sublime
and
Beautiful,
describes
the
sublime
experience
in terms
of
predominantly
natural
imagery:
it
"comes
upon
us
in
the
gloomy
forest,
in
the
howling
wilderness,
in
the
form
of
the
lion,
the
tiger,
the
panther,
or
rhinoceros."9
Kant's
Critique
of
Judgment
goes
one
step
further
by
stipulating
the
necessity
of
nature
(or
representations
thereof)
to
the
sublime
experience, granting
that
art
can
evoke
a
feeling
of the
sublime
only
insofar
as
it
recapitulates
nature.10 At
the moment
of
the
sublime,
Kant
writes,
we
"measure
ourselves
against
the
apparent
almightiness
of
nature":
"Bold,
overhanging,
and,
as
it
were,
threatening
rocks,
thunder
clouds
piled
up
the
vault
of
heaven,
borne
along
with
flashes and
peals,
volcanoes
in
all
their
violence
of
destruction,
hurricanes
leaving
desola
tion in their
track,
the
boundless
ocean
rising
with rebellious
force,
the
high
waterfall
of
some
mighty
river,
and
the
like,
make
our
power
of
resistance
of
trifling
moment
in
comparison
with
their
might"
(CJ110).
Thus both
Burke
and
Kant
envision the
sublime
as
a
disorienting
or
overwhelming
confrontation
with
a
natural
object.
It is
this
version
of
the
sublime,
involving
a
dialectic between self
and
nature,
which
is
most
visible
in
the
Romantic
sublime
exemplified
by
the
poetry
of
Wordsworth,
and which Cronon has in mind when he traces the genealogy of our
modern
notions of
wilderness.
It
seems,
then,
that there
has
been
a
scholarly
neglect
on
the
part
of
ecocriticism
to
interrogate
the
discourse of the
sublime.
If
critics
are
right?if
in
fact
the
sublime
encounter
with
the wild
otherness of
nature
has
functioned
to
reinforce
or
ratify
our
estrangement
from
it?then
surely
it
is
important
that
we
try
to
understand
why.
More than
merely
redressing
that
neglect,
however,
I
want
to
argue
that
we
would
be
premature
to
dismiss
wholesale
the
aesthetic
of
sublimity
that
we
have
inherited.
For
although
the
sublime
is
not
without its
ideological
freight,
I am far from convinced that this
ideology
is
fundamentally
or
intrinsically
maleficent. On
the
contrary,
I
believe
the
concept
of
the
sublime
offers
a
unique
opportunity
for
the
realization
of
a
new,
more
responsible
perspective
on
our
relationship
with
the natural
environment.
It
is
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606
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
revealing that even Cronon, at moments throughout his essay but
especially
in the
following
passage,
betrays
his
ambivalence about
renouncing
the ideal
of
sublime
nature:
"On
the
one
hand,"
he
begins,
the notion
of
wilderness
is
dangerous
because
it
underwrites
humans'
separateness
from,
and
ultimately
superiority
over,
the natural world.
"On
the other
hand,"
he
continues,
I also think that it is
no
less
crucial for
us
to
recognize
and honor
nonhuman
nature
as
a
world
we
did
not
create,
a
world with
its
own
independent,
nonhuman
reasons
for
being
as
it is. The
autonomy
of nonhuman
nature seems
to me to be an
indispensable
corrective to human
arrogance.
Any
way
of
looking
at nature
that
helps
us
remember?as
wilderness tends
to
do?that the interests
of
people
are not
necessarily
identical
to
those of
every
other
creature
or
of
the
earth
itself is
likely
to
foster
responsible
behavior.
To
the
extent
that wilderness
has served
as
an
important
vehicle
for
articulating deep
moral
values
regarding
our
obligations
and
responsibilities
to
the nonhuman
world,
I
would
not want to
jettison
the contributions it
has
made
to our
culture's
ways
of
thinking
about
nature.
(TW
87;
italics
in
original)
What
are
we
to
make of this
rather
starding
concession? Cronon's
own
answer is essentially to qualify (or clarify) his original claim: "Wilderness
gets
us
into trouble
only
if
we
imagine
that
this
experience
of wonder
and
otherness
is limited
to
the
remote
corners
of
the
planet,
or
that
it
somehow
depends
on
pristine
landscapes
we
ourselves
do
not
inhabit"
(TW
88).
But this
answer
appears
vulnerable
on
both
theoretical
and
practical grounds:
theoretical,
in that it does
indeed
seem
"heretical"
to
recommend
(as
Cronon
proceeds
to
do)
that
a
tree
in
a
garden
be
granted
equal
status
to
a
tree
in
an
ancient
forest.
This
sounds
to
me
like
an
open
door
to
unlimited
clear-cutting.
Practical,
in that
it
seems
extremely
unlikely
that
a
man-made
garden
could
ever
be
capable
of
inspiring
the sense of wonder, awe, and otherness that an
old-growth
forest
could.
Rather,
I
think Cronon's
vacillation
is best
understood
as
instantiating
a
fundamental
incongruity
that
has
always
characterized
the
structure
of
the
sublime,
at
least in its
conventional
versions.
Crudely put,
the
contradiction
of the sublime
is
that
it has tended
to
include
both
humbling
fear and
ennobling
validation
for
the
perceiving
subject.
Ever
since the
eighteenth
century,
critics and
readers
alike
have
generally
paid
more
attention
to
the latter than
to
the former.
But
humility
before
nature
has
consistendy
been
an
elementary
part
of the natural
sublime. Kant
writes
that
in
experiencing
the
sublime
we
perceive
"our
faculty
of
resistance
as
insignificandy
small in
comparison
with
[nature's]
might,"11
recalling
Burke's
statement
that
"we shrink
into
the
minuteness of
our own
nature,
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TOWARD
AN
ECOLOGICAL SUBLIME
607
and
are,
in
a
manner,
annihilated"
(PE 68).
Kant
adds
that "the
irresistibil
ity
of the
might
of
nature
forces
upon
us
the
recognition
of
our
physical
helplessness
as
beings
of
nature"
(CJ
111).
Part
of the
sublime
experience,
in
other
words,
is
the realization
that
we are
mortal
creatures,
"beings
of
nature" whose
lives
are
entirely
dependent
on
forces
greater
than
we are.
The
mere
fact
that
humility?which
Kant calls
a
"sublime
temper
of
the mind"
(CJ
114),
and which
we
could
justly
call the
cornerstone
of
any
environmental ethic?is
cited
as a
prerequisite
to
the
sublime
would,
perhaps,
by
itself
suffice
to
justify
a
r??valuation
of
the
current
ecocritical
stance.
That wonder
and
awe are
also
part
of the
package,
to
say nothing of the consequent "admiration" and "respect" cited by both
Burke
(PE
57)
and Kant
(CJ
91),
can
only
enhance the
possibility
that
the
sublime
may,
after
all,
be
worth
saving. My
starting point,
that
is,
for
proposing
a
reconfigured
version
of the
sublime12?an
"ecological
sublime"?is
the
recognition
that the
traditional
natural
sublime,
for
all
its
problems,
involves
what
look
to
us
like ecocentric
principles.
In
imagining
an
ecological
sublime,
we
would
need
to
preserve
these
(and
any
other)
positive
aspects
of
the
conventional sublime
while
identifying
and
critiquing
its
negative
aspects.
In
order
to
do
so,
however,
it is
necessary
to
confront
head-on
the
problem posed by
its
contradictory
structure.
II
Theorists
of the
sublime from
Longinus13
onward
have
conceived of
the sublime
in
oxymoronic
terms.
Burke
had
ample precedent
in
classifying
"delightful
horror"
as
"the
most
genuine
effect,
and
truest
test
of
the
sublime"
(PE
73),
as
did
Kant
in
defining
the
sublime
as
"at
once
a
feeling
of
displeasure
...
and
a
simultaneously awakened pleasure" (CJ
106).
Of
the
eighteenth-century
theorists,
it is
Kant
who
offers what
is
perhaps
the
most
illuminating
(if
deeply problematic)
explanation
of
this
modulation,
and
it is
instructive
for
us
to
examine
his
"Analytic
of
the Sublime"
in
The
Critique
ofJudgment
In
a
well-known
passage,
Kant
writes
that
the
sublime
is
"brought
about
by
the
feeling
of
a
momentary
check
to
the
vital
forces
followed
at
once
by
a
discharge
all
the
more
powerful"
(CJ
91).
This
account
implies
(against
his
use
of
the word
"simultaneously"
above)
that
the
experience
is
diachronic?a
"move
ment
of
the mind"
(CJ
121),
as
he
later
puts
it,
rather
than
an
instantaneous reaction. De Man has commented on the
artificiality
of
Kant's
tendency
throughout
the
Critique
to
narrativize the
sublime
moment
in
this
way;14
yet
artificial
or
not,
this
temporal
model
provides
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608
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
a useful heuristic device for a consideration of the
paradoxical
character
of
sublimity.
In
his
study
The Romantic
Sublime,
Thomas Weiskel
elaborates
on
the
"structure
of
Romantic
transcendence"
as
it
is
mapped
out
by
Kant
by
dividing
the
sublime
moment
into three
"phases
or
economic states":
a
normal,
essentially
pre-sublime
stage
in
which
"the
mind
is
in
a
determinate
relation
to
the
object";
then
a
sort
of
rupture
in
which
a
disequilibrium
between
mind
and
object
is
introduced;
and
finally
a
"reactive
phase"
in
which
equilibrium
is
restored.15
Reading
Kant
with
this
structure
in
mind
helps
us
to
isolate
the
moment
of
peripety
in
Kant's narrative?the
moment
when the
"disequilibrium"
of
humility
gives
way
to
a
compensatory
reaction-formation.
In
effect,
it
allows
us
to
salvage
a
good
part
of
Kant's
analytic,
to
avoid
throwing
out
the Kantian
baby
with
the
bathwater.16
According
to
the
Critique,
the
sublime
experience
begins
with the
apprehension
of
a
natural
object
which
the
imagination
is
unable
to
grasp.
The result
is
a
kind
of
cognitive
dissonance,
a
rift between
perception
and
conception.
This
rift
is
then
overcome
by
the
triumphant
emergence
of
reason,
revealing
to
us,
finally,
our
"pre-eminence
over
nature"
("
Ueberlegenheit
?ber
die
Natur")
(qui).
In
Kant,
therefore,
we
see
a
general
trajectory
of the
sublime
that,
as
it
turns
out,
is
characteristic
of
nineteenth-century
literary
representa
tions
of
sublimity.
In
Wordsworth's
The
Prelude,
for
example,
the
poet
claims
to
have
grown
up
"Fostered
alike
by
beauty
and
by
fear,"17
learning
"By
the
impressive
discipline
of
fear,
/
By
pleasure
and
repeated happiness"
(P
1.631-32).
In
this
way,
he
says,
his
sublime
"Haunting"
by
nature
becomes
his
"ministry"
(P
1.494-5).18
What
the
poet ultimately
learns, however,
by
the
end
of The
Prelude
is
"how
the
mind of
man
becomes
/
A
thousand
times
more
beautiful
than the
earth
/
On which he dwells . . .
[and]
of fabric more divine"
(P
13.446
52).
This
is
exemplary
of
what
Keats
(despite having
never seen
The
Prelude)
was
famously
to
call
Wordsworth's
"egotistical
sublime."19
A
remarkably
similar
movement
is
evident
in
a
text
that
reflects
the
transatlantic reach
of
Romanticism,
Emerson's
Nature.
In
one
of
the
most
famous
passages
in
American
literature,
Emerson
reports
"[c]rossing
a
bare
common"
and
feeling "glad
to
the brink
of
fear."
Suddenly
he
is
stopped
in
his
tracks
and
experiences
(to
borrow
Kant's
phrase)
a
"momentary
check
to
the
vital forces": "all
mean
egotism
vanishes.
I
become
a
transparent eyeball;
I
am
nothing."
This
moment
of
self
abnegation,
however,
is
short-lived,
for Emerson
continues,
"I
see
all;
the
currents
of
the Universal
Being
circulate
through
me;
I
am
part
or
particle
of
God."20
Humility
is
thus
transformed
into
self-apotheosis,
validating
the
individual's
dominion
over
the
nonhuman
world:
"Nature
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TOWARD AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
609
is
thoroughly
mediate.
It is
made
to
serve.
It
receives
the dominion of
man
as
meekly
as
the
ass
on
which
the saviour
rode.
It
offers all its
kingdoms
to
man as
the
raw
material which
he
may
mould
into what is
useful"
(AT 0-51).
These
three
examples
all
depict
the
sublime
experience
as
a
temporal
movement
from
the diminution
to
the
aggrandizement
of the
subject.
Breaking
down
this
process
according
to
Weiskel's
model,
we can
isolate
the
third
stage
as
being
of
concern
to
the ecocritic?the
stage
when,
as
Kant
puts
it,
nature
"sink[s]
into
insignificance
before
the
ideas
of
reason" ("dieNatur als gegen die Ideen der Vernunft.
.
.
verschwindlet]") (CJ
105).
However,
it is
not
sufficient
to
say
that
in
imagining
an
ecological
sublime
we
could
simply
eliminate this
stage.
For if the
experience
were
derailed
prior
to
the
moment
of
"transcendence,"
there would be
no
epiphany,
no
joyful
"lifting
up"
(what
Longinus
would
have
called
hypsous)
of
the
subject.
And
it
seems
to
me
that
to
deprive
the
sublime
of
some
kind
of
revelatory
experience
would be
to
water
it
down,
to
dim its
luster.
I
am not
even sure
that
we
would
be
justified
in
continuing
to
use
the word
"sublime"
in
such
a case.
Ideally,
then,
an
ecological
sublime
would offer
a
new
kind of
transcendence
which would
resist the
traditional
reinscription
of humankind's
supremacy
over nature. But I
am
getting
ahead
of
myself.
My
point
is
that
we can
afford
to
remain
fairly
faithful
to
the
conventional
formulation of the sublime
through
its
first
two
stages.
As I
have
been
implying,
one
of
my
principal assumptions
here
is
that
a
retooled
version
of
an
old
aesthetic
concept,
if
that
is
the
goal,
would
be
more
likely
to
take
root
the
more
closely
it
resembled its
precursor.
I
have
already
indicated
my
agreement
with
William
Cronon's view
that
the
contemporary
attitudes of
Western
culture toward the
natural world
are
indebted
to
the
concept
of
the
sublime,
notwithstanding
Weiskel's
assertion that
it is
a
"moribund
aesthetic"
(RS 6).
If
our
project
is
to
be
one
of
reconfiguration
rather than
of
mere
renaming,
we
must
concede
that the
sublime,
as
elusive and
protean
a
concept
as
it
is,
has
finally
an
essential
structure
which
must
provide
the
framework for
an
updated
model.
Otherwise
we
are
doing
nothing
more
than
putting
an
old
word
on
an
entirely
new
idea. This is
not to
deny
the
historicity
of
the
sublime
or
to
imply
that
we
could
reproduce
it in
its
historical
specificity
if
we
so
wished.
Obviously,
as a
literary
or
aesthetic
term,
it is
mediated
by
impenetrable
layers
of
discourse?cultural,
historical,
linguistic.
Yet
our
inability
to
know it perfectly does not preclude
us
from trying to
understand
it
better.
In
any
case,
I
consider
the
sublime
to
be
a
particular
cultural
and/or
literary expression
of
something
that
is
indeed
universal: human
beings'
encounters
with
a
nonhuman
world
whose
power
ultimately
exceeds
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610
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
theirs. The
basic
structural
similarity
of
the
accounts
of
Kant,
Wordsworth,
and Emerson
is
important
less
as a
record of
literary
influence
(Wordsworth
never
read
The
Critique
of
Judgment,
and Emerson
had
not
yet
read
The
Prelude)
than
as a
sign
of
a
certain
consistency
in
the
way
"canonical"
writers
(all
of
course
white,
male,
Euro-American,
and
of
a
particular
economic
class)?who
have
had,
for
better
or
worse,
the
strongest
impact
on
hegemonic
culture?responded
to
and
represented
this universal
experience.
These three
texts
are
among
the
cultural
artifacts
that
helped
define
and refine
a
tradition of
the sublime which
still has relevance today.
The
legacy
of this
tradition
tends
to
be
especially
evident
in
contempo
rary
American
nature
writing.
Annie
Dillard's
Pilgrim
at
Tinker
Creek2?
for
example,
bears
comparison
to
Wordsworth's
Prelude22
in
that
both
docu
ment
an
individual's
process
of
self-discovery through
an
evolving
rela
tionship
with
nature,
which unfolds
"in
eddies
of
separation
and
reunion"
(RS 6).
The
"separation"
for Dillard
reaches
its
peak
in
the
chapter
entided
"Fecundity,"
which
can
be
read
in
the
context
of
the Kantian
sublime. Kant divides
the
sublime into
two
main
categories:
the math
ematical,
which
stupefies
with the
seeming
infinitude
of
number;
and
the
dynamic,
which overwhelms with sheer
physical
presence.
The math
ematical
sublime
abounds
in
"Fecundity,"
as
when the
speaker
contem
plates
the
number
of
"flecks
of
skin"
that
must
be
shed
by
a
"million
million"
rock barnacle
larvae:
"My
brain
is full
of
numbers;
they
swell
and
would
split
my
skull
like
a
shell"
(PTC 170).
But where
the
sublime is
concerned
there is
a
fine
line
between
astonishment
and
horror,
as
Burke
observes23
and
as
Dillard
demonstrates.
Noting
nature's "infinite
variety
of
detail and
the
multiplicity
of
forms,"
she
writes,
"In
this
repetition
of
individuals
is
a
mindless
stutter,
an
imbecilic
fixedness
that
must
be
taken
into
account.
The
driving
force behind all this
fecundity
is
a
terrible
pressure
I
also
must
consider,
the
pressure
of
birth and
growth,
the
pressure
that
splits
the bark of
trees
and
shoots
out
seeds,
that
squeezes
out
the
egg
and bursts
the
pupa,
that
hungers
and
lusts
and
drives
the
creature
relentiessly
toward
its
own
death"
(PTC 164).
This
sublime
moment
prompts
her
to
see
the
world
in
a new
light?or,
to
be
more
accurate,
in
a
new
darkness.
Suddenly,
"the
shadows
are
deeper.
Extravagance
takes
on a
sinister,
wastrel
air"
(PTC
183).
Think
ing
about
the
"million
million" barnacle
larvae,
she
writes:
"Can
I
fancy
that
a
million million
million human infants
are more
real? What if
God
has the same affectionate disregard for barnacles? I don't know if each
barnacle larva
is
unique
and
special,
or
if
people
are
essentially
as
interchangeable
as
bricks"
(PTC
170).
She
is
faced
with
the
unsetding
realization that
human
beings
may
not
be
at
the
center of
the universe.
And
although
she herself
is
in
no
physical
danger,
she
comes
face
to
face
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TOWARD
AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
611
with her own
mortality:
"I
myself
am not one, but
legion.
And we are all
going
to
die"
(PTC
162).
This is
a
classic
example
of
the Kantian
rupture
between
our
perception
of
phenomena
and the failure
of
our
imagination
to
get
a
handle
on
it.
But its
significance
in
the
context
of
the
ecological
sublime
is
that
it
ultimately yields
a
heightened
understanding.
As
the
chapter
winds
down Dillard
writes,
"I
saw
how freedom
grew
beauty
and
horror from
the
same
live branch"?a line
that
reprises
the familiar
oxymoronic
structure
of
the sublime.24
Continuing,
she
acknowledges
that
her
own
death and
the
death of
a
jellyfish
are
"two
branches
of the
same
creek,
the creek
that
waters
the world.
Its
source
is freedom
and
its network
of
branches is infinite."
Seeing things
now
from
a
broader,
holistic
perspective,
she
accepts
that
death is
simply
the
price
we
pay
for
life. And
to
be
part
of
life
is
to
be
part
of
a
"network"
of
interrelations:
"The
graceful
mockingbird
that
falls
drinks
there
and
sips
in
the
same
drop
a
beauty
that
waters
its
eyes
and
a
death
that
fledges
and
flies.
The
petals
of
tulips
are
flaps
of the
same
doomed
water
that
swells and
hatches
in
the ichneumon's
gut"
(PTC
184).
In
her
apparent
refusal
to
be
tempted by
the
third
stage
of
the
sublime,
Dillard
provides
us
with
an example of a text that gets us closer to a model of ecological
sublimity.
We
must
be
careful,
however,
before
embracing
a sense
of
humility,
mortality,
and
dependence
as
either
a
panacea
for
our
environmental
predicament
or as
the
defining
element
of
an
ecological
sublime. The
difficulty
is
that the
consistent
response
of
Western
civilization
(espe
cially
since
the
scientific
revolution of
the
seventeenth
century)
to
this
recognition
of
vulnerability
has
not
been
eventual
acceptance,
but
dogged
resistance. The
unfathomable
otherness
of
nature unnerves
us,
and
the
idea
that
we
are
somehow
part
of
this alien
entity
shocks
us.
Hence
we
devise
ways
to
circumvent,
deny,
escape,
or
overcome
it.
Such
efforts,
indeed,
constitute the
story
of
the
conventional sublime?a
story
which
describes the validation of
the
individual
through
an
act
of
transcendence
in
which
the external
world
is
domesticated,
conquered,
or
erased.
One of Kant's few
concise
definitions
of the
sublime
provides
an
instructive
example.
He
writes,
"The
sublime
may
be
described
this
way:
It
is
an
object
(of
nature)
the
representation
of which
determines
the mind
to
regard
the
elevation
of
nature
beyond
our
reach
as
equivalent
to
a
presentation
of
ideas"
(CJ
119).
Such
a
description
implies
the
effective
dissolution
of
phenomenal reality
into the
domain
of the
ideal.
As
Weiskel
comments,
the
Kantian
sublime
"implies
the
conversion of
the
outer
world
into
a
symbol
for
the
mind's
relation
to
itself
(RS
85).
Nature
is
reduced
to
a
"mere
nothing,"
to
use
Kant's
phrase,25 leaving only
the
self
in
all
its
glory.
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612
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
III
Pondering
this
problem,
one
may
be
tempted
to
conclude
that the
sublime is
not
worth the risk. After
all,
it
depends
on
an
experience
of
hyperbolic
alienation,
a
sense
of the
inexorable otherness of
nature.
Isn't
such
an
attitude
dangerous
to
begin
with?
Environmental
philoso
phy
teaches
us
that
estrangement
from
nature
is
the
problem,
not
the
solution.
Shouldn't
we
endorse
those
concepts
which
foster
harmony
with
the
natural
world?
My
response
is
that
we
most
certainly
should,
as
a
rule, strive to recognize our kinship with nature. At the same time,
however,
it is
my
belief
that
we
will
never
be
able
fully
to
realize this
ideal?not
as
long
as
there
are
mountains
that
tower
over
us,
oceans
that
separate
us,
hurricanes that could
kill
us.
On
an
even more
basic
level,
as
long
as
there
is
an
"I,"
there
will
always
be
an
"other."
Even
if
we
could
change
this
situation,
it
seems to me
unconscionable
that
we
might
want
to
neutralize
completely
nature's
"sublime"
otherness.
Some
ecocritics, indeed,
are
working
from
a
perspective
in
which
the
separate
status
of
nature
is
assumed
and
even
endorsed.
Scott
Slovic,
for
example,
in his book
Seeking
Awareness in American Nature
Writing,
condemns the "facile sense of
harmony,
even
identity,
with one's
surroundings"
that
is
"often ascribed
to
rhapsodic
nature
writing."26
He
writes:
"By
confronting
face-to-face
the
separate
realm
of
nature,
by
becoming
aware
of
its
otherness,
the
writer
implicitly
becomes
more
deeply
aware
of
his
or
her
own
dimensions,
limitations
of
form
and
understanding,
and
processes
of
grappling
with the unknown.
...
It is
only
by
testing
the boundaries
of self
against
an
outside
medium
(such
as
nature)
that
many
writers
manage
to
realize who
they
are
and
what's
what
in
the
world"
(4).
Slovic's
general impulse
seems
sensible
to
me;
and
yet
I
cannot
help feeling apprehensive
about
a
critical
approach
that
appears
to
accept
with
such
acquiescence
the
division
of
subject
and
object?one
which
seems
unabashedly egocentric,
as
the
tide
of
his
book
reflects.
I
think
it
is
worth
asking
whether nature's
otherness
might
be
theorized
in
a
way
which
somehow avoids
this
hierarchical
binary
opposition.
As
it
happens,
the
discourse
of
environmental
philosophy
has
already
begun
to
ask this
question.
Neil Evernden's book
The
Social
Creation
of
Nature
makes
an
important
contribution
to
answering
it.
In
Evernden's
view,
Western
culture's
traditional
conception
of the
physical
world
can
be divided into
two
general categories,
two
"rival Natures":
"nature-as
object,"
and "nature-as-self."27
The former
is
manifestly
dualistic,
posit
ing
humankind
as
being
in control
of
and
responsible
for
the
physical
environment,
which exists
as
an
entirely
separate
entity.
The
latter,
meanwhile,
is
along
the
lines of the
Deep
Ecology
position:
once
we
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TOWARD AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
613
realize that we are "literal participants in the existence of all
beings,
then
we
will realize
that
to harm nature is
to
harm
ourselves. Nature
is,
then,
an
extended
self,
and
is
entided
to
the
same
concern as
any
other
person"
(SC
101).
Evernden
rejects
both alternatives
on
the
grounds
that
they
"are
not
as
different
as
they
may
seem"?for both
rely
on a
dualism in
which
"the
centrality
of the
perceiving
human
subject
is
apparent"
(SC
101-2).
Thus,
in
the final section of his book
Evernden
proposes
a
different
approach.
He
suggests
an
oudook
which would
decenter
the
subject
and
"liberate"
nature,
leaving
it
outside
the domain
of
mind?neither
as an
object
nor
as
a
"wider
self but
as
a
mysterious,
alien
"divine
chaos"
(SC
120).
This
move
would
involve
seeing
nature
independent
of
any
conceptual categories,
to
"take
seriously
Merleau-Ponty
's
adage:
To
return to
things
themselves is
to return
to
that
world which
precedes
knowledge'"
(SC
110).
Whereas
our
everyday
perception
of
phenomena
is
governed
by
the
strictures of
language
and
reason,
if
nature
is
"accepted
in its
full individuality,
as a
unique
and
astonishing
event,
our
encounter
is
entirely
different,
and is
perhaps
fundamentally religious
in
the
nonecclesiastical
sense.
In
such
instances,
we
experience
what
Rudolf Otto called the 'wholly other': 'that which is quite beyond the
sphere
of the
usual,
the
intelligible,
and
the
familiar,
which
therefore
falls
quite
outside the
limits
of
the
"canny,"
and
is
contrasted
with
it,
filling
the
mind with
blank
wonder and
astonishment'"
(SC
117).
Peter
Reed,
in his
essay
"Man
Apart:
An
Alternative
to
the
Self-Realization
Approach,"28
also
appeals
to
Otto's idea
of
the
"wholly
other"
(with
its
pun
on
the word
"holy")
as a
favorable
alternative
to
our
more
traditional
conceptions
of nature.
In
the face
of
the
holy,
Reed
writes,
"we
stand
dumb,
overcome
by
an
encounter
with
something
that
is
so
obviously
beyond
our
ability
to
capture
in
words"
(MA
58).
Like
Evernden, Reed seeks to
explain
how we
might
accomplish
what would
surely
be
a
neat
trick:
preserving
the
radical
alterity
of
nature
while
resisting
its
objectification
or
reification.
He
goes
on
to
oudine
the
ethical
implications
of this
perspective,
contending
that
its
realization
would
pave
the
way
for
human
beings'
acceptance
of the
intrinsic
value
of
nature
(MA 61-63).
We
may
well
find this
third
way
appealing?not
only
as
a
new
way
of
imagining
our
relationship
with
the
natural
world,
but
also
as
the
final,
crucial
piece
of the
puzzle
in
our
formulation
of
an
ecological
sublime.
Indeed,
in
describing
it
both
Evernden
and
Reed
use
words
that
literary
critics will
recognize
as
belonging
to
the
lexicon
of
the
sublime:
"wonder,"
"awe,"
"mystery,"
"chaos,"
"astonishment."
Nevertheless,
trou
bling
questions
remain.
First,
how
is
the
notion
of
the
"wholly
other"
fundamentally
different
from the
kind of
alienation
we
have
seen
in
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614
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
Kant?
The
answer
appears
to
lie
in
its
status
as
something
that is
possible
only
outside the
realm
of
conceptualization.
Reed
emphasizes
that
in
such
an
encounter
with
nature
"there
is
no
room,
no
time,
for
reflection.
We
are
seized
by
the
relationship;
we
cannot
think about
it
as we
would
an
object.
It is
here,
now,
and while
it
lasts,
there
is
only
now.
Since
we
have
no
time
to
ourselves
to
think
about
the
relationship,
there is
never
any
question
of
doubting
its
reality.
...
[It]
is
outside
the
thinker,
not
inside
her
or
his
own
consciousness"
(MA
57;
italics
in
original).
Evernden
would
seem
to
agree:
It
might
be fair
to
say
that
the
experience
of
radical
otherness is
at
the
base
of all
astonishment
or
awe,
all
"numinous"
experience.
It is
that shock of
recognition
that
generates
the
acknowledgment
of
mystery
that
we
can
characterize
as
religious.
Otto
suggests
that "in
the
last
resort
it
relies
on
something
quite
different from
anything
that
can
be
exhaustively
rendered
in
rational
concepts,
namely,
on
the sheer absolute wondrousness
that
transcends
thought,
on
the
mysterium,
presented
in its
pure,
non-rational form.
All
the
glorious
examples
from
nature
speak
very
plainly
in
this sense."
(SC
117)
By
contrast,
the
estrangement
of
subject
and
object
mandated
by
the
Kantian
sublime
depends,
as
a matter
of
course,
on
logos?on
the
emergence
of
what
Kant calls
"reason."
In
the
scenario
that Reed
and
Evernden
envision,
there
can
be
no
subject
or
object,
since
this
very
dualism
is
a
conceptual
construction.
We
have
long
been conditioned
by
structuralist
theory
to
be
skeptical
of the notion
that
an
unmediated
experience
might
be
possible,
that
we
might
step
outside
the
confines
of
language.
Yet
the
discourse of
the
sublime
seems
to
be
predicated
on
something
like
this
possibility.
The
sublime
for
Kant
occurs
in
that
space
in
which
phenomenal
nature
exceeds the capacity of our sensible or cognitive faculties, at that
moment
when
"with
the
advance
of
apprehension
comprehension
becomes
more
difficult
at
every
step
and
soon
attains
its
maximum"
(CJ
99)
P
There
is
a
moment
of
blockage
in
which
conceptualization
fails;
we
are
temporarily
jarred
loose
from
our
linguistic
moorings,
and
because
these
define
our
sense
of
self, it,
too,
is threatened
at
this
moment.
This,
at
any
rate,
constitutes
the second
phase
of the
Kantian
sublime,
before
the
compensatory
third
phase.
It
might
be
accurate
to
describe this
moment
as an
unmediated
experience
of
nature?unmedi
ated,
at
least,
by
conventional
rational
concepts,
and
thus
also
by
a sense
of
"subject"
and
"object."
The discourse of
the
sublime,
in
other
words,
seems
to
offer
a
precedent
for the
Reed-Evernden
model
by
theorizing
the incommensu
rability
between
actual
"nature" and
that which
logos
would
purport
to
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TOWARD
AN ECOLOGICAL SUBLIME
615
define
and
contain.
To
repeat
Otto's words
above,
it
"relies
on
some
thing quite
different
from
anything
that
can
be
exhaustively
rendered
in
rational
concepts."
The
symbolic
order,
after
all,
is
a
limited
human
construction
that
never
fully
accounted for
the
wholeness
of
"reality"
in
the first
place.
The sublime
would
seem
to
adumbrate the
ontological
autonomy
of
the
nonhuman
by
forcing
us
to
recognize
this
limitation.
IV
What
I
am
calling
the
ecological
sublime
is
perhaps
most
fully
illustrated
in
Thoreau's
"Ktaadn,"
the
best-known
essay
from
his collec
tion
The
Maine
Woods. "Ktaadn" is
Thoreau's tale of his
trip
to
the
New
England
wilderness
and
ascent
up
mile-high
Mount Katahdin.
Surpris
ingly,
the
emotional climax
of
the
narrative
occurs
not
with
the
author's
triumphant
conquest
of
the
mountain's
summit,
but
on
his
way
down?
after
failing
even
to
make
it
to
the
top.
Traversing
downhill
through
the
"Burnt Lands"
region
of the
woods,
Thoreau's
speaker
experiences
an
epiphany
which
culminates
in
these
famous lines:
What is it
to
be admitted
to a
museum,
to see
a
myriad
of
particular things,
compared
with
being
shown
some
star's
surface,
some
hard
matter
in
its
home
I
stand
in
awe
of
my
body,
this
matter
to
which
I
am
bound
has
become
so
strange
to
me.
I
fear
not
spirits,
ghosts,
of which I
am
one,?that
my
body
might,?but
I
fear
bodies,
I
tremble
to
meet
them.
What is
this Titan
that
has
possession
of
me?
Talk
of
mysteries ?Think
of
our
life
in
nature,?daily
to
be
shown
matter,
to
come
in contact
with
it?rocks,
trees,
wind
on our
cheeks
the
solid earth the
actual world the
common
sensel
Contac?
Contac?
Who
are
we?
where
are
we?
(K 150)
To
understand this
passage
better,
it is
essential that
we
return to
the
speaker's
disappointment
on
Katahdin's
ridge,
for the
two
episodes
are
intimately
related.
The
solitary
ascent
is
a
classic
example
of
the
Burkean
sublime,
as
Ronald
Wesley
Hoag
shows
in
an
essay
on
"Ktaadn."31
For
our
purposes
a
quick
overview of
the
natural
imagery
of
the
scene
will
suffice
to
make
this
point:
there
is
"the
deep
and
narrow
ravine,
sloping
up
to
the
clouds,"
the
"impenetrable
thickets" of
vegetation,
the
mountainside
"a
giant's stairway,"
the
"masses
of
bare
rock,"
the
"bleak
sky,"
a
"dark
and
cavernous
region,"
and
everything
enveloped
by
the
"hostile ranks of clouds" (K 139-40). Thoreau describes the trek as
"scarcely
less
arduous than
Satan's
anciently
through
Chaos"
(K
140);
the
landscape
"savage
and
dreary,"
"wildly
rough,"
and
"desolate"
(K
141);
and
nature
"Vast,
Titanic,
inhuman"
(K
144).
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616
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
But
the salient
point
for
Thoreau,
and for
us,
is not so much the
difficulty
of
the
terrain
but
the
very
otherness
of
nature,
in
all
its
rawness
and
brutality.
"I
cannot
pity
nor
fondle
thee
here,"
he
imagines
nature
telling
him,
"but
forever
relendessly
drive
thee
hence
to
where
I
am
kind"
(K 144).
As
he tells
it,
the
experience
renders
him
overwhelmed,
bewildered,
humbled,
and
profoundly
estranged
from the
nature
he
thought
he knew.
And
this
sense
of
the sublime
persists,
at
least
latendy,
into
the later
passage.
As
Thoreau
writes
upon
entering
the
"Burnt
Lands,"
"Perhaps
I most
fully
realized
that this
was
primeval,
untamed,
and forever
un
tameable Nature,
or
whatever
else
men
call
it"
(K 149).
The
word
"nature,"
once
a
familiar
concept,
no
longer
seems
to
apply;
the result
is
a
"collapse"
of the
"linguistic apparatus,"32
a
disjunction
between
res
and
verba.
"It
is the
unfamiliar,"
Evernden
says,
"that shakes
[our]
complacency
and makes
us
doubt
the
adequacy
of conventional
vocabularies"
(SC
132).
Faced
with
the
limitations
of
language,
Thoreau
"can
only
describe
the
scene
before
him in
terms
of
its
denial
of
human
categories"33?that
is,
by saying
what
it is
not
"Here
was
no
man's
garden,
but the
unhandselled
globe.
It
was
not
lawn,
nor
pasture,
nor
mead,
nor
woodland,
nor
lea,
nor
arable,
nor
waste-land.
It
was
the
fresh
and natural surface of the
planet
Earth . . .Man was not to be associated
with
it.
It
was
Matter,
vast,
terrific,?not
his
Mother
Earth that
we
have
heard
of.
.
."
(K149).
David
Robinson observes
that
Thoreau's
recurrent
use
of
the
word
"Matter"
is
important
in
that
it
suggests something
which
is
"beyond
the
power
of
mind
to
project
or
control"
(TK
220).
I
would
add
that
"Matter,"
in
its
relative
generality
and
neutrality
as
a
semiotic
term,
is
about
the
best Thoreau
can
do
with
language
to
denote
the ineffable
"solid
earth,"
the
recalcitrant
"actual world"
that
he
perceives.34
The
"contact"
he
makes
with
the
world
is
wholly
beyond
the
realm
of
language,
reason,
logos.
Max
Oelschlaeger,
in The Idea
of
Wilderness,
writes
that
in
"Ktaadn,"
Thoreau
"denies
the
unquestioned
validity
of
conven
tional
categories,
which
ostensibly
define
the
forest,
animals,
and
all wild
nature.
The
true
meaning
of
the
wilderness,
he
insists,
is rooted
in
the
spirit
of
living
nature
and
in the
relation
of
human consciousness
to
that
world,
not
in human
categorization
or
use
of
both.
. . .
Thoreau
is
revealing
a
presence
concealed
by
language."35
Thoreau's
description
of
the
moment of
"Contact "
with
nature
suggests
a
new
way
of
imagining
"transcendence."
For
this
is
a
kind
of
transcendence?but
not
transcen
dence
of the
physical
world.
Rather, by crossing
the
threshold
of
discursive
conceptualization,
the
speaker
transcends
logos.
Thoreau's
narrative
thus
points
us
toward
a
potential
redefinition
of
the
problem
atic
third
phase
of the
sublime.
In
a
sense,
"Ktaadn"
turns
Critique
of
Judgment
on
its
head:
for whereas
in Kant
the
discovery
of
reason
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TOWARD
AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
617
abrogates
the natural
world,
in Thoreau the
discovery
of nature abro
gates
reason.
To
be
more
precise,
a
sublime
encounter
with
nature
seems to
have
the
power
to
jolt
us
momentarily
out
of
a
perspective
constructed
by
reason
and
language,
a
perspective
that,
in
modern
Western
culture,
has
rendered
nature mute.
On
a
broader
level,
Thoreau's
reconception
of
the sublime
in
"Ktaadn"
is
relevant
to
ecological
literary
criticism
in
that
it underscores
the
value
of
a
theoretical
approach
that
is
attentive
to
questions
of
language
and
representation?questions
that Lawrence
Buell,
in
The
Environmental
Imagination,
considers
in
his
chapter
entitled
"Represent
ing
the
Environment."
Buell
weighs
the various
options
available
to
ecocritics
in
confronting
the
problem
of
linguistic depictions
of
nature,
given
that "our reconstructions
of
environment
cannot
be other
than
skewed
and
partial"
(?784).
On the
one
hand,
Buell
notes,
an
ecocentric
criticism would
naturally
want
to
emphasize
the
"realness" of the world
as
opposed
to
its
constructedness?a
position
that
seems
to
invite the
privileging
of
a
"realistic"
or
mimetic
form
of
representation.
On
the
other
hand,
"mimesis
itself threatens
nature
by tempting
us
to
accept
cozening
copies
for
the
real
thing"
(?7103).
Buell's
solution is
a
kind of
compromise:
ecocriticism, he
suggests,
should insist on a "dual account
ability
to matter
and
to
discursive
mentation"
(?792),
which
might
entail
demonstrating
(as
he himself
does
in
a
discussion of
Mary
Austin)
how
distortion
and
stylization
can
actually
bring
the reader
closer,
imagina
tively,
to
the
"thing
itself."
Buell's
main
claim
is
convincing;
yet
I
believe
he
understates
the
extent
to
which ecocriticism
might
benefit from
a more
rigorous
and
sustained
engagement
with
critical
theories
that
focus
on
the
instability,
indeterminacy,
and
opacity
of
language.
He
is
correct
in
observing
that
"literary theory
has
been
making
the idea
of
a
literature devoted
to
recuperating
the
factical
environment
seem
quaintiy
untheoretical.
All
major
strains
of
contemporary
literary theory
have
marginalized
literature's referential
dimension"
(?7 86).
However,
in
explaining
ecocritics'
general
resistance
to
theory
as a
backlash
against
this
cli
mate?"it
seems
to
me
more
urgent,
being
more
scandalous
to
current
critical
orthodoxy,
to stress
writerly
interest
in
fidelity
to
the
world
of
objects"
(?7 463)?Buell
seems
to
let
them off
the
hook
too
easily.
I
believe that
ecocriticism would
strengthen
its
theoretical
base
(not
to
mention
its
professional
legitimacy) by
including
more
approaches
that
highlight
the
symbolic, tropological,
and
discursive
dimensions
of
language.
To
the
extent
that
literary
portrayals
of
sublimity
such
as
"Ktaadn"
(or,
I
would
argue,
Shelley's
"Mont
Blanc")
imply
the
limits
of
referentiality against
the
solidity
of
the
real
world,
they
demand
such
a
methodology.
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618
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
V
The
rapidly
increasing impact
of
technology
on
the
world
has
only
heightened
the
urgency
of
the
need
to
reconsider the
sublime.
In
an
age
in
which
humankind,
in its
moments
of
hubris,
imagines
that
it
can
ensure
its
own
survival
through technological
means?that it
will
ultimately
win
its
war
with nature?the
sublime
is
more
relevant than
ever
before. The situation
has
changed
dramatically
since the
time of
Romanticism,
when
nature was
often
seen as an
emblem
of
permanence
against the transience of human life. A passage from Byron's Childe
Harold's
Pilgrimage,
which
intersperses
celebrations
of
nature
with
medi
tations
on
the
ruins
of
human
cultures,
nicely
illustrates this differ
ence.36
In
an
apostrophe
to
the
ocean,
hailed
as
"boundless,
endless,
and
sublime,"
Byron
draws
a
contrast
between
the
durability
of the
ocean?
an
"image
of
Eternity"
(IV. 183)?and
the
mortality
of
human
beings,
who
wreak
destruction
upon
themselves:
Man
marks
the earth
with ruin?his
control
Stops
with the
shore;?upon
the
watery
plain
The wrecks are all
thy
deed,
nor doth remain
A
shadow
of
man's
ravage,
save
his
own,
. .
.
His
steps
are not
upon
thy
paths,?thy
fields
Are
not
a
spoil
for
him,?thou
dost
arise
And shake him from
thee;
the
vile
strength
he wields
For Earth's destruction
thou dost
all
despise,
Spurning
him from
thy
bosom
to
the skies?
And send'st him
shivering
in
thy
playful
spray
And
howling,
to
his
Gods,
.
.
.
(IV. 179-80)
Although
we
might regard Byron
as
being
ahead of his
time
in
noting
humans'
capacity
to
effect
"Earth's
destruction,"
I
find this
passage
most
striking
for the
obsolescence
of its sentiment.
In
an
era
of acid rain
and
oil
spills,
man's ruin
no
longer
"Stops
with
the
shore."
Inasmuch
as
these
lines
represent
the old
Romantic
sublime,
it
is indeed
a
"moribund
aesthetic."
If nature's
sublimity
has
traditionally
been defined
in
large
part
by
its
permanence,
its
sovereignty,
its
inviolability,
then
the decline of
this
version
of
the sublime should
be
cause
for
concern.
Undoubtedly,
the
fact that
through technological
advances
we
do
have
more
control
over
nature
than
ever
before
has
contributed
to
the
antiquation
of the
traditional
natural
sublime.
Furthermore,
in
addition
to
altering
funda
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TOWARD
AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
619
mentally our relationship with the natural world, technology has as
sumed
an
integral
role
in
the
ideology
of the
sublime
as
it
informs
that
relationship.
The
sublime
is
not
disappearing
along
with the
disappear
ance
of
wild
nature;
its
grounds
are
merely
shifting.
This
shift is the
subject
of
Jonathan
Bordo's
essay
"Ecological
Peril,
Modern
Technology,
and
the
Postmodern
Sublime."37
Drawing
on
Jean-Fran?ois
Lyotard's
theory
of the sublime
in
The Postmodern
Condition,
Bordo
notes
that
if the
"postmodern
sublime" is
the
condition
of
being
overwhelmed
by
the
threatening
and
bewildering
effects of
technology,
then
ecological
catastrophe
(as
the result
of
technology)
becomes
a new
source
of the
sublime. That
is,
the sublime
in
this
case
is
evoked
not
by
natural
objects
but
by
their
devastation. Human
beings
still
experience
a
humbling
sense
of
fear and
awe
before
nature,
but
in
this
case?in
contradistinc
tion
to
conventional
accounts
of
the
sublime?the
threat
is
of
their
own
making.
And
worse,
the
danger
is
all
too
real.38
That the threat of
ecocatastrophe
could be
a new
version of
the
sublime
may
at
first
seem
an
innocuous
point.
If
anything,
one
might
argue,
surely
it is
a
good thing
that
we
might
be
so
affected
by
the
gravity
of
the
environmental crisis
to
imagine
that
it
poses
a
threat
to
us
personally. This is similar to the line of reasoning Buell pursues in
advocating
a
rhetoric of
environmental
apocalypticism:
if
we can
be
made
to
imagine
such
a
cataclysm,
then
we
might
be scared into
preventing
the real
thing
(?7280-308).
Yet
the
ideology
of
the
sublime
presents
an
obstacle
to
this solution.
Referring
to
ecocatastrophe,
Bordo
writes,
"It
is
a
grave
and
ironic
paradox
that its
'management'
has
come
to
fall
within
the
province
of
its
cause,
technology"
(EP
172).
In other
words,
we
fancy
that
the
situation
can
be
controlled
by
the
very
thing
that
caused
it
to
spiral
out
of
control
in
the first
place.
In
this
scenario,
technology plays
the role that
reason
plays
for
Kant
in
The
Critique
of
Judgment:
both are called in to save us, in deus ex machina
fashion,
from
a
threatening,
unfathomable
external
force. Kant de
scribes
this
as
a
process
of
"subreption"
in
which
the
power
of
the
threatening
other
is
converted into
our
own
power.
Of
course,
what
we
did
not
realize
was
that
the
power
belonged
to
us
all
along:
the
source
of
the
sublime
was
ultimately
the
same
thing
that
allowed
us
to
emerge
victorious from
the skirmish. Thus
our
reliance
on
technology
to
deliver
us
from crisis is the
familiar
third
stage
of the
sublime in
a new
guise,
a
stage
which
is
supposed
to
end in
a
glorious
conquest.
So
we
wait,
secure
in
the
notion that
a
happy ending
is
guaranteed.
As Bordo
observes,
our
trust
in
technology
thus
takes the form
of
denial,
the
vague
"assurance
that
actions
are
already
being
taken"
(EP
175).
And
in
the
meantime,
things
are
only
getting
worse.
The
technological
solution
is
ultimately
a
dead
end
because,
contrary
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620
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
to
Kant,
reason can
never
master
nature.
There
will
always
be
limits
to
our
knowledge,
and
nature
will
always
be,
finally,
impenetrable.
An
ecological
sublime
would
remind
us
of
this lesson
by
restoring
the
wonder,
the
inaccessibility
of
wild
nature.
In
an
age
of
exploitation,
commodification,
and
domination
we
need
awe,
envelopment,
and
transcendence.
We
need,
at
least
occasionally,
to
be confronted
with
the
wild
otherness
of
nature
and
to
be
astonished, enchanted,
humbled
by
it.
Perhaps
it
is
time?while
there is
still
some
wild
nature
left?that
we
discover
an
ecological
sublime.
University
of
Oregon
NOTES
1
William
Cronon,
"The
Trouble
with
Wilderness;
or,
Getting
Back
to
the
Wrong
Nature,"
in
Uncommon
Ground:
Rethinking
the
Human
Place
in
Nature,
ed.
William
Cronon
(New
York,
1996),
pp.
69-90;
hereafter cited
in
text as
TW.
2
Laura
Doyle,
"The
Racial
Sublime,"
in
Romanticism,
Race,
and
Imperial
Culture,
1780
1834,
ed. Alan Richardson
and
Sonia Hofkosh
(Bloomington,
1996),
pp.
15-39;
Sara
Suleri,
The Rhetoric
of
English
India
(Chicago,
1992);
Terry Eagleton,
The
Ideology
of
the
Aesthetic
(Oxford, 1990);
Patricia
Yaeger,
"Toward
a
Female
Sublime,"
in
Gender
and
Theory,
ed.
Linda Kauffman
(New
York,
1989),
pp.
191-212;
Anne
K.
Mellor,
Romanticism
and
Gender
(New
York,
1993);
and Barbara Claire
Freeman,
The Feminine
Sublime: Gender
and
Excess in
Women's Fiction
(Berkeley,
1995).
3 Paul
de
Man,
"Phenomenality
and
Materiality
in
Kant,"
in
The
Textual Sublime:
Deconstruction
and Its
Differences,
ed.
Hugh
J.
Silverman and
Gary
E.
Aylesworth
(Albany,
1990),
p.
103.
4
Frances
Ferguson,
Solitude and
the Sublime
(New
York,
1992),
p.
130.
5 Neil
Hertz,
"The
Notion
of
Blockage
in
the Literature of the
Sublime,"
in
his The
End
of
the
Line:
Essays
on
Psychoanalysis
and the Sublime
(New
York,
1985),
p.
53.
6
Donald
Pease,
"Sublime
Politics,"
in
The
American
Sublime,
ed.
Mary
Arensberg
(Albany,
1986),
p.
46.
7 Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (New York,
1991).
8 Karl
Kroeber,
Ecological Literary
Criticism:
Romantic
Imagining
and
the
Biology of
Mind
(New
York,
1994),
pp.
173-74n9;
hereafter
cited
in
text
as
ELC.
9
Edmund
Burke,
A
Philosophical
Enquiry
Into the
Origin of
Our
Ideas
of
the
Sublime
and
Beautiful
(1759),
ed.
James
T.
Boulton
(Notre
Dame,
Ind.,
1986),
p.
66;
hereafter
cited
in
text
as
PE. It is
true
that
Burke
devotes
part
5
of
his
treatise
to
the rhetorical sublime?to
the
sublime effect
(and affect)
of
"Words."
But
this section?which
is
relatively
brief
and,
indeed,
reads rather
like
an
afterthought?is
also
anchored
in
nature;
virtually
all
of
Burke's
examples
of sublime
literature describe
scenes
and
images
from the natural
world.
10
Immanuel
Kant,
The
Critique
of Judgment
(1790),
tr.
James
Creed Meredith
(Oxford,
1992);
hereafter cited
in
text
as
CJ.
In
the
introductory
section
to
the second book
of
Critique
of
Judgment,
Kant
writes,
"we
here
confine
our
attention
in
the first instance
to
the
sublime
in
Objects
of
nature,
(that
of
art
being
always
restricted
by
the
conditions
of
an
agreement
with
nature)"
(p.
91).
The
original
reads:
"wir
. . .
hier
zuv?rderst
nur
das
Erhabene
an
Naturobjecten
in
Betrachtung
ziehen,
(da?
der Kunst wird
n?mlich
immer
auf
die
Bedingungen
der
Uebereinstimmung
mit
der Natur
eingeschr?nkt)."
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TOWARD AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
621
11
I
quote
here from
an
alternate
translation
of The
Critique
of
Judgment,
that
of
J.
H.
Bernard,
in
Critical
Theory
Since
Plato,
ed.
Hazard
Adams,
2nd
rev.
ed.
(New
York,
1992),
p.
390.
12
Other
critics,
especially
those
writing
from
a
feminist
perspective,
have
recently
embarked
upon
this
project
of
"imagining]
a
reconfigured
sublime
metaphysics"
by
"deconstructing
traditional
notions
of
sublimity,"
in the
words
of
Laura
Doyle
("The
Racial
Sublime,"
p.
17).
In
addition
to
Yaeger,
Freeman,
and
Mellor
(see
n.
2
above),
see
also
Yaeger's
"The
Language
of Blood':
Toward
a
Maternal
Sublime,"
Genre,
25
(Spring
1992),
5-24.
13
I
have almost
entirely ignored
Longinus's
Peri
Hypsous
in
this
paper,
in
part
because
its
focus
is
(at
least
overtly)
on
the rhetorical
rather
than
the
natural
sublime;
and
in
part
because, although his role was seminal, his contribution
to
what became the "traditional"
Romantic
sublime
is
largely
subsumed
by
Kant,
Burke,
and
the Romantic
poets.
In
taking
this
position
I
am
following
the
precedent
set
by
earlier criticism
on
the
sublime:
Samuel
Holt
Monk's
The Sublime:
A
Study
of
Critical
Theories
in
XVIII-Century England
(New
York,
1935),
and
Marjorie
Hope
Nicolson's Mountain
Gloom,
Mountain
Glory
(Ithaca,
1959).
For
an
account
that
differs
markedly
from these
and
privileges
the
"Longinian
tradition"
in
the
eighteenth-century
discourse
of the
sublime,
see
the introduction
to
The
Sublime:
A
Reader
in
British
Eighteenth-Century
Aesthetic
Theory,
ed.
Peter
de Bolla and Andrew
Ashfield
(Cambridge,
1996);
as
well
as
de
Bolla's
The Discourse
of
the Sublime:
Readings
in
History,
Aesthetics
and
the
Subject
(London,
1989),
especially
pp.
32-40.
For
a
discussion
which
focuses
more
closely
on
the
text
of
Peri
Hypsous
itself,
see
Neil
Hertz,
"A
Reading
of
Longinus,"
Critical
Inquiry,
9
(1983),
579-96.
14 De Man
posits
that The
Critique
of
Judgment
is less a
"tight
analytical
argument"
than a
"story,
a
dramatized
scene
of
the mind
in
action"
("Phenomenality
and
Materiality
in
Kant,"
p.
104).
Noting
Kant's
tendency
to
anthropomorphize
the faculties
of
"imagina
tion" and
"reason,"
de
Man
concludes,
"We
are
clearly
not
dealing
with mental
categories
but with
tropes
and
the
story
Kant tells
us
is
an
allegorical fairy
tale"
(pp.
104-5).
15
Thomas
Weiskel,
The
Romantic
Sublime: Studies
in
the
Structure
and
Psychology
of
Transcendence
(Baltimore,
1976),
pp.
23-24;
hereafter
cited
in
text
as
RS.
16
I
have
no
particular objection,
from
an
ecocritical
perspective,
to
Kant's
emphasis
on
epistemology
over
ontology.
I
find
plausible
Frances
Ferguson's
view
that
"though
the
Kantian
separation
of the aesthetic
has
repeatedly
been
seen as
an
escapist
attempt
to
make
reality
less
real,
it
seems
to
me
that the Kantian boundaries
achieve
precisely
the
opposite
effect"
(Solitude
and
the
Sublime,
p. 3).
For
a
concise discussion
of Kantian
philosophy
within
the
context
of
ecological
ethics
see
Murray
Bookchin,
"Toward
a
Philosophy
of
Nature:
The Bases
for
an
Ecological
Ethics,"
in
Deep Ecology,
ed.
Michael
Tobias
(San
Diego,
1985),
pp.
213-39.
17 William
Wordsworth,
The
Prelude
(1805
ed.,
bk.
1,
1.306)
in
The
Prelude:
1799,
1805,
1850,
ed.
Jonathan
Wordsworth,
M.
H.
Abrams,
and
Steven
Gill
(New
York,
1979).
Hereafter
cited in
text as
P
by
book
and
line
number.
18
For
a
delineation
of
some
of
the
similarities between
Kant's
sublime and
Wordsworth's
Prelude,
see
Eve
Walsh
Stoddard,
"Flashes of
the
Invisible
World:
Reading
The
Pr?lude
in
the
Context
of the
Kantian
Sublime,"
in
Wordsworth
Circle,
16.1
(1985),
32-37.
19
John
Keats,
letter
to
Richard
Woodhouse,
27 October
1818,
in
The
Selected Letters
of
John
Keats,
ed. Lionel
Trilling
(New
York,
1951),
p.
152.
20 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Boston, 1985), p. 13; hereafter
cited
in
text
as
N.
21
Annie
Dillard,
Pilgrim
at
Tinker
Creek
(New
York,
1974);
hereafter
cited
in
text
as
PTC.
22
Sandra Humble
Johnson's
The
Space
Between:
Literary
Epiphany
in
the Work
of
Annie
Dillard
(London
and
Kent, Oh.,
1992)
features
occasional
comparisons
between
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622
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
Wordsworth's
epiphanic "spots
of
time" and Dillard's
epiphanies
in
such
works
as
Pilgrim
at
Tinker
Creek and
Holy
the
Firm.
Johnson
considers the
experience
of
the
sublime
to
be
one
of five
"types"
of "illuminated
moments,"
the
other
four
being
"the
mystical
experience,
the
conversion,
the
vision,
and
the
epiphany" (p.
6).
23
Burke
writes,
"astonishment is
that
state
of
the
soul,
in
which
all
its motions
are
suspended,
with
some
degree
of
horror"
(A
Philosophical
Enquiry,
p.
57).
24
Wordsworth also
represents
the
sublime
as a
series of
antinomies
in
the
famous
"Gondo
Gorge"
passage
of book
6
of The
Prelude,
which
follows the
speaker's
crossing
of
Simpl?n
Pass
(6.556-72):
the
speaker imagines
the "woods
decaying,
never
to
be
decayed";
"Tumult and
peace";
"the darkness and the
light."
25
Again
I
quote
from
Bernard's translation of
The
Critique of Judgment,
p.
389.
26 Scott Slovic, Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing (Salt Lake City, 1992), p. 4;
hereafter
cited
in
text.
27 Neil
Evernden,
The
Social
Creation
of
Nature
(Baltimore,
1992),
pp.
99-101;
hereafter
cited
in text
as
SC.
28 Peter
Reed,
"Man
Apart:
An
Alternative
to
the
Self-Realization
Approach,"
Environ
mental
Ethics,
11.1
(1989),
53-69;
hereafter cited
in text
as
MA.
29
Proceeding along
these
lines,
Barbara
Claire Freeman
defines
her "feminine sublime"
as
"an
encounter
with radical
alterity
that
remains unassimilable
to
representation."
Such
a
notion
of
alterity
implies
a
"general
concept
of
the
unrepresentable
as
that
which
exceeds the
symbolic
order
of
language
and culture"
(
The
Feminine
Sublime,
p.
11).
30
Henry
David
Thoreau, "Ktaadn,"
The
Maine
Woods,
in
Thoreau
in the
Mountains:
Writings
by
Henry
David
Thoreau,
ed.
William
Howarth
(New
York,
1982);
hereafter
cited in
text as
K.
31 Ronald
Wesley Hoag,
"The Mark
on
the Wilderness:
Thoreau's
Contact
with
Ktaadn,"
Texas Studies in
Literature
and
Language,
24.1
(1982),
23-46. See
especially
pp.
33-35.
32
John Tallmadge,
"'Ktaadn': Thoreau
in
the
Wilderness
of
Words,"
ESQ:
AJournal
of
the
American
Renaissance,
31.3
(1985),
146.
Tallmadge
remarks that
at
this
moment
"[l]anguage
seems
to
be
failing"
Thoreau,
and
we
are
made
aware
of his
"acute
awareness
of
the world
as
it is
versus
the world
as
conceived and described
by
language"
(145).
It
was
Thomas
Weiskel who
first
theorized
the
sublime
in
explicitly
semiotic
terms,
attributing
it
to
"the
fission
of
word and
thing,
or
signifier
and
signified"
(The
Romantic
Sublime,
p.
20);
see
especially
pp.
16-18
and
26-28.
33
David
Robinson,
"Thoreau's
'Ktaadn' and the
Quest
for
Experience,"
in
Emersonian
Circles,
ed. Robert Burkholder
and
Wesley
T.
Mott
(Rochester, 1997), pp.
217-18;
hereafter
cited
in text
as
TK.
34 As
Tallmadge
puts
it,
Thoreau's
'"redemptive imagination'
fails,
and he
is
forced
to
fall back
on
direct,
unmediated
experience"
("'Ktaadn':
Thoreau
in
the Wilderness of
Words,"
145).
We
might
also
regard
"matter"
as
a
pun
on
the
Latin
mater,
which
is
compatible
with the idea
that
Thoreau is
returning
to
something primal
and, indeed,
pre
linguistic.
35 Max
Oelschlaeger,
The Idea
of
Wilderness
(New
Haven,
1991),
pp.
150-51.
In The
Environmental
Imagination:
Thoreau,
Nature
Writing
and the
Formation
of
American
Culture
(Cambridge,
Mass.,
1995),
hereafter cited
in
text
as
El,
Lawrence
Buell
registers
a
degree
of
skepticism
about
Oelschlaeger's
rather
celebratory
reading
of "Ktaadn." Thoreau's
narrative,
he
declares,
is "a studious exercise
in
romantic
literary
sublimity,
in
keeping
with
the many other
stylizations
throughout 'Ktaadn' that mark it as a piece designed for
periodical publication
in
the
company
of
other
romantic travel
narratives,
a
favorite kind
of
nineteenth-century
magazine
fare"
(p.
12).
He
concedes,
however,
that
"even
literary
Thoreauvians
would
hardly
deny
that the
passage
refers
back
to
an
experience
of
confrontation
with
an
actual
landscape
that
struck Thoreau
as more
primal
than
anything
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TOWARD
AN
ECOLOGICAL
SUBLIME
623
he had
met
before"
(pp.
12-13).
Buell's
point
is
that both
are
valid,
and
that
to
insist
on
either
one at
the
expense
of the other
would
be reductive. This distinction
anticipates
his
endorsement,
developed
later
in
his
book,
of
a
"dual
accountability
to
matter
and
to
discursive
mentation"
(p.
92),
which
I
discuss below. It is
also
analogous
to
the
distinction
between the "rhetorical" and
"natural"
sublimes:
one
refers
to
the
act
of
attempting
to
create
or
re-create,
through language,
the effect
of
an
experience;
the other
refers
to
the
experience
itself. This
difference, however,
becomes
exceptionally
blurry
(if
it does
not
disappear
altogether)
when
we
are
dealing
with
literary representations
of
an
experience
that
may
or
may
not
have
"actually
happened."
In
conceding
Buell's
point,
then,
I
would
merely
add
that
even
when critics
do
put
emphasis
on one
side
or
the
other,
the
distinction between what is
represented
and what
is said
to
be
experienced
is
never as
sharp as either the critic or the writer pretends.
36
George
Gordon,
Lord
Byron,
Childe Harolds
Pilgrimage
(1812,1818),
Byron
's
Poetry,
ed.
Frank D. McConnell
(New
York,
1978);
hereafter cited in
text
by
canto
and
stanza
number.
37
Jonathan
Bordo,
"Ecological
Peril,
Modern
Technology
and the
Postmodern Sub
lime,"
in
Shadow
of
Spirit:
Postmodernism
and
Religion,
ed.
Philippa Berry
and
Andrew
Wernick
(London,
1992),
pp.
165-78;
hereafter cited
in
text as
EP.
38 Both Kant
and
Burke,
along
with several
other
eighteenth-century
theorists
of
the
sublime,
stipulate
that
at
the
moment
of
the
sublime the
subject
cannot
be
in
any
actual
imminent
physical
danger.
See
Kant,
The
Critique of Judgment,
pp.
112-13
and
121;
and
Burke,
A
Philosophical Enquiry,
p.
40.