I found AE’s point about sublimity and depth fascinating, both because it would never have occurred to me, and because I really feel that I value depth more than sublimity, and that deep down this makes me a Romantic (rather than a Classicist). It’s interesting that Latin “altus” can mean either “high” or “deep,” depending on context; that is, it indicates verticality, without specifying direction or relationship. “Deep” vs. “high” has a lot to do with where we’re standing; though we wouldn’t say this, the ocean’s surface could be “high” if we’re on the bottom of it, and a mountain “deep” if we’re on the summit. Our terminology is much more subjective than the Latin.
Why is this of interest? As opposed to sublimity, “depth” is a largely subjective notion; AE associates it aptly with a “psychologizing bias.” Another way of putting it is that “depth” is internal while “sublimity” is external; depth leads down into our own abysses while sublimity scales the heights of the human spirit. In the presence of the sublime, the spirit swells, moved by mists in the valleys and the snow on the peaks, and the sun, still higher, hidden behind clouds. We see the mind of God in the mountain, the Forms of Plato in the hidden sun; or we thrill to the soaring spirit of Satan, in which is embodied the infinite capacity of mankind to endure all hardships, even hopelessness, with dignity and pride. We are, as AE says, moved beyond ourselves; the sublime is always tinct with awe, and not a little terror, a feeling of our own smallness in the midst of immensity. Come to think of it, the Hardy poem above may be more sublime than deep, as it places tiny, stubborn, static humanity within the wide-angle lens of the rise and fall of Dynasties. By contrast, the “Nightingale” may be a “deep,” rather than a “sublime,” poem, since Keats retreats somewhere deep within himself, where he bids us follow.
The language I instinctively adopt in discussing the sublime (“soaring spirit,” “tinct with awe,” “in the midst of immensity”) is self-evidently old-fashioned; the music I associate with it is a kind of syrupy bombast, of Wagner, Strauss, and John Williams, music that tells us what to feel, as if we couldn’t figure it out on our own, as Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay clearly believe. One can’t help but wonder if the great wars of the last century and their aftermath have anything to do with our preference for “depth” to “sublimity.” Certainly the charisma of a Hitler still has a lot to do with the disdain and suspicion in which we hold rhetoric; perhaps the greatness of our atrocities (as well as the mediocrity of our officials, increasingly apparent with the advent first of television, then the internet) makes us more and more cynical, or at least suspicious, about the greatness of our nature. It may seem safer to devote our energies to sorting through our own inner workings, rather than arranging the state, or history, into a system, that is, to reach inside rather than out; more modest, and more harmless, to cultivate the spirit’s loam instead of its crown.
When I think of the sublime, the poem that springs immediately to mind is Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” a passage like this:
Quote:
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears--still, snowy, and serene;
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there--how hideously
Its shapes are heap'd around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven.--Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None can reply--all seems eternal now.
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Upon rereading (it had been a while), I see that Shelley’s poem is using nature to reflect on the workings of the mind. There is depth as well as height. The “ravine of Arve—dark, deep ravine” comes racing out of various caves, flashing like lightning, rolling for ever: the collective power of human genius, from its deep springs leaping. Mont Blanc, towering above, suggests superhuman power, probably the Platonic forms. The poem certainly invites our participation in decoding its imagery (“where from secret springs / The source of human thought its tribute brings / Of waters;” “Teach the adverting mind”); ultimately, Shelley is interested in the relationship of the individual to the group, and of humankind to nature, a unity of inner experience to outer perception. The poem is both sublime and deep.
However, Shelley’s poem isn’t “deep” in the same way as Keats’s, mentioned above. In Keats, the depth is psychological; in Shelley, it’s poetic. Shelley’s poem shows the poet doing what the poem asks us to do: Shelley contemplates and interprets the sublime scene before him as we are asked in turn to contemplate and interpret the poem; the creative poet-speaker becomes a model for the creative poet-reader. It’s a parable-like attempt to lead us, by eliciting our active involvement, towards a more profound perception of and relationship with nature. The poem is also clearly grounded in both philosophy and psychology, and some of its depth comes from the sources on which it draws. As Shelley says, his own waters have “a sound but half their own;” the other half is from the greats on whose shoulders he stands.
Bill claims not to know what “depth” is, then advocates a sort of “beautiful complexity.” I’m trying to answer his question, at least from my perspective, and perhaps only for my own benefit. In my view, psychological depth is the proper opposite of sublimity. However, poetic depth has to do with the construction of a poem: aspects that pull the reader out of the temporal main stream of the verse, under its surface, or beyond it, and invite her to contemplations of another sort. These, I think, are mainly relational: of the writer to the reader, or of one poem to another, or to philosophy, or of patterns and motifs within the poem, and maybe more—echoes, say, which are relations of words, or concepts. Whether “depth,” or the related “layers,” is actually the best metaphor for this effect isn’t clear to me, and it would be interesting to see if older critics discuss this phenomenon, and if so, how they describe it. “Complexity” is not a bad stab; while “depth” suggests a vertical layering, “complexity” suggests horizontal intertwining. “Depth” hints at shadow meanings, that what lies beneath the surface is somehow dark or dangerous, that its discovery would be, at best, a mixed blessing. In its psychological implications, it may be mystical; rather than ascend the heights towards the summits bathed in light, we are rappelling down into the darkness of the self, terrified of what we may find, but drawn along nevertheless. Poems that model this descent with their organization or arrangement may be “deep” in both the senses I describe.
With that friends, I rest for the night; time to rappel down the dream-cave. Wilbur and his thyme will have to wait. (Or, somebody else could take a stab at it!)
Chris
PS.: By the way, Barbara, one way you could make a start towards writing the way you want is not to defer to the other “superior writers” here; you know, killing the Buddha and all that. Not everyone agrees, but I am quite confident that for me flexing critical muscles also strengthens poetic ones; you might consider taking poems that do it for you and trying to articulate why--that is, do what you want the rest of us to. I think I've learned the most from Eratosphere over the years not from the critiques I've received, but from those I've given.