Sublimation of Love into Art
Shake-speare - Quintessential Oxford
Sublime/Noble Style (see Southern, Pandora)
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The original, nature, and immortality of the soul a poem : with an introduction concerning humane knowledge
Davies, John, Sir, 1569-1626
(snip)
...No Body can at once two Forms admit,
Except the one the other do deface;
But in the Soul ten thousand Forms do sit,
And none intrudes into her Neighbour's Place.
All Bodies are with other Bodies fill'd,
But she receives both Heav'n and Earth together:
Nor are their Forms by rash Encounter spill'd,
For there they stand, and neither toucheth either.
Nor can her wide Embracements filled be;
For they that most and greatest things embrace,
Enlarge thereby their Mind's Capacity,
As Streams enlarg'd, enlarge the Channel's Space.
All things receiv'd, do such Proportion take,
As those things have, wherein they are receiv'd:
So little Glasses little Faces make,
And narrow Webs on narrow Frames are weav'd.
Then what vast Body must we make the Mind,
Wherein are Men, Beasts, Trees, Towns, Seas and Lands;
And yet each thing a proper Place doth find,
And each thing in the true Proportion stands?
Doubtless, this could not be, *but that she turns
Bodies to Spirits, by Sublimation strange*;
As Fire converts to Fire the things it burns;
As we our Meats into our Nature change.
From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms,
And draws a kind of *Quintessence* from things;
Which to her proper Nature she transforms,
To bear them light on her Celestial Wings.
This doth she, when, from things particular,
She doth abstract the universal Kinds,
Which bodyless and immaterial are,
And can be only lodg'd within our *Minds*.
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Love's Martyr, Chester
Marston:
A narration and description of a most exact wondrous creature, arising out of the Phoenix and Turtle Doues ashes.
O Twas a mouing Epicedium!
Can Fire? can Time? can blackest Fate consume
So rare creation? No; tis thwart to sence,
Corruption quakes to touch such excellence,
Nature exclaimes for Iustice, Iustice Fate,
Ought into nought can neuer remigrate.
Then looke; for *see what glorious issue (brighter
Then clearest fire, and beyond faith farre WHITER
Then Dians tier*) now springs from yonder flame?
Let me stand numb'd with wonder, neuer came
So ••rong amazement on astonish'd eie
As this, this measur•lesse pure Ra•itie.
Lo now; th'•cracture of deuinest Essence▪
The Soule of heauens labour'd Quintessence,
(Peans to Phoebus) from deare Louer's death,
Takes sweete creation and all blessing breath.
What strangenesse is't that from the Turtles ashes
Assumes such forme? (whose splendor clearer flashes,
Then mounted Delius) tell me genuine Muse.
Now yeeld your aides, you spirites that infuse
A sacred rapture, light my weaker eie:
Raise my inuention on swift Phantasie,
That whilst of this same Metaphisicall
God, Man, nor Woman, but elix'd of all
My labouring thoughts, with strained ardor sing,
My Muse may mount with an vncommon wing.
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The Rocket and the Whale: A Critical Study of Pynchon’s Use of Melville
• Zhana Levitsky
• Published 2015
• Art
Pynchon, Melville, whale, Moby-Dick, Moby Dick, whiteness, light, rocket, color theory, American literature.
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https://jhna.org/articles/petrifying-gaze-medusa-ambivalence-explexis-sublime/
Ekplexis: Terrifying, Shattering, and Petrifying
So much for enargeia. But what about ekplexis, which for Longinus was the vivid effect reached by sublime poetry? It is a distinction with important implications for the arts, since they were considered in antiquity and the early modern period to be more akin to poetry than to prose.11 Even though it might be putting too much weight on Longinus’s pairing of prose with enargeia and poetry with ekplexis, I do think it worthwhile to pursue the poetical variety of the sublime, because it may tell us more about the nature of the sublime in the arts, and because Dutch varieties are particularly telling. We also move here from theoretical accounts of the sublime to its figurations, because Netherlandish artistic literature, as far as I can see, is rather silent about the striking, terrifying, or even paralyzing and petrifying variety of the sublime.
Enargeia and ekplexis have very different etymologies and hence connotations. Enargeia is derived from argos, a strong light, comparable to the almost white flash of lightning in the Mediterranean, or a spotlight. Homer uses it to describe the epiphany of the Olympian gods. Ekplexis is derived from ekpletto, which means to strike, confound, paralyze, or render somebody beside themselves with fear, surprise, or amazement, a much more negative effect than the shining vividness enargeia evokes.12 Longinus pairs enargeia with prose, and ekplexis with poetry. This distinction alerts us that the effect of sublime phantasia is not simply a very intense variety of enargeia; it may also turn out to be much more negative, threatening, unsettling, or even petrifying.
In Peri hypsous these terrifying aspects of the sublime are illustrated repeatedly by the rhetorical powers of Demosthenes, who, as Longinus describes it, “with his violence, yes, and his speed, his force, his terrifying power of rhetoric, burns, as it were, and scatters everything before him, and may therefore be compared to a flash of lightning or a thunderbolt.” And, he adds, at the end of the surviving text, “You could sooner open your eyes to the descent of a thunderbolt than face his repeated outbursts of emotion without blinking.”13 The brilliant illumination of enargeia has here turned into the shattering flash of ekplexis.
The term Longinus uses here to define the awe-inspiring, terrifying aspects of the sublime is to deinos, meaning the terrible, awe-inspiring, or forceful but also the excessively or incomprehensibly crafty or virtuoso. He briefly mentions this when discussing Homer.
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Parodic Sublime: Jonson
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much;
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, RISE!
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Ode/Elevated Style:
Pandora, the musyque of the beautie, of his mistresse Diana. Composed by Iohn Soowthern Gentleman, and dedicated to the right Honorable, Edward Deuer, Earle of Oxenford, &c. 1584. Iune. 20.
Non careo patria , Me caret Illa magis. [By no means to absent from my native land, To me more dearly That way]
His earth, is the nourishing teate,
As well that deliuers to eate:
As els throwes out all that we can
Deuise, that should be naedefull fore
The health, of or disease or sore,
The houshold companions of man.
And this earth, hath hearbes soueraine,
To empeach sicknesses sodaine,
If they be well aptlie applide.
And this yearth, spues vp many a breuage,
Of which if we knew well the vsage:
Would force the force Acherontide.
Bréefe, it lendes vs all that we haue,
With to liue: and it is our graue.
But with all this, yet cannot giue,
Vs fayre renowmes, when we be dead.
And in déede they are onelie made,
By our owne vertues whiles we liue.
Antistrophe.
¶ And Marbles (all be they so strong,)
Cannot maintaine our renowmes long:
And neither they he but abuses,
To thinke that other thinges haue puissaunce,
To make for time any resistaunce,
Saue onelie the well singing Muses.
And the fayre Muses that prouide,
For the wise, an immortall name:
With Lawrell, by hearesay of Fame.
Nor euerie one that can rime,
Must not thinke to triumph on time.
For they giue not their Diuine furie,
To euerie doting troupe that comes.
Nor the touch of eu'rie ones thommes,
Is not of an eternall durie.
Epode.
¶ No, no, the high singer is hée
Alone: that in the ende must bée
Made proude, with a garland lyke this,
And not eu'rie ryming nouice,
That writes with small wit, and much paine:
And the (Gods knowe) idiot in vaine,
For it's not the way to Parnasse,
Nor it wyll neither come to passe,
If it be not in some wise fiction,
And of an ingenious inuension:
And infanted with pleasant trauaill,
For it alone must win the Laurell.
And onelie the Poet well borne,
Must be he that goes to Parnassus:
And not these companies of Asses,
That haue brought verce almost to scorne.
