Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

It seemed somewhat apropos that one of my favorite stories has a perfect title for my ending piece.  Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, by Joyce Carol Oates is a great story I suggest you read it.  It is just downright disturbing, and it is definitely somewhat sublime.  I, at least, find that I understand the the main characters action's on some instinctual level and can find no rational reason for them, this disparity in my mind produces all sorts of strange emotional responses.

Where Have You Been?

The Landscape of the Mind and Emily Dickinson

This blog originally started on the subject of the Emily Dickinson and the Landscape of the Mind, which admittedly is a wonderful topic.  I hope to come back to it at sometime in the future, because internal landscapes bear an innate characteristic of the sublime, they are like our ideas and thoughts, we can never seem to get them completely across to other people.  (Notice that the divide between people is obliquely stated in the word across.  If you are trying to get your ideas across, you are noting the divide between you.  You are trying to cross the gap that you see between you.)  I am completely aware of this because I have no talent at most forms of art and so little outlet for the images that I see in my head.  I am sure that we all have some element of this problem of communication.  I have a few ideas for what I might do with this in the future, but we will get to that in the next section.  One of my classmates, Neal, actually did his blog on landscape, and it merits further reading if you are interested.

New Media as a Medium of Intellectual Exchange

I also wanted to to incorporate new media. This at least I was able to do.  I actually throughly enjoyed being able to create a more interactive experience with my reader.  One of the great benefits of blogging is the ability to add new content.  I think I seized upon this idea almost immediately, this is most likely because I love imagery almost more than anything else in a text and the ability to show my audience even more directly what I mean is a glorious opportunity.  There are also new mediums of communication that we can use and that we as a class used to some extent, such as Diigo, commenting on each others blog, and I suspect that most of us emailed those we tried to get involved in our projects, though commenting on the blogs of others can sometimes also get them to respond.  There is a great little article on the effects of New Media on the Old Media that I pulled the picture to the right from.  If you look at it the end of the article it might give you a sublime experience.

 The Sublime, In the Beginning...

 I actually switched from the idea of Emily Dickinson and the Landscape of the Mind to the sublime after I started doing research.  I was no doubt somewhat inspired by the project of one of my peers, Katherine, who has done her project on the perception of the sublime in the Digital Age, as well as simply the sublime nature of the internet as an accomplishment, you should read more about it.

I found that abundance of the sublime in her writing to be incredible until...  I think it hit me that the sublime just is a part of the human experience.  We as human beings cannot get away from it as long as we have a finite perspective.  At first I thought it would be more difficult to find depictions of the sublime in popular media, and while it certainly does take time, usually I will have a movie or two that I want a clip from and the hardest part is finding that exact clip.  Sometimes I find something else that I like as much or more as what I was looking for in the first place.  My point, that the sublime is everywhere, and that I think is what I have taken the most out of this experience.  However, I think I need to keep going.

I explored a few ideas on my way to actually discussing my topic in a more argumentative way.  I explored, for example, the counter sublime, and the dark sublime.  Both of these altered how I looked at the sublime later.  The counter sublime, which is the attempt to make the sublime understandable, is inherently a paradox.  If you can make someone understand something then is it really sublime anymore?  However, we as humans cannot help but try to explain, and sometimes we will even manage to convey the sublime.  Most of the time, though, we find something that makes us feel the sublime and try to show that same thing to others.  I have kept this idea in mind through out my project and it has made me more aware of the method by which we try to convey the sublime.  The dark sublime did not enter as much into my discussion, though it was helpful to know how far Emily Dickinson went into the range of the human sublime.

Analysis and Transfiguration

This reference is probably one that noone will get, but I am referring to a lovely musical piece called Adagio and Trasfiguration, by Elliot Goldenthal.  I am not sure how to load a piece of music or I would do so here.  However, suffice it to say that music often is a sublime experience to me, with my skin getting goosebumps that rise from my arms and I get sensation of cold that goes up my entire body.

And here my project also gors through a transfiguration, which is. "A marked change in form or appearance; a metamorphosis." - FreeDictionary.com.  I can also hope that it meets the second definition, a "change that glorifies or exalts," but time will tell.  This sections main movements are mainly composed of contrast and exploration of aspects of the sublime.  Usually I examined a particular element of the sublime and showed its presence in both modern media examples and in Emily Dickinson's poetry.  As aspect of the sublime is something like faith, which I explored in relation to the conversion in Contact and Emily Dickinson's "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —"  Overall I am fairly satisfied with where I have gone in this blog and have stayed mostly on track, though there have been some minor diversions into other things like the Emily Dickinson conference (which I still think was a good idea, maybe someone else will be able to tell me how it goes).

 Where Are You Going?

Potential for Landscape in the future.

I have a few examples of landscape that I think would work well for the sublime and for internal landscapes.  These are two depictions of the afterworld.  One is What Dreams May Come, which is in reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet "To be or not to be" soliloquy.  This is actually very relevant to the story as the story is about what happens after death, and Hamlet's contemplation of suicide is also relevant.  I would also like to take a look at the landscape in The Lovely Bones.  Both of these films have the landscape as a changing and very dynamic player in its own right.  I would also like to look at dreamscapes, which appear in a number of films, though I think that the Youtube video "Her Morning Elegance" would be one especially appropriate example.  This exploration could become another whole subject in itself. 
  
Upholding the Status Quo 

One option is simply to continue to do what I have already been doing so far.  Emily Dickinson's poetry is vast and I am not likely to run out anytime soon.  The gamut of human emotion and experience is also vast, just look at how many books have been written, the realization of how vast human experience is can be a sublime experience.  If you wanted to live one day in the life of everyone else, assuming there are six billion people it would take almost 16.5 million years.  There is still much to do with this subject.

Distilling the Sublime 

It hit me when I was doing my blog about zombies and sickness, that we exaggerate human emotion in modern media, especially video.  Disaster movies are another great example.  We can see the peaks of human emotion in a simple drama, but there is a part of us that craves something beyond.  We desire the exceptional and the unimaginable.  And movies deliver this to us, they give us what we are looking for.  I think that this might be a worthy topic of discussion for the future.  

The End 

And just because I can, I also want to include a picture from wordle of my project so far.  I am even going to post this first and then create the wordle as a full summary of my project.  It has been wonderful, I might even can it sublime, to share with you.  I hope to continue in the future.

Andrew Morris 

Reaching Out

Attempting to communicate is an integral part of our experience.  We are born, grow, and die, never quite saying what we want to say.  Our language is powerful and astonishing for its range of possibilities.  That being said, we still feel its inadequacies sharply.  Language is in many ways a central part of the sublime, because language is insufficient to communicate what we feel, including the sublime.  Language is also one of the ways we conceptualize the world.  I have had the experience of both attempting to remember something and not finding it (Tip of the Tongue Syndrome - Notice that we created an expression to tell what this feeling is) as well as just finding that I had no word for what I wanted to say.

Language is almost a sublime experience in itself.  Language is ever expanding and there are more words in our language than I will ever know.  I have also tried to learn other languages and there are definitely some sublime moments when you see all the facets of the language spread out before you and realize that language is far more complex than you had realized.  Language, even all the standard languages for speaking on earth are still insufficient.  If we really tried we could maybe create a language that would tell more, combining posture, sign language, and intonation as well as words to add emotional and social value to our speech.  I have had the experience of emotion communicating more through music than through language, but it is harder to communicate ideas with music.  This actually makes me think of Swift's Gulliver's Travels which I have read for one of my classes.  In Laputa one of the scientists is trying to have people communicate with objects instead of words, and while the idea is ridiculous there are no doubt advantages to that form of communication as well.  I have been known to draw examples both on paper and from other objects in order to communicate.

I have been discussing communication because of my own attempts to communicate lately.  I have been sending out emails to various Emily Dickinson scholars, attempting to get them to comment on my blog, as yet I have no responses.  If you too would like to attempt communication, I recommend examining the scholars registry at EDIS (Emily Dickinson International Society).  The registry provides information on each of the scholars, including a way to contact them, when you click on their names.  Also, EDIS is hosting a conference at Oxford in August, and they have a number of speakers listed who are not on their registry, so I recommend attempting to connect with them as well, especially if they will be discussing a subject that you are interested in.

To be fair I have only communicated with them in the last week, and most are probably busy.  I have also been considering the issue of much of the scholarly world's feelings about new media; it is possible that many of them are simply not interested.  So I will continue to hope for a big response from someone who is in the field.

Andrew Morris

This article is part of a continuing theme on Emily Dickinson, modern media, and the sublime, if you would like to know more read here.

Trying to Catagorize the Sublime

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.
--Victor Hugo


Since I am attempting to form a (somewhat) cohesive work I feel obliged to begin to encapsulate it and summarize it on one page or post as much as possible.  Though I first want to mention that attempting to categorize the sublime, both within my posts and within this central organizational structure may be considered counter-sublime.  As I am now introducing you to my main subject, we should probably move on to that.

The Definition of the Sublime

The sublime.  If you are reasonably well read, or have another reason to have a large vocabulary, you probably already know its standard definition, which is where we will start.  It is (from the Oxford Dictionary):

sublime
• adjective (sublimer, sublimest)
1 of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.
2 extreme or unparalleled: sublime confidence.

There is also a definition from chemistry:

  • verb Chemistry (with reference to a solid substance) change directly into vapour when heated, typically forming a solid deposit again on cooling.

— ORIGIN Latin sublimis, from sub- ‘up to’ + a second element perhaps related to limen ‘threshold’ or limus ‘oblique’.

The sublime is usually considered to evoke positive emotions and connotations in these definitions (except in chemistry, then it's just a process).  That is something that you lose when you go into the literary definition.  The sublime certainly can be positive, but it can also be negative.  For the sake of literature, the sublime can be considered any experience that transcends any attempt to describe it.

How the Sublime Pertains to Our Discussion

My project involves using examples of the poetry of Emily Dickinson and comparing it to media (in particular video).  In each example I am highlighting a particular element of the sublime.  My true main argument is perhaps a little more general.  The fact that we can find the sublime both in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and in movies, which are often public venues of entertainment, suggests that they are an essential part of the human experience.  That is why this project matters.  Even if you don't care for Emily Dickinson, or popular media, you still know what it is to be human, and the sublime is part of your existence.

Where our discussion has lead us so far: 

So far I have discussed a number of topics, they are in order of discussion:

First I have had some posts that were purely formative, in which I was discussing the process of research (though research never really stops), they are:


Literally a Literature Blog, Figuratively Speaking

Emily Dickinson Research Trends

Getting better all the ti-i-ime...

The Form of our Blog Projects

Then I begin to dig a little more deeply into my subject matter:


Emily Dickinson as the Precursor to the Dark Sublime
-In this post I discuss the Dark Sublime as it relates to another piece of literature, Heart of Darkness By Conrad, and a poem of Emily Dickinson's. I also examining the fact that Emily Dickinson is ariving at the Dark Sublime years before anyone else.

The Circular Sublime-This post discusses the opening scene of the movie Contact in context of an Emily Dickinson poem.  This particular example of the sublime focuses on cyclical nature, space, and humanities place in the universe.


Avatar Party - Avatar as a Sublime Experience?
-I don't have a specific Emily Dickinson poem that this post refers to, but I examine a few of the themes that you can find in the movie Avatar.


Sickness, Zombies, and the Sublime
-Sickness as a sublime experience, and also zombies as a manifestation on the modern fear of zombies.  I also bring this into an example of poetry from Emily Dickinson.

Religion and the Sublime

-A return to the movie Contact, this time exploring the issue of religion, faith, and sublime.  Then I examine Emily Dickinson's perspective on structured religion.

Emily Dickinson Conference-Not actually about a specific subject and the sublime.  There is an upcoming conference at Oxford University hosted by EDIS (Emily Dickinson International Society).  I just give a brief look at the subjects that they will be exploring.

Terror and Awe - A Return to the Early Sublime  - A return to some of the early historical aspects of the sublime as described by Edmund Burke.  Nature, disaster movies, and awe and terror.

Cohesion in Purpose - An attempt to make my blog a little more cohesive by pointing out what the value of the blogs that I have written is.

Reaching Out - Brief discussion of the sublimity of language.  Also my attempts to contact other people to comment and or discuss the ideas of this blog.



The Future? 

Here are a few elements that could be discussed in the future:




 -More specific Avatar examples in the context of Emily Dickinson.

 -Movie Criticism and the Sublime (I am currently reading through some books on Movie/Cinema Criticism so I am not sure if this will yet apply.)

 -Themes I find Emily Dickinson poems that are especially obvious to me, like the solitary/internal self, self vs society, nature,  gardening and flowers (I am sure I can make a sublime out of this somehow), Death, love, etc...  as long as I can find proper media examples.

-The movie What Dreams May Come as an example of sublime imagery.  It is also about love, heaven (particularly the psychology), internal landscapes, hell, madness, and grief and loss.  It is also a fantastic example of a movie that begins In medias res, or in the middle of things, as we skip back across his life to see his interactions with his children and wife, as we experience his story.

-Anything that people tell me I should discuss in more detail or cite as an example.  (So post comments people)

Andrew Morris

Added 06/17/2010:

I have been told a number of times that my definition of the sublime is still not clear enough.  While I am now tempted to steer them towards my blog on the sublimity of language, I feel I should attempt to do the subject greater justice.

I believe that my concept of the sublime is fairly simple.  It is any experience, feeling, or object that a person undergoes that raises emotions beyond the complete comprehension of that person.  A good definition comes from Edmund Burke, "In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it."  I should make it clear, however, that I do not subscribe to Burke's idea of the sublime as only being from terror and pain, and I consider any emotion that is heightened sufficiently can become overwhelming and become sublime.  I also do not limit it to emotional sublime.  It is possible for us as human beings to encounter experiences and objects that we cannot comprehend.  They may well have emotional overtones, but the stars in the sky and realization of that infinity, which I have had a few times is overpowering by itself.

I hope this makes things a little clearer, if not let me know and I will try again.