Sublimity and Dreams










   This clip is the culminating scene in an Akira Kurosawa short called "Sunshine Through The Rain." The film begins with all of its pieces in set. There is a little boy and an older woman, there is a rainy day that is also sunny, and there is a fable concerning foxes. The older woman lets the little boy know that on a day that is rainy and also sunny, the foxes hold their wedding processions in the forest (which must not be watched.) Compelled by that sublime quality we call curiosity, the little boy sneaks out into the forest regardless, where he witnesses something we might not expect - it is not foxes, but people in fox-masks that come dancing through the forest, and there seems to be a sort of conflation between the real and the unreal here. They are clearly not foxes, although in the world of the film they might represent foxes - similarly, the tale might have been fictitious, yet the implications of danger within it seem very real. In this way, Kurosawa makes both the fictitious seem less contrived and the known less knowable, leaving behind nothing but a sense of unconvinced wonder "for grandeur produces ecstasy rather than persuasion in the hearer." (Longinus 137)
   Furthermore, Longinus tells us that "persuasion is on the whole something we can control, whereas amazement and wonder exert invincible power and force," (Longinus 137) which serves as further reminder that the space between what we know we know, what we know we don't know, and what we don't know we don't know is the space that will give birth to the sublime when explored carefully. The details in the story are few, and yet they are carefully selected and highly-packed - of the sublime, Longinus says that "the first of [the procedures that produce the sublime] attracts the reader by the selection of details, the second by the density of those selected." (Longinus 140) At the point of the film to which we discussed, the details mostly entail binaries - old woman and young boy, rainy and sunny days, fabled foxes celebrating in human celebration and what appears to be humans dressed and moving as foxes - the space that charges it all is always that space between, which the foxes (or fables, story, wonder itself) rule - the danger comes when you acknowledge that space, or even worse, step into it, but the foxes themselves must always be there both before and after intrusion. Also, the initial warning is given weight - at first it seems a mother attempting to keep her child from pneumonia, but it turns out that there is nothing practical in her tale, except if one wants to view the tale itself as practical.
   After the event in the forest, the child returns home to a welcoming which isn't so warm. His mother is waiting for him, and with her a blade that one of the foxes has left at the house under the instructions that the child must kill himself with it. The only option that remains to the boy is if he rushes after the fox, returns the knife, and asks for forgiveness. Finally, the build-up to the scene I've posted done - or is it? The reason I've chosen this scene is that it is a conclusion, although all it does is build, and its power is contained in an instant. Rather than the accumulated effect of art, "sublimity, on the other hand, produced at the right moment, tears everything up like a whirlwind." (Longinus 137) This combined with Longinus' idea that "there is nothing so productive of grandeur as noble emotion in the right place" (Longinus 139) provide for a scene that is too large to unpack. In a way, I think the short film is about curiosity, that faculty which demands a larger playground, finding one too big and now in the nearly impossible (but undeniable) place of having to negotiate with it. As Longinus puts it, Kurosawa has "[wheeled] up one impressive unit after another to give a series of increasing importance," (Longinus 141) only to leave the little, frail boy naked against the scene of huge wonder which is the final gesture towards absolute sublimity.

Other instances of sublimity:

Hawkins solo (second)





and Bud Powell











Longinus. "On The Sublime." ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.   

Kevin O'Neal and the Classics

   Last week we were visited by Kevin O'Neal, a scholar in greek antiquity, and he spoke on Aristotle and the art of persuasion. Much of it was utterly fascinating, including the idea of Aristotle as a fiction himself, only known to us in secondhand notes compounded by his students, and also the idea that he never spoke of *how to teach people - all learning comes from context, which is why the symposium is so important, which perhaps renders any idea of Teaching (presumably in a vacuum) as moot.
   The greek hierarchy of life consists of labor, work, and speech/action, the highest of which is speech/action because it conceives of something that wasn't here before and yet modifies only oneself as opposed to 'work' which employs external substance. Speech and action that aren't necessary are considered most highly, because then man is existing of and for himself rather than as a vessel towards a different end. The memorable deed done or story told excites the imagination of the republic and strengthens resolve (if not principle itself.)
   Also fascinating to me was the idea of community and that it essentially arrises out of communication. The city only exists if we discuss it at length, which is is why the greek polis is considered 'a city made in speech.' It seems to me that our civilization doesn't discuss itself as transparently as the polis; there is a conversation happening, but it's all on the books. The idea of a total government outruns our ability to speak it. We are taught to appreciate what we have rather than to constantly reaffirm or to make something new. If we were to return to the roots of our country, it would be bloodshed and rebellion, and so we've learned to discuss politely. We may speak, but the context is often considered beyond us, curiously like the God-Approved Cities of old. Also, the public life is only so important to us - we also are expected to fulfill certain roles, but we can easily shake them in our private solitudes (that define American experience even more than the political forum.) "Here is my piece of silence, here are the things that have been offered to fill it, it all is rightly mine by the doctrines that promise it, may you find your own silence and fill it however you may (as long as it doesn't fracture mine.")

Last Week in Theory - (Or Last Millennium in Thought)

  To begin our class, we started with the Sophists, or those mercenary Wise Men who commoditized Rhetoric. Although the lack of 'truth' other than in a shadowy guise of 'most persuasive argument' is a troubling concept that might allow any Gordon Gekko with an agenda and a few well-chosen words to thrive and conquer, it is also liberating in the sense that 'truth' is not caught and calcified - rather, it is a dancing thing that must also move with the argument, which makes for responsible citizens engaging with language in order to find their own particular relationship to it. This is the environment that prefigures Plato and it seems to me that his main invention is to mention that we are all playing towards this endgame known as 'truth' (which, considering Plato's massive ironies, might very well be irretrievable - something inherent in the Sophists but not much beneficial for them or their penny-grabbing antics.) In introducing his encomium, Gorgias agitates us towards Rhetoric in a challenge: "The man who speaks correctly what ought to be said has a duty to refute those who find fault with Helen." (Longinus 38) This is an imploration against the stream, or an instance of the agonistic; we, as responsible citizens, ought to be contrarians so that an argument doesn't gather steam and run away on us until it seems without argument, a natural truth. Not only is this good for the polis, but it is also sheerly enjoyable, "for to tell those who know something they know carries conviction, but does not bring pleasure." (Longinus 39) In other words, people love to be echoed and agreement is generally favorable, but don't people prefer to be surprised? Isn't the shock of something unexpected, suddenly come into being, a much grander pleasure than an expectation filled upon (and that can only please to the extent of that expectation)? Near the end of the encomium, the self-aware nature of Gorgias' text (post-modern anybody?) becomes apparent in the rhetorical consideration of rhetoric in that "speech is a powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body." (Longinus 40) This idea of speech always carrying some implication, often political, prefigures Foucault and a slew of other writers interested in where language has come from and who is intended to use it. It is a good argument - the Greek gods are forces beyond control that bat human beings around like poppycocks, and if such gods are conceived, to blame Helen for her wooing (or capture, or trance) would be to elevate her to the status of a god herself, when her blood is merely half of that.
   The Plato readings were just as interesting if not more, especially the way he refers to the gods as indivisible and seeks to elucidate their work by achieving a singularity of observation and purpose in himself. This seems wholly impossible, however, and the paradoxes that abound whenever Plato tries to make the leap remain central to his aesthetic power. If "the gods are not shape-shifting wizards and do not mislead us by lying in what they say or do," (Plato 50) then there is a lie in every shape we would attempt to hold, be it from thought to speech or from speech to writing, especially if these shapes consider themselves whole altogether. It seems where we, us human beings and natural liars, are most complete and indivisible from the gods is when we ourselves are lying and aware of it, or stating truths from two angles that do not cleanly intersect. I find it fascinating that much of Plato is written in a sort of agon with Homer in an attempt to become the great Greek teacher and I imagine the differences between the two writers (or rather what they do in their work) is a battle still waging today between the realistic and romantic genres. To state it very simply, the question might be 'to propose oneself as telling the truth by means of lies or to lie as if it was the truth and nothing more, truth (if it exists at all) springing from the lies?' 



  This is my first encounter with these thinkers and one doesn't have to look too far to find modern incarnations of their ideas today. The main difference, I would think, is that the 'agon' has been replaced with the 'accept-all' and so universities publish great deluges of selfsame material rather than trying to diverge from predecessors in clever ways. I, as usual, think something in between the two might be best. 

  Works Cited: 

Gorgias. "Encomium of Helen". ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print. 

Plato. "Republic". ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.