The "Sublime" in Romanticism

      The sublime (from the Latin sublīmis) is an aesthetic concept. It is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic.  The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.  Unlike objective beauty, the sublime is beyond comprehension and it is beyond expression (words).
    

      The sublime has been likened to trying to count the stars at night.  At first, it may seem doable, but quickly one becomes overwhelmed by the amount stars and the infinity of space.    

     Before the Enlightenment, philosophers as far back as Plato maintained that ugliness was just the absence of beauty.  But in the 18th century, they maintained ugliness was antithetical to beauty and had an ontological reality that could inspire feelings of pleasure just as beauty could.  

      In his book The Critique of Judgment (1790) the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant claims, "We call that sublime which is absolutely great." He distinguishes between the "remarkable differences" of the Beautiful and the Sublime, noting that beauty "is connected with the form of the object", having "boundaries", while the sublime "is to be found in a formless object", represented by a "boundlessness."
  
      Anything that overwhelms the senses can be called sublime. The sublime can produce feelings of overwhelming grandeur or terror.  The feeling of "absolute nothingness" is a theme invoked by existentialists.  The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855) spoke of "fear and trembling" and 20th century existentialists talked of "existential anxiety" or "nausea."
  

      The romantic poet, William Wordsworth  (1770 - 1850) used the concept of the sublime.  Wordsworth says that the "mind {tries} to grasp at something towards which it can make approaches but which it is incapable of attaining."  In trying to "grasp" at this sublime idea, the mind loses consciousness, and the spirit is able to grasp the sublime—but it is only temporary.  Wordsworth expresses the emotion that this elicits in his poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey":

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

In which the burden of the mystery

In which the heavy and weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened 

      Here Wordsworth expresses that in the mood of the sublime, the burden of the world is lifted.  In a lot of these cases, Wordsworth finds the sublime in Nature.  He finds the awe in the beautiful forms of nature, but he also finds terror.  Wordsworth experiences both aspects of the sublime.  However, he does go beyond Kant's definition of the literary sublime, for his ultimate goal is to find Enlightenment within the sublime.

The sublime in music:

      Although poets have spoken of the sublime, there is a position that the only artist who can convey the sublime is the instrumental composer.  From that view, while the sublime is beyond words, it is not beyond music.

      Joseph Hayden used harmonic dissonance to represent darkness and an empty void in his oratorio The Creation before God created the heavens and the Earth.  ("In the beginning, the world had no form, and darkness was upon everything.")  He then used consonant harmonies (a bright C major chord) to represent light  (and the Lord said "Let there be light.")

      Beethoven often used the dark to light idea revised as kampf und seig (struggle and victory) in his middle "Heroic" period and again in Symphony #9. 

      You will have to see if you experience the unspeakable sublime while listening to Beethoven's music.