Edmund Burke  1729-1797   A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful   1757  Studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 

•	Balitore Meeting House, County Kildare, Ireland 
•	 
Edmund Burke, book 1757
Publications
•	1756  A Vindication of Natural Society. 
•	1758-1789  Editor of the Annual Register
•	1770  Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents; Two Speeches on America 
•	1775  Speech on Conciliation with America
•	1790  Reflections on the Revolution in France.  

[Section I] The passion caused by the sublime in nature [and in its highest degree] is Astonishment.
•	This is when all the soul’s motions are suspended with some horror.
•	The mind is completely filled with some object and cannot think about any other.
•	Nor can it reason about its object.
•	The sublime hurries us by an irresistible force.
•	The inferior effects of the sublime are admiration, reverence, and respect.
Fusseli or Füssli, Johann Heinrich (1741)–1825)“The Nightmare,” 1781, 
“The Wolfman” 2009
Joseph Vernet, 1759, Shipwreck  
J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth. 1842. Oil on Canvas. Tate Gallery, London. 

“Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set end on end, and piled high on each other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work.”  

William Turner “Stonehenge” c.1825 
John Constable  Stonehenge, 1835
Section II Terror
–	Fear is the passion that robs the mind of its ability to act and reason the most.
–	Since fear is the apprehension of pain and death it resembles pain.
–	What is terrible [terrifying] in sight is sublime too.
•	For dangerous things cannot be seen as unimportant or contemptible.
–	Many animals are terrifying and hence sublime even if not large, e.g. 

The Ideas of Pain are More Powerful than those of Pleasure
•	“the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasure which the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy” 

Delight increases with Distance
•	“When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience.”

•	“I make use of the world Delight to express the sensation which accompanies the removal of pain or danger; so when I speak of positive pleasure, I shall for the most part call it simply Pleasure.”
Terror is the ruling principle of the sublime.
–	If we add terror to large things they become more sublime.
–	The view of a plain [as in Kansas] may be as extensive as that of the ocean but it is not as sublime, since it is less terrifying.
Kansas Plain

Astonishment and Terror
–	Several languages use the same word to signify both astonishment [wonder] and terror, for example the Roman words stupeo [from which we get stupefying] and attonitus, and the English words astonishment and amazement.

•	Turner, The Passage of the St Gothard, 1804 
Turner Vesuvius
Section III Obscurity
–	Obscurity [darkness and unclarity] is generally necessary to make something terrifying.
–	If we fully understand the danger, much of the fear goes away.
–	For example night adds to our fear when danger is present. 

•	Also ghosts and goblins of whom no one can form a clear idea, are scary.
•	Dictatorships, which are based on fear, hide their leaders.

•	"Little Goblins" from the Los Caprichos set of aquatint prints Francisco Goya, 1799 
Religion 
In religion, many non Christians, for example native Americans, keep their places of worship dark. 
The Celtic pagan priests carried out their rituals in dark woods.

•	Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur 
•	(1757-1810)
•	 Encyclopédie des voyages
John Milton Paradise Lost  1667
•	The English writer Milton best understood the secret of heightening terror using obscurity.  He describes Death with gloomy pomp.    
•	In Milton’s poem on this topic all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and sublime to the highest degree. 
•	Next image:  William Hogarth
Satan, Sin and Death (A Scene from Milton's `Paradise Lost') circa 1735-40 Oil on Canvas

Comment on this painting taken from the Tate Museum web site.
•	“In Hogarth’s canvas Sin is pictured as if trapped and imprisoned by the many-headed tentacles that wrap themselves around her torso and writhe from her waist; furthermore, her expression and her gestures are tender and imploring, rather than malicious or manipulative. Here, Hogarth attempts to fuse a feminised iconography of sentiment with a sublime and grotesque imagery of hell-fire, violence and monstrous masculinity.” 

“Satan Encounters
Sin and Death,”
Gustave Doré (1866) 
Some other comments on the sublime by Burke not in our text:

–	“I know of nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power.” Chapter “Power.”
–	 “The horse in the light of a useful beast, fit for the plough, the road, the draft; in every social, useful light, the horse has nothing sublime: but is it thus that we are affected with him, whose neck is clothed with thunder, the glory of whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage, neither believeth that it is the sound of the trumpet? In this description, the useful character of the horse entirely disappears, and the terrible and sublime blaze out together.” Chapter “Power.”  The quote is from the Bible Job 39:24
Delacroix “Tiger Attacking a Wild Horse,” 1825 

Delacroix, Eugène “Horse Frightened by a Storm,” 1824

Burke: Chapter “Light in Building.”

•	“I think … that all edifices calculated to produce an idea of the sublime, ought rather to be dark and gloomy, and this for two reasons; the first is, that darkness itself on other occasions is known by experience to have a greater effect on the passions than light. The second is, that to make an object very striking, we should make it as different as possible from the objects with which we have been immediately conversant; 

•	when therefore you enter a building, you cannot pass into a greater light than you had in the open air; to go into one some few degrees less luminous, can make only a trifling change; but to make the transition thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the greatest light, to as much darkness as is consistent with the uses of architecture. At night the contrary rule will hold, but for the very same reason; and the more highly a room is then illuminated, the grander will the passion be.”

“Small statue notre dame” from projectvisual.net
'The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel', Louis Jacques Mand Daguerre, c.1824 
Monastery Graveyard in the Snow, 1817 by Casper David Friedrich, Former National Gallery, Berlin.

•	Caspar David Friedrich, 
•	Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
1818 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg).
Caspar David Friedrich  The Sea of Ice  (1823–24)