Nature is a network of incredible forces whose might looms over all humans, but in the modern age of urbanization, we often lose sight of the true majesty of our world. The notion of the sublime in nature is a cross-cultural phenomenon that likely manifested itself long before the earliest use of the term in the first century, but the modern definition of the sublime is a shadow of the resonance it held two centuries ago. The sublime is the immense grandeur of something superior to oneself, a concept that mostly came to be associated with nature—and more specifically, for the purposes of this essay, mountains in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To experience the sublime is comparable to standing reverently in the foothills of the Alps, completely overpowered by the immensity of the landform towering above. It is an incomprehensible vastness that evokes extreme fear, passion, and pleasure.
The meaning of the term “sublime” has changed over time in keeping with societal trends, but its modern meaning as a synonym for “awesome” or “magnificent” is terribly diluted from the original value of the term. The initial use of the sublime to describe the pinnacle of expression that is possible through written language is usually attributed to Longinus, a first century Greek scholar and master rhetorician. Longinus outlines three essential components: passion, compelling idea, and elevated language.1 One’s passion and compelling idea must come naturally from within and should be spontaneous, as sublimity is the resonance of soulful feeling. Elevated language acts as a quick and jarring yet more tangible vehicle for the passion and compelling ideas to transport the audience, unsettling all of their previously conceived notions of what is magnificent. Longinus stresses the importance of the impulsivity of elevated language, as the sublime could overpower any beautifully composed literary composition with potent, pure astonishment.
Longinus’s definition only extends as far as recognizing literature and rhetoric as the source for the sublime, but Irish-born philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797) adapts this notion to apply more generally to the human experience and the physical world in his 1757 treatise A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. For him, the sublime is something that is capable of producing the strongest, highest possible form of emotion, which is a coexistence of pleasure and pain, fear in tandem with immense solitude. In his treatise, he explores the interactions and distinctions between the sublime and beauty. Beauty is a more intimate impression. It is a force that provides us pleasure and draws us in, often triggering a desire for closeness. Beauty is an object of lust, which is sometimes fulfilled. This is where a divide forms between beauty and the sublime; you can scale a mountain but you can’t ascend the sublimity of that mountain. The sublime is always superior to us.2
George Barrell Cheever (1807–1890), an American minister, wrote of the grandeur and sublimity of the Alps in Wanderings of a Pilgrim in the Shadow of Mont Blanc (1846). Cheever equates the immense weight of his experience of the sublime at Mont Blanc to a religious experience raising an awareness of the omniscience of God:
But the view of such a scene also makes one sensible of his own insignificance and sinfulness; it makes one feel how unfit he is for the presence of a God of such inaccessible glory.3
Cheever is not alone in his appreciation of nature as a means of spirituality. There is a reason that monasteries have often been established high in the mountains. There is the physical element of high elevation that people believed could bring them closer to God.
The British Romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) created a great number of works depicting the Alps. His works in watercolor are particularly apt at representing the splendor of the mountains, the washed hues imitating soft, ethereal light emanating from the heavens. His other main area of focus is the seascape; the ocean scenes seem to fall into two divisions: the pristine view from afar or tumultuous views from within the action. This is not so much the case in his mountainous works, which tend to be mostly serene depictions, even in as chaotic a scenario as an avalanche. It is a deliberate decision to illustrate these two landforms, the sea and the mountain, differently. Both offer an imminent possibility of danger, but perhaps Turner saw the mountains as such a majestic place that, even in the most perilous of moments, he retained a sense of peace with the sublime. The sea, although also incredibly vast, does not lend itself to this control over emotions.
Centuries ago, before the development of more advanced forms of transportation and equipment, many saw the mountains as towering, impenetrable barriers. Some surely experienced the sublime duality of terror and bliss, but the general public, especially in urban areas, stayed a safe distance from the ominous dangers of the Alps. With the development of better routes and climbing technology came a rise in the popularity of mountaineering. This was a leisure activity of the elite, but nevertheless, many were aware of the notion of the sublime and sought to find it in the Alps. With the establishment of tourism in the Alps came a more widespread understanding of the sublime as it applies to the mountains. Burke’s image of the sublime as the astonishment produced by the incredible vastness of nature survived into the mid-1800s, but quickly diminished in the latter half of the century, as the newly established resorts dotting the summits were overcrowded with tourists. As a result, climbers in the mountains seeking to experience the sublime were robbed of that fundamental element of solitude due to the “buzzing hives of restless strangers,” as American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910) describes tourists in his accounts of the Jungfrau in A Tramp Abroad.4 As travel increasingly became more accessible, so did the public’s use of the word “sublime,” which lost some of its association with each utterance by an uninspired explorer.
Around the turn of the century, many European explorers turned their attention to the Himalayas. Alpine climbers were eager to escape the crowds in Europe and began looking for new, untraversed areas to explore. British imperialism was rampant in South Asia, with presence in India, Burma, Bhutan, and Sikkim, and as a result, the English had extensive exposure to the exotic cultures of South Asia. The Himalayas were pristine peaks with a promise of wonder and challenge, an experienced alpine climber’s dream. British soldier Francis Younghusband (1863–1942) led the first group of Englishmen into Tibet, an experience that left him in a state of bliss. He had entered Tibet with the mindset of a conqueror and left with a newfound spirituality: “the first streaks of dawn gilding the snowy summits of Mount Everest, poised high in heaven as the spotless pinnacle of the world.”5 This surprising change in character was inspired, but also challenged when Younghusband led 5000 troops into Lhasa in 1904. Tibet was the only Himalayan nation that had escaped the British touch, and the government was ready to start planning their entry. Six hundred Tibetans were slaughtered when they encountered the British Troops en route to Lhasa, bringing Younghusband’s newfound mysticism into question. Shortly after this expedition, trips into Tibet were planned solely for the purpose of exploration in preparation for an attempt at conquering Everest. Captain Cecil Rawling led one of these exhibitions and was the first European to see the northern face of Mount Everest. He described a sense of the sublime greater than any other:
Towering up thousands of feet, a glittering pinnacle of snow . . . a giant amongst pygmies, and remarkable not only on account of its height, but for its perfect form. No other peaks lie near or threaten its supremacy. . . . There is nothing in the world to compare it with.6
It was during Rawling’s expedition that Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, called for a British expedition to Mount Everest, but the outbreak of World War I delayed their plans.
Many prominent European explorers went off to fight in the war, and upon their return showed profound, unprecedented psychological effects of war. John Noel, who had served in WWI, related his experience of the Himalayas to other soldiers, knowing that as they heard about the wonders of the Himalayas, they too might “know what the vision of Everest had become, at least for him: a sentinel in the sky, a place and destination of hope and redemption, a symbol of continuity in a world gone mad.”7 The battles fought in the Alps had perhaps tainted the pristine image that was held before the war, another reason for explorers to turn their sights toward the Himalayas. With war also came a desensitization towards the imminence of death; this may in turn have lessened apprehensions for climbers entering the daunting traverses of Everest. British Colonel George Mallory led the first two expeditions with the intent to ascend Everest in 1922 and 1924. Sadly, Mallory and his companion Sandy Irvine met their deaths during the second attempt, but in the most dignified way possible. Bently Beetham, one of the men from Mallory’s party, eloquently lamented Mallory and Irvine from a camp overlooking Everest:
[M]oonlight seems to bring us face to face with greater and more lasting ideas; it lends a touch of the supernatural to our vision. That night and with that scene in front of one, it was quite easy to realize that the price of life is death, and that, so long as the payment is made promptly, it matters little to the individual when the payment is made. Somewhere up there in that vast wilderness of ice and rock, were still two forms. Yesterday, with all the vigour and will of perfect manhood, they were playing a great game—their life’s desire. Today it is over, and they had gone, without ever knowing the beginnings of decay. Could any man desire a better end?8
This epitomizes the capacity of the sublime to completely overcome humans, and even lead them willingly to their demise.
We measure our life experiences in terms of pain or pleasure. Whether they are physical, mental, emotional, or hypothetical, these are two intense feelings that can be used together to describe nearly any emotional experience. One step into the mountains can bring us to remember that at any moment, natural forces could bring us to our end. The Earth is armed with countless powerful, deadly forces, such as avalanches and tsunamis, that cause terror, but accompanying this fear is also a dizzying combination of wonder, thrill, peace, and insignificance, the summation of which can be encompassed by the term “sublime.”9
1. Paul Velde, “Fear of the Sublime,” Antioch Review 22 (Mar. 2010): 217–231.
2. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, A New Edition (Basil: J. J. Tourneisen, 1792).
3. George B. Cheever D. D., Wanderings of a Pilgrim in the Shadow of Mont Blanc (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1846), 149.
4. Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, (Harper, 1907), vol. 2; 31.
5. Wade Davis, “Everest Imagined.” Into the silence: the Great War, Mallory, and the conquest of Everest. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 64.
6. Davis, 65.
7. Davis, 87.
8. Quoted in Davis, 554; Bently Beetham, “The Return Journey,” in Edward Felix Norton, Fight for Everest 1924: Mallory, Irvine and the quest for Everest (Sheffield: Vertebrate Publishing, 2015), chapter 8 (Kindle Locations 2372-2377).
9. See also: Ann C. Colley, Victorians in the mountains: sinking the sublime (Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). Credo Reference. 11 Sept. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.credoreference.com/entry/prpoetry/sublime>.