Day Five - Amazing Discussions

Felt really good to be outside today :)

I made it to another Friday! We had a LOT of reading to do this time, including some Edgar Allen Poe. I didn't enjoy that, but one of the theoretical readings really stuck out to me. 

Part of our reading was from a man named Kant. Kant's goal was to explain metaphysics using normal things. Sounds pretty intense, right? The focus of his writing was on the difference between the beautiful and the sublime. 

 

The definitions we are using for beautiful and sublime are a little different than normal. In Kant's work, "beautiful" means something known, reasonable, or safe, and still lovely. "Sublime" would mean something the opposite of that: something that causes overwhelming awe, or even fear. Something unknown, dangerous, and ultimately fantastic. Kant wrote that we, ourselves, are "sensible subjects", because we can only learn information by using our senses. We would like to be "moral subjects of reason", to have a perfect understanding of all things. There is no way to attempt to gain this understanding. If a person tried, they would either attain godhood, or, more likely, go completely insane.

 

If someone tries to understand the sublime, their mind would yank them back from the threshold of insanity before they got too far. For example, trying to comprehend the size and depth of all creation. Trying to really, really understand and know every part of it perfectly.

 

Different things can be sublime to different people, since everyone's mind works differently. Have you ever been up very late at night, thinking about your life? At a certain point, you'll probably become overwhelmed and very emotional. At least, that's what happens to me. In this instance, you're probably trying to understand something that is unable to be perfectly understood and known.

 

Hearing these ideas makes me feel a lot better about the way I've been feeling and reacting to things happening in my life lately. To me, a lot of things that are coming up are overwhelming and unknowable, and terrifying. Some events in my future are truly sublime. I am unable to handle thinking, feeling, or planning anything about it, and now I understand why a little better.

 

This all sounds very philosophical, and I was wondering how it tied into fantasy literature. Kant writes that fictional literature is a form of "transcendence". Transcendence is the ability to judge the difference between beautiful and sublime. The very idea of transcendence brings both pleasure and pain with it; pleasure in more understanding, and pain from the areas that remain unknowable. Fantasy literature helps us to understand the sublime in a small way. It helps make things that are so fearful, so overwhelming, into things that can be conquered and learned from. Fantasy makes life bearable in the worst of times.

 

The final thing we discussed in class was the idea of boundaries. By setting up a boundary, or a rule, you are proving that it can be crossed and broken. By presenting a negative, you are proving a positive to exist. Basically, imaging telling a child, "Don't go into the street.". This child probably didn't know being in the street was possible until you told them not to do it.

 

Fantastic literature is where the boundaries exist; it's about exploring, learning, being between worlds. It's transcendence, pleasure and pain, it's wonderful.