Antarctic Loneliness and Fright

[Dave Monroe]

"She knew that the sailor had seen worlds no other man
had seen if only because there was that high magic to
low puns, because DT's must give access to dt's of
spectra beyond the known sun, music made purely of
Antarctic loneliness and fright." (Lot 49, Ch. 5, p.
129)

Note that this "Antarctic loneliness and fright" is a
textbook example of sublimity, and so, from the
textbook, Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into
the Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful,
with Several Other Additions (1756, 1757) ...


Antarctic ...

"Greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the
sublime...."  

http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/207.html

"Succession and uniformity of parts are what
constitute the artificial infinite...."

http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/209.html


Loneliness ...

"... in the balance between the pleasure of general
society and the pain of absolute solitude, pain is the
predominant idea. But the pleasure of any particular
social enjoyment outweighs very considerably the
uneasiness caused by the want of that particular
enjoyment; so that the strongest sensations relative
to the habitudes of particular society are sensations
of  pleasure. Good company, lively conversation, and
the endearments of friendship, fill the mind with
great pleasure; a temporary solitude, on the other
hand, is itself agreeable. This may perhaps prove that
we are creatures designed for contemplation as well as
action; since solitude as well as society has its
pleasures; as from the former observation we may
discern, that an entire life of solitude contradicts
the purposes of our being, since death itself is
scarcely an idea of more terror."

http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/111.html


Fright ...

"The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature
... is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of
the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with
some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so
entirely filled with its object, that it cannot
entertain any other."

http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html

"... terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more
openly or latently, the ruling principle of the
sublime."

http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/202.html


And cf., say, Ch. XXIV of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
or the Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831) ...

"Once, after the poor animals that conveyed me had
with
incredible toil gained the summit of a sloping ice
mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue, died, I
viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when
suddenly my eye caught a dark speck upon the dusky
plain. I strained my sight to discover what it could
be, and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when I
distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions
of a well known form within...." 

http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/chapter-24.html

Yr arctic, at least, yr loneliness AND yr fright.  See
also ...

Loomis, Chauncey.  "The Arctic Sublime."  Nature
   and the Victorian Imagination.  Ed. U.C.
   Knoepflmacher and G.B. Tennyson.  Berkeley:
   U of California P, 1977.  95-112

Just wanted to fire something, at least, off in re:
Ch. 5 today, is all ...

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