Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 16:49:11 -0400
From: "J. B. Sclisizzi" <jbs-AT-toronto.cbc.ca>
Subject: Re: the sublime (was Trusting liars to lie)


colin.wright3-AT-virgin.net wrote:

> Here's an interesting question: do you think that a sublime
> literature is possible?

i'd like to think so.  and not just literature and poetry, but film as well -- i'd like to
think that the sublime may be experienced in the marx brothers (scenes in "duck soup," for
instance) ...

someone (i can't remember who ... maybe ricoeur, maybe todorov -- it wasn't deleuze ...
perhaps you know?) wrote a bit on "logical absurdity" which i found interesting.  perhaps
(it struck me) the sublime might be experienced (or, rather, it might experience us),
through the holes in narrative, through those moments when sociolinguistically constructed
reality (and this applies to the particular constructed realities of  literature, films,
etc.) break down.

i think, however, this would need to be disentangled from the various (post-)modernist
"techniques" for rupturing narrative that we've come to know too well.  "techniques" which,
according to their proponents, are intended for political rather than aesthetic aims, but
which are quickly co-opted by mainstream culture and end up, for instance, rather benignly
on mtv ..

brent ...