Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 23:14:50 -0500
Subject: Re: Terror & the Sublime



>
> --Do you mean 'commonplace "feelings"' in reference to trying to access
sublime
> only through beauty creating "sentiment"?

*Yes*

 If so, yes, that is what I meant.
> Or, to go even further, commonplace feelings that are articficially
heightened
> to try to imitate sublime feelings.

*Yes*


.  The longer the
> silence, the more powerful we felt we had been. But is it a trance?  So
> mesmerized by the events before them that they forget that they are
sitting in a
> play, forget that their role is to applaud.  If you are caught up in the
events of the moment, are you awake or asleep?

  Do audiences awaken to remember to
> applaud, or is the applause the process of coming down out of a different
state
> of awareness--the sublime--back to the mundane?

*One is lost in the event, regrets it has ended.*

.  Peter Brook argues that drama, for the
> most part, has lost its "authority"--the way it had it when drama was
religious ritual that had spiritual significance for all its participants.
Now, drama  often merely replicates or attempts to duplicate those things
without the authority to take them beyond representation.

*This seems a reasonable point of view, and the sophisticated
audiences in London, Paris, New York, where Peter Brook has been so
successful, are not very religious.  And drama has spiritual significance
for non-believers who experience mortality, dread, fear, paing , without
believing its God's will.*

  > **Tyranny is one way of viewing it, but it is also an "offering" to a
> > voluntary audience who may reject it.  Tyranny implies power over
persons
> > who can't escape.  So people walk out and lose the value of a ticket.
New
> > art is a gamble, a chance ticket-buyers take.**
>
> --Which is one reason critics make so much money; so the ticket-buyers
feel like
> they're taking less of a risk.  I think if the audience rejects the
offering,
> the sublime cannot be reached.  Could it be sublime for just the
performer?  Not if the work is indeed an "offering."  Interesting question,
though.  Who must be
> involved in recognizing the sublime?

*When the playright completes the play, s/he might have a sublime feeling -
same for a  performer on completing a performance.

Kant, Lyotard, and others define an "idea" of sublimity which emerged from
their personal experience.  The rest of the world can read the words, the
definitions, and compare with their own personal experience, to determine
how it fits the definition.
Most of those in the world, who have sublime feelings, never heard of Kant
and Lyotard, nor need to.*


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