Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
TEXT
Part Two, Section III: OBSCURITY
Part Two, Section IV: Of the difference between CLEARNESS and OBSCURITY with regard to the passions
SECTION III
OBSCURITY
[…]
No person seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light by the force of a judicious obscurity, than Milton. His description of Death in the second book [of Paradise Lost] is admirably studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and colouring he has finished the portrait of the king of terrors.
The other shape,
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either; black he stood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on. [PL II.666–73]
In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and sublime to the last degree.
SECTION IV
Of the difference between CLEARNESS and
OBSCURITY with regard to the passions
[…]
We do not any where meet a more sublime description than this justly celebrated one of Milton, wherein he gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so suitable to the subject.
He above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruin’d, and th’ excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new ris’n
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations; and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. [PL I.589–99]
Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical picture consist? in images of a tower, an archangel, the sun rising through mists, or in an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs, and the revolutions of kingdoms. The mind is hurried out of itself, by a croud of great and confused images; which affect because they are crouded and confused. For separate them, and you lose much of the greatness, and join them, and you infallibly lose the clearness. […]