Burke’s aesthetic of ‘obscurity’ is the driving force for conceptions of the sublime in the works of romantic poets like Wordsworth, Shelley and Coleridge
To Burke, nothing “canstrikethemindwithitsgreatness [...] whilstweareabletoperceiveitsbounds.”
Sublimity, in this period, is associated with conditions of solitude, obscurity and darkness. → limitless, infinitude - images that cannot quite be conceptualised
the sublime exceeds pictorial expression
Like Wordsworth’s description of the Alps, the sublime is “derivedfromimageswhichdisdainthepencil.” → escapes the limits of representation - it is non-representable; reach for a horizon that is just out of grasp
Poetic language is more efficient at giving the sublime an apprehendable form, as it is more emotive, and more importantly elusive, than the visual image.
use indefinite language when describing notions of sublimity, language of obscurity and indefinition → which becomes a residue of a sight or feeling that is inexpressible.
In A Companion to Romanticism, Nicola Trott declares that the sublime “presumesanaestheticofexcessornon-representability.”
