"The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime goes back at least to Longinus (first century CE), who saw the sublime as an overwhelming, ecstatic force that uplifts the soul with grandeur. A flower is beautiful, and so is a great oak, but the great oak is also sublime, and it is its sublimity rather than its beauty that we retain."
"At the heart of our attraction to natural grandeur is our desire for transcendence, which is then expressed through sublime art and language. In On the Sublime, Longinus laid out five sources of literary sublimity: noble concepts; passionate feeling; figures of speech; noble diction; and dignified composition. The first two, he claimed, are innate, while the last three are learnt."
The distinction between beauty and the sublime dates back to antiquity and identifies different aesthetic responses. The sublime involves overwhelming feelings of awe, terror, and delightful horror and is linked to power, vastness, and obscurity. Beauty evokes feelings of love, pleasure, and relaxation and is connected to smallness, smoothness, and delicate form. Attraction to natural grandeur reflects a desire for transcendence and is expressed through sublime art and language. Five sources of literary sublimity are noble concepts, passionate feeling, figures of speech, noble diction, and dignified composition. The sublime is pleasurable only when experienced from a place of safety; otherwise it is simply terrible.
Read at Psychology Today
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