Sublime - February 4, 2012

This morning the forecast was for "freezing fog," which sounds ominous, but translates into a silvery frost on everything. And there was a light frost. Took Anya for a walk around the neighborhood where Daniel was having his tutoring, then later in the afternoon to the dog park. By then the sun had broken through into a beautiful mid-30°s day. A lovely day at the dog park, and in general.

The beauty of the most stunning winter landscapes, whether sheathed in snow or coated in frost or ice, is one of silence. Once things really begin moving in earnest, there are muddy tracks and bootprints... it's the initial, early-morning hush and the magical coating of frozen water in whatever form it takes, that makes winter landscapes so wonderful.

Maybe because of the physics definition of "sublime" (the change of state from solid directly to gas, as most widely seen in the "evaopration" of snow), I was thinking about the philosophical idea of the the "sublime." The word in common usage is about exaltedness, of a quality "above the lintel" (that's apparently the root of the word) and so out of reach. In aesthetics, it's contrasted with "beauty." The sublime has a note of fear in it's awesomeness, perhaps like the character of Aslan in C.S. Lewis' Narnia books being "not a tame lion." Both beauty and sublimity expand one's sense of the universe, but sublimity evokes a sense of one's smallness.

Severe weather can be sublime when it isn't downright horrifying. Oddly though, I think this is less true of winter weather. Blizzards just wear you down, unlike summer thunderstorms and tornadoes. Think of a Hudson-school painting of a thunderstorm... there's real drama there. In a ice-storm or a blizzard, there is a muffling, numbing silence, or a stead, howling moan.

There is something strange and specifically homo sapiens-y about this. Weather is weather, on the surface. Why should an blizzard have less of a sense of awe about it than a thunderstorm? It's as though our sense of drama is dependent on time. Which of course it is. Even if it's the same change, we react differently to an overnight change and a year-long change.