sublime

Catherine and I were telling niece Hannah about a friend of ours who has Asperger's Syndrome. I'd been trying to get Catherine to understand that person a bit better by having her imagine being in a group where everyone relates everything to a color — This is so delicious and blue-green! -Really? It seems more green-blue to me... President Bush's Iraq policy is so orange since the last election.... — you understand the words that everyone's saying, but it seems they're talking nonsense much of the time. You don't attach emotions to things others do. You know that a melody is beautiful, no doubting that; but it seems to make everyone else feel some way about it that you don't feel. You recognize its beauty — why should it make you cry? That's what it's like to have Asperger's.

Hannah said, catching on, that therefore this friend would never understand, say, why she would get tears in her eyes during the prelude of Julie Taymor's Broadway staging of The Lion King.

I said, "Exactly. And I know exactly which part made you well up in tears, and get a lump in your throat: it was right when they swing into the second chorus and the giraffes come out."

Hannah was amazed: "That's it! How on earth did you know that?"

"Because Edmund Burke was writing all about it in 1757."

I was talking about a central work of criticism, by the statesman, parliamentarian, writer, and all-round great guy Edmund Burke, called "A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful." It laid the groundwork for Gothic literature from Mary Shelley to Bram Stoker to Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It explained why those old Roman ruins are so romantic-looking to us, and it kicked off a trend of actually building fake ruins on private estates. It explained why roller-coaster rides are so attractive, and why Titanic was a blockbuster.

It's been a huge presence in my life and work. I thank Steven Kellman, one of those remarkable professors one brags about having had, for introducing it to me. Read it in its entirety.