Irving Babbitt, (the curmudgeonly foe of Romanticism, but such a fine writer) made a valuable distinction between "awe" and "wonder." The former, he noted, is an emotion born of the experience of a certain "unity" or "manifoldness" that "transcends" the individual, making ethical consideration moot, in the face of the Sublime (cf. his Rousseau and Romanticism, 1919). The latter, he said, is the emotion felt by the unreflective observer who simply gapes in astonishment at that which he does not understand. To make an idol of this emotion, to write poems expressing the ineffable glory of nature, without any attempt to conceptualize Her, is (according to Babbitt) the height of anti-humanistic irresponsibility. Now I am a partisan of Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode," and I've spent a large portion of my life elucidating the works of 'mystics' like Plotinus, the Pseudo-Dionysius, various Gnostics, the Cappadocian Fathers, and others ... Yet I am sensitive to the need for a humanism, especially in our present era of religious warfare, sanctimonious politics, hero-worship, and cookie-cutter "persons" ... Analysis, deep introspection, a glorying in the uniqueness of the self, is likely a recipe for loneliness, but not insanity. In our present age, the one who stands apart and erects a monument that sluttish time cannot besmear, is one for whom awe easily turns to disgust. The great Classical writers, so admired by Babbitt, were disgusted with the density of their age, yet enamored of the possibilities. This is the entire point of aesthetically responsible existence: to aim for that which should be, while hating vigorously that which is.
When Charon picked up his last passenger (cf. Lord Dunsany's vignette, he smiled and cried ... Smiled at the end of his labors, and cried at the loss if his raison d'etre: that is a superficial reading. The more involved reading suggests a love of change, an attachment to the unexpected, which is the recipe for sublimity. Awe-inspiring events suggest a realm heretofore unexplored, possibilities untapped ... The tired self is energized with a new reason for being, a new direction, even if it is shudder-producing, fearful in the extreme ... We crave these things. It is what makes us human. To sail off into the wide seas, expecting death but hoping for some grand alteration -- not only of one's own life but of all humanity -- that is the stuff of humanism, of awe
Speaking only of myself, as I embark on this vast sea of logoi (my newfound sobriety and new acquaintances and ... yes, new-old love) ... as I embark, I recite a line (modified to myself) from one of my favorite poems: And though I am not that strength which in old days riled up my Christian colleagues at philosophy conferences, / that which I am, I am: one equal temper of antagonistic analysis / Made weak by drink and intolerance, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
