Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite

211 Pages·1959·18.07 MB·English

by  Marjorie Hope Nicolson

MountGalionoa mn Mdo untGalionry :
The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite
MountGaliono m
anMdo untGalionry :
ThDee veloopftm heen t
Aestohfte htIein cfisn ite
BY MARJORIE HOPE NICOLSON
Columbia University
CornUenlilv ePrrseistsy
Ithaca, New York
l
'I
© 1959 by Cornell University To
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS AILEEN W'A RD
and
Firpsutb li1s9h5e9d
Tot hMee mory of
VICTORIA SCHRAGER
This work has been brought to
publication with the assistance of
a grant from the Ford Foundation.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AlvlERICA BY THE
VAIL-BALLOU PR,ESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, NE"W YORK
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Preface
IN a way this volume had its inception as long ago as the academic
The
year I had become interested in the passages in
Sacred Theory of the Earth
1939-1940. in which Thomas Burnet implied an
apparently paradoxical attitude toward mountains, combining
violent disparagement of the ugliest objects in Nature with an al­
most lyrical rhapsody on the exalted emotions he had experienced
Eighteenth Century Background,
among the Alps, Basil Willey's
which called the attention of literary students to the importance
of the "Burnet controversy," had not yet appeared. I had first met
Burnet in Cecil Moore's early article "The Return to Nature in
English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century." I knew Katharine
Cosmogonies of Our Fathers,
Brownell Collier's which treated
some of Burnet's theological and scientific ideas, and had seen the
brief but illuminating article "Grottoes, Geology, and the Gothic
Topographical
Revival," which Robert A. Aubin developed in his
Poetry in XVIII-Century England.
Important and interesting
though these various studies were, they did not explain what
seemed to me a basic problem in the history of taste: Why did
mountain attitudes change so spectacularly in England?
vii
viii Preface Preface ix
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127
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Preface
X Preface Xt
The Breaking of the Circle.
promised myself that I would finish the study of mountains upon sity as Because the problems I treat
which I had been working in a more or less desultory fashion. in these two works-different though they may seem-are inte­
The Breaking of the
T19h4e8 ,M essenger Lectures, delivered at Cornell in April and May, gral parts of a single whole, there is inevitable overlapping be­
Circle
were entitled "The Sublime in External Nature." On that tween that volume and this, chiefly between
occasion I used material now expanded in the first five chapters and Chapter Three of the present study, dealing with the
of the present work. But even at that time, I was aware that, al­ "New Philosophy."
though I had found auswers to some of my questions, I had not The scope of my study has greatly widened since those days
found them all, nor had I gone far enough with various aspects at Smith College when I easily suggested to Miss Ward that she
of those I had treated. solve a problem of the "dynamics of taste" in six weeks. Neither
Once more my study of changing mountain attitudes was laid she nor I had foreknowledge that this subject would prove "A gulf
aside-this time because of the tremendous pressure experienced profound as that Serbonian bog ... Where armies whole have
by many graduate schools as an aftermath of the Second World sunk." I am much more acutely aware than any of my critics can
War and the "G.I. Bill," which sent so many veterans, hungry be of the serious limitations I have gradually imposed upon myself.
Italian
and thirsty for reading, into graduate schools. Since Columbia At one time I had planned to do much more with landscape paint­
Landscape in Eighteenth Century England
believed-rightly, I am persuaded-that men and women who ing, in part because such critics as Elizabeth Manwaring in
The Picturesque
had spent several years in the armed forces had the right to the and Christopher Hus­
best graduate training we could give them, we set no arbitrary sey in found in Italian landscape painting the ori­
limits upon the number of veterans, with the result that for nearly gin of the "new" attitude in England and in part because, if the
ten years we have spent our time and energies upon the disserta­ change in literary taste was as fundamental as I have made it, the
tions of our graduate students, rather than upon our own books same "climate of opinion" should have affected the plastic arts.
and articles. It has been a rewarding period for them and for us. \Vhen I discovered, however, that Mr. and Mrs. Henry V. S. Og­
If it has delayed our own work, perhaps this lack has been repaid den were engaged upon an ext1e9n5s5iv e sEtundgyli sohf Tlaansdtes cinap Le apnadinsctainpge
in the Seventeenth Century
by what our students may contribute to the advancement of in England, since published in as
learning. (which they were good enough to
When I had an opportunity to return to the problems raised in allow me to read in a more expanded earlier version), I deliber­
this volume, I began to realize more fully than before that my ately restricted myself to literary attitudes.
attempt to discuss attitudes of two centuries of English literature So far as limiting the subject to England is concerned, I am, of
toward "Nature" had led me to problems in intellectual history course, aware that changes in taste are seldom bounded by coun­
that could not and should not be treated in a single volume. Again, tries. vVinds of doctrine blow across the English Channel in either
as in the case of the "Newton" material, I decided to isolate some direction. I have pointed out occasionally that the phenomena in
aspects, which, while having an integral connection, might be England were not paralleled in France, though they may have
treated separately. The result was the series of essays which I been in Germany. Something of the sort that occurred in England
delivered as the Norman 1W95a0i t Harris Lectures at Northwestern occurred also in America, though whether as a result of parallel
University, published in under the auspices of that Univer- causes or of "influence" I must leave others to decide. Because
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Preface
xii Preface
XlZZ
life is short and knowledge (at least my own knowledge) finite, Millennium and Utopia.
I like to remember that as a result of that sacrifice he produced
I have set myself artificial geographical limitations.
his distinguished book, I thank him also
When this study was first begun, I planned to consider equally
for the phrase "the Aesthetics of the Infinite," which was his be­
attitudes toward mountains and toward ocean-the two "grand­ L. H.
fore it was mine. Three of my Columbia colleagues, Professors
est" phenomena of Nature known to man. I found, however, My
James Clifford, Jerome Buckley, and Gilbert Highet, have
wthiatth t here is compliatreartaitvuerley," l iftotlre r"eoacsoeanns ltihteart aatruer eo"b ivnio cuosm epnaoruisgohn.
read some sections of my manuscript and made suggestions.
"n1ountain
former colleague, Professor Pierre Garai, assisted me greatly in
Insofar as "ocean" attitudes can be isolated, there are parallels,
matters of research. I remember with pleasure the aid and courtesy
though thfee Eeln glish-an island people and a seafaring race-never
I found in various libraries, particularly the Huntington Library,
seem to the same distaste for the sea as for the "hook­
the New York Public Library, and those of the Union Theo­
shouldered" hills. During the eighteenth century ocean came to
logical Seminary and the Jewish Theological Seminary.
share with mountains the "sublime." A majority of poets and
As tlus study really began at Smith College, it is fitting that it
Spectator
prose writers would have agreed with Addison who wrote in
should have been completed there. In the spring of 1957, I was
489:
invited to give the Vanderbilt Lectures, which were entitled
imagination so much as the sea or ocean. I cannot see the heavings of
Of all objects tbat I have ever seen, tbere is none which affects my "Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory." During my period
of residence in Northampton, I experienced many courtesies,
tinho-is apsrtoodniisghiomuesn bt;u lbku to fw wheante rs,i se vweonr ikne da cuapl min, wa titehmopuets at, vseor yth aptl etahse­ none more than those on the part of Miss Margaret Johnson,
it
Librarian, and Miss Dorothy King, Curator of Rare Books. I
hm;,ouiznotnai nosn1 evise rimy psoidssei bilse ntoo tdheinscgr ibbue tt hfeo aamgrineega bbliell ohworsr oarn tdh aflto aartiisnegs was particularly delighted by Miss King's collection of Burneti­
from such ait p rospect. A troubled ocean, to a man ·who sails upon
ana, which I am sure has no duplicate in any other library. My
it,
greatest debt of all, however, as I have intended to indicate, is to
is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and conse­
Aileen Ward, who needs no explanation for my dual dedication.
qthuaetn tclayn gairvieses tfhreo ni1m gagreinatanteiosns . one oSf utchhe ahnig ohbesJte ckt inndast uorfa llpyl eraasi�srees M. H. N.
. .. Columbia University
ionf mhisy_ e txhisotuengchets ats hme uidchea a so fa mane tAaplmhyigsihctayl dBeeminogn,s tarnadti ocno. nvinces me November 1958
apologiae
I shall bring my to an end with one final remark: If
it occurs to a critic, as it well may, to quote the Horatian phrase f
that the mountains labored only to bring forth a mouse, may I
say that I thought of it first-and often!
I can mention here only a few of the many who have helped
me at various stages of this work. To my former student, Ernest
Lee Tu veson, I owe a debt of gratitude for his generosity in giving
up this subject, upon which he had made more than a beginning.
l
Contents
Preface Vil
Introduction
I The Literary Heritage 34
2 The Theological Dilemma 72
3 New Philosophy 131
4 The Geological Dilemma 144
A Sacred Theory of the Earth 148
56
The Burnet Controversy 225
7 The Aesthetics of the Infinite 271
8 A New Descriptive Poetry 324
,
Epilogue 371
Index 395
xv
MountGalionoa mn Mdo untGalionr y:
The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite
Introduction
"Short Views We Take"
"TO me," said Byron's Childe Harold, "high mountains are a
feeling." We comfortably agree, believing that the emotions we
feel-or are supposed to feel-in the presence of grand Nature
are universal and have been shared by men at all times. But high
mountains were not "a feeling" to Virgil or Horace, to Dante,
to Shakespeare or Milton. Today as the lordliest peaks are con­
quered and the ascent of Everest is front-page news, we take for
granted that men have always climbed mountains for pleasure
or triumph. Today when tours (by luxury train, private car, or
auto bus) have become synonymous in thousands of minds with
Mount Washington or Mount Hood, the Rockies, the High
Sierras, Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, the Alps or the Pyrenees, we
assume that our feelings are the perennial ones of human beings.
We' do not ask whether they are sincere or to what extent they
have been derived from poetry and novels we have read, land­
scape art we have seen, ways of thinking we have inherited. Like
men of every age, we see in Nature what we have been taught
look for, we feel what we have been prepared to feel. to,/