Now that the coronavirus causes experiences that cannot be fully captured by the senses, the underlying natural infinity of romantic art, inspired by the sublime, could figuratively symbolize the imminence of adversity that beset us.
The shipwreck
, which William Turner completed in 1805, becomes an allegory not only for the quality of the immeasurable, but also for what we feel.
The philosopher Edmund Burke in 1757 defined it as an effect that is among the most intense emotions that the mind is capable of feeling, “everything that operates in a way analogous to terror is a source of the sublime, it is a terrifying feeling, but wanted".
It differentiates it from the beautiful, which lacks the aspect of terror.
Burke insists that a faithful representation of the sublime, such as the image of a stormy sea, offers us a safe physical distance from what is represented.
More precisely, the emotion arises as soon as we are out of danger, but still shaking.
It is, substantially, like taking a look at the constitutive nothingness of being.
The sublime and sublimation go hand in hand.
The sublime allows us to capture, so to speak, the most revealing aspect of sublimation in our own everyday sublimations — it is not a unique faculty of the great artists.
It is one of the procedures that the mind uses to transform what threatens, frustrates or provokes aggressiveness, by engendering a sense of reopening that allows us to overcome feelings of stagnation.
It gives us distance from what we feel and that simultaneously attracts and frightens;
it has the potential to transform that infinity into something controllable, conceivable and, although it causes anxiety, it does not stagger us.
The transformation implicit in sublimation is similar to that which occurs with dreams, which, by generating order and meaning out of chaos, restore our ability to think.
"Ordering the chaos, this is creation", proposes the poet Apollinaire.
Its transformative potential is revealed in the sense it has for chemistry: it is a process through which matter passes from a solid state to gases without the need to go through the liquid state.
The comet's tail is an example: its traveling rocks when approaching the Sun heat up and the gases that are frozen sublimate and generate its wake.
To sublimate is to transform, writes the psychoanalyst Giuseppe Civitarese in his book on the subject: "There is an obvious connection between the alchemical meaning of sublimation and that of psychic transformation."
Sublimation is an unconscious mechanism of the mind postulated by Freud - it ranges from making good soup in difficult times to the artistic creativity of Leonardo da Vinci.
The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott proposes that the first sublimatory activity is the child's play.
An instinct is said to be sublimated as it is transformed and oriented towards a new goal, which is generally highly valued and socially acceptable.
It is an escape valve for the impulses that threaten us and create anguish before their imminent liberation.
Sublimation could be useful in those moments when we feel saturated, on the verge of an explosion and before the imminent discharge of emotions that can be harmful;
Instead of turning them into a fit of rage, it could be a way of confronting our feelings, transforming them into something external and concrete, tangible, visual, audible, olfactory.
A good example of the role of aggression in sublimation is provided by Henri Matisse's thought when decorating the Vence chapel: "If I don't wake up in the morning with the desire to kill someone, I can't work."
What if those angry or aggressive emotions were channeled into some kind of physical activity?
Freud remembers reading a passage in which the poet Heinrich Heine invokes his friend Dieffenbach, “who whenever he could catch a dog or a cat, cut off its tail for the sheer pleasure of cutting, although he was later forgiven, since the very joy of cutting made him the best surgeon in Germany ”.
Freud concludes that Dieffenbach behaved in a similar way throughout his life;
however, he turned sadistic harm into benefit;
It occurred to him to describe this transformation in chemical terms of sublimation.
Sublimation is a complex process.
According to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, sublimation brings us closer to the edge of a nameless void; he gives the example of the potter's jar that acquires its receptive shape by enclosing a void.
Another example is cave paintings, in which a hole in the stone becomes the pupil of the animal's eye.
Thus, the created environment and the real one intertwine — the symbolism of Paleolithic art evokes separation anxiety and fear of death.
All sublimation revolves around this void.
As an individual transformation process, it is a resource that allows us to obtain a reconciliation of polarities.
It fosters a feeling of security.
Sublimate is what we do, most of the time without being aware of it, and we only realize it when its effects move us.