When most of us are asked to define the word "sublime" we are likely to come up with a definition such as " Something which awakens an uplifting emotion, causing the spirit to soar". This has always been the predominant meaning of the word, but in 1756 Edmund Burke published an essay entitled A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful; the following quotation is from that essay. "The passions which belong to self-preservation, turn on pain and danger; they are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances; this delight I have not called pleasure, because it turns on pain, and because it is different enough from any idea of positive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I call sublime."
This essay had an enormous impact on the writers, artists and composers of the Romantic Movement, which was dominant during the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries.
The Romantic Movement grew out of a trend in Eighteenth Century literature, and it was always closely connected with literature. The word "romantic" is derived from the Medieval tales of chivalry which were called "romances", the word derives from the Old French word "romans", which meant "something composed in French" (most Medieval literature was written in Latin). The Romantic Movement was a reaction against the Classical culture which had been dominant since the Renaissance; while the Romantics did look to "exotic" cultures such as those of the Near East, they mainly looked to nature and the Middle Ages for inspiration. The revival of popular interest in the Middle Ages began with the publication in 1765 of Horace Walpole's novel, The Castle of Otranto. A passion for things "Gothic" combined with the collection and publication of folk tales by scholars such as the brothers Grimm, along with Nordic mythology, the result was a culture of escapism in which painful emotions such as melancholy and horror were indulged and even enjoyed.
In literature and music the quest for the sublime was quite successful, it was less successful in the visual arts. While the Romantics reveled in the sublime grandeur of mountains, stormy seas and lightning filled skies, it was difficult to translate this grandeur into paintings, just as it is difficult to capture the sublime grandeur of the Grand Canyon in a photograph. It was even more difficult to try to evoke the sublime grandeur of the Alps by arranging huge boulders in a garden, although people did try to do this. The most successful of the Romantic gardens either had a natural setting of sublime grandeur or Medieval ruins; some had both.
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