Art and the sublime

In ‘Andrea del Sarto’, one of Robert Browning’s many dramatic monologues, the poet and playwright writes: “Ah but man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for”. Like any great maxim in English literature Browning’s words have challenged critics over the centuries, causing them to question the artists’ meaning and its relevance.

Browning seems to suggest that man should strive for ‘more’ than he can achieve and get lost in the belief that anything is possible. The process of ‘over-reaching’ is likened to the creation of heaven, a perhaps fictitious idyll at the forefront of the collective imagination of man. In trivial terms it would appear Robert Browning is saying “shoot for the stars”.

As an English graduate in the crux of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s it seems people are no longer willing to believe in such optimistic musings. Rather, man should be ‘realistic’ and take whatever job or opportunity may come his way. After all, we are in a ‘recession’ don’t you know!

But Robert Browning’s words re-iterate two main Romantic school’s of thought that should not be forgotten. He is referring to the creative imagination, expressing the typically artistic notion that man’s vision tends towards the beautiful and he should strive to exceed the banality of ordinary life through art. The image of reaching can be seen as the creative process, in which man’s mind transcends the material world. At a time when cuts are being made to the arts Browning’s statement seems to be one that has got lost in a climate of facts and statistics and limits. But this is dangerous.

For me, the second relevance Browning’s words have is in how they can be reflected in our everyday lives. The importance of attempting to achieve something that is maybe unrealistic is what makes man a creative animal. It is what inspires, and ultimately gives our lives purpose. Every time we dream and attempt to better ourselves we are endorsing Browning’s Romantic ideology.

For Browning’s contemporary, Keats, it was the ‘striving’ after what can never be attained that became the true poetic task. In his sonnet ‘Bright Star’ Keats said he wanted to be “Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear” his lover’s “tender-taken breath”. For Keats the breath must be forever ‘taken’ and not released because he longed for the moment just before completion, a moment full of ‘potential’. Whether the goal is achievable or not it seems that it is the reaching or striving that really matters because it is creative vision itself that makes life beautiful and gives it meaning.

So, let’s make sure that we nurture potential and do not forget what the Romantic’s taught us about the sublime and hope and flight of imagination. It is easy to get bogged down by the increasing ‘realism’ that seems to define the 21^st century, an age of technology and science and factoids.

In the words of the great Percy Byshhe Shelley, “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar”. I am not suggesting everyone should become a poet but the basic principle stands. Let us embrace concerns with love and beauty and ‘over reach’ in our daily lives because life is nothing, if not full of possibilities.