Dear Cyndy,

The correspondence about Nathaniel which I forwarded, will bring you up-to-date
with some of my recent preoccupations. Last evening, after I became too tired
or too bored with my novel, I decided to review Schiller's pronouncements on
the sublime (Das Erhaben), which I read, if ever, many many years ago. On the 
Internet, I read two separate essays replete with the reification of undefined 
concepts which is the hallmark of Kantian philosophy. I would be embarrassed if 
you asked me to recapitulate what I read. What I remember now is a remarkable 
identification of sublimity with freedom. Schiller's argument, if I can do it 
justice, is that beauty, being physical, captivates and is perceived the the senses, 
while the sublime, being metaphysical (Schiller doesn't use that term, but he point 
to it) addresses and is addressed by reason; and reason (mind, nous) as Plato insisted, 
frees us from the bondage of the senses and the sensual. This effect of the
sublime reflects the circumstance that nature is everywhere and forever
threatening us with injury and death. It our ability of our reason to
contemplate these threats (with equanimity) which has the "uplifting"
sublime effect of liberating us by placing us above and permitting us to
survey, overlook and look down upon all that threatens and annoys us.
That's why it has always been important to me to ascend to the very summit 
of each mountain, and that's why lofty condominiums with views of the
Harbor or of the Park fetch millions of dollars. The hypothesis that
freedom is freedom from fear, and that reason secures freedom by the
contemplation of injury and death, reminded me of the stirring soldiers'
chorus from Schiller's play Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein's Camp)  
which concludes with the couplet "Wer dem Tod ins Angesicht schauen kann,
Der Soldat allein ist der freie Mann." (The only man who is free is the 
soldier able to look into the face of death.)  That's an interesting 
thought diametrically opposed to my own conviction that the military is 
the institution of ultimate slavery whose members have forfeited their
spiritual integrity. Schiller argues further that art rather than nature
is the primary locus of the sublime, exemplified especially in tragedies
(such as he himself composed) - again a conclusion which is divergent from 
my own experience. If I don't get distracted I will continue my pursuit of
the sublime in the texts of other authors and report to you what I find.
Jochenfound