Genius: Nature VS Art

Genius : Nature V/S Art
Classical Critics were only concerned with technical knowledge in art and literature.
Plato calls poets imitators and divine frenzy.
Sublimity: ideas of natural ability-naturally gifted beyond mere technical skill.
 By Longinus
 Touched by Roman and Jewish thoughts
 Also calls hypsos
 Based on writer’s mental characteristics
 Greatness of soul (megalopsychia)
 Power of conceiving impressive thoughts
 Makes strong emotional impact on the reader
 Irrestible effect on readers
#Romantics  transmitted to modern thought the notion of ‘originality’
 Which was previously taken for granted or accepted as a self-evident in all the arts.
 New styles and genres are created by some individual
 Romantics played up the uniqueness and individuality of genius.
# Longinus distinguishes between rhetoric and genuine poetic power
 Rhetoric :- the command of verbal skill; skills of art
 Genuine:- not restrained by rules and regulations
 “Can attain a grace beyond reach of art” Pope
 True genius can express sublime ideas which are associated with large scenes and aspects of nature not small and intimate realities. (Opposite to Wordsworth)
 Longinus preserves certain literary devices to achieve the grand effect of sublimty
 Grand ideas-grand words
 “Let there be light”- grand idea
 Brave Gorkhalis: Grand ideas
 Imitation is a transplantation of the original to foreign soil
 Original is a new plant which grows naturally
 Coleridge’s fancy is imitation because it is derived from pre-existing materials
# Hazlitt argues that one cannot define or intellectually grasp the nature of the production of genius.
 Sulblime writers point us what is before our eyes and under our feet.
# Longinus “On Sublime” (3rd C)
 True sublime elevates us with a sense of proud possession
 Fills us with joyful pride
 As if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard
 If any idea doesnot affect us then it’s not true sublime
 Outlast the moment of utterance
 Gives abundant food for thought
 Its impossible to resist its effect
 Pleases all people at all time
 All agree together in holding one and the same view about the same writing
 Calls genius as “demigods”( half-gods)
 Great and divine things develop
 Develops unconquerable passion into our hearts
 Extraordinary, great and beautiful
 Don’t write about what is useful and necessary
 Write about unusual which wins our wonder
 Sublimity lifts them near the mighty mind of gods