EVENING WILL COME: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POETICS (ISSUE 6: June 2011)

Martin Corless-Smith
On Sublimity                     (page 9)

Such a revelation depends upon a certain construction of our physical and spiritual make-up, a metaphorical description that we inherit from a particular cultural and historical context. And it might be that in our twenty-first century context this dualistic, one might say, Cartesian, construction ought to come under some pressure. But for my interest I am not asking for my reader to image the soul and the body as clearly distinct, I am in fact looking at the moment that Browne, Sebald, and Nash notice as a kind of moment of crisis in the identity of being. For if language is of the earth, in its poetic moments it might be said to point to that which is beyond its own materiality, just as in moments of deep reflection the mind might become aware of a state of being that hints at a bodiless elevation.


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