Has any experience ever suspended your powers of comparison? If so, you have experienced the sublime. Of such an experience while mountain trekking with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Clement Carlyon wrote:
When we were ascending the Brocken, and ever and anon stopping to take breath, as well as survey the magnificent scene, a long discussion took place on the sublime and beautiful. We had much of Burke, but more of Coleridge . . . Many were the fruitless attempts made to define sublimity satisfactorily, when Coleridge, at length, pronounced it to consist in a suspension of the powers of comparison. (Quoted from Clement Carlyon’s Early Years and Late Reflections, 1936, vol. I, p. 51.)
Clear nights of January, around 9:00 p.m. in northern latitudes, are one of the best times of the year to experience the sublime, provided the sky where you live is free of light pollution. Using binoculars or a small telescope, look south and up into the Orion nebula in the Orion constellation. The suspension of your powers of comparison will awaken a terrific intensity of feeling. We need a regular diet of the sublime, essential ingredient to being human.
Please consider joining the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) because everyone must have the chance to go out in backyards and city parks and slew binoculars or telescope across the night sky in search of the sublime.
For a short biographical sketch of Clement Carlyon, click here.
To learn about the International Dark-Sky Association, click here.
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