The words on the signs are taken from On the Sublime and the Beautiful, by Edmund Burke. These are words that stand alone in describing the sublime in Burke's text. A text which is peculiar to say the least - a kind of commonsense guide to the Sublime backed up with cod-scientific reasoning. It strikes me that in defining the sublime Burke makes its commodification possible. The sublime could be sold as paintings and later photographs and of course as adventure holidays. This is a book that launched a thousand Cook's Tours turning landscape into a sensationalist fun fair.
... For Gray and Walpole, though, the mountain experience was different. Intellectually skeptical, they could make themselves reverent as a form of aesthetic play. What they were interested in, along the high mountain passes, was not a true epiphany with the omnipotent Almighty, but an experiment in sensation. Their journey was designed to take them close to the edge, to toy with disaster. Where earlier mountain travellers had recoiled from mountain terror, Walpole and Gray revelled in it. They might have taken as there text the revealing remark by one John Dennis, who, on crossing the Alps in 1668, thought he had "walkd upon the very brink in a literal sense, of Destruction ... The sense of all this produced in me ... a delightful Horrour, a terrible Joy and at the same time that I was infinitely pleased, I trembled." (Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. 1995. HarperCollins Publishers, Great Britain. p. 449)
Over time the Grand Tour has mutated to Cook's Tour and now to the Gap year. People destined for higher things [mainly higher education] seek adventure, thrills, good works and culture. This is the repayment of imperialist capitalism's debt and the method of globalised capitalism. The altruistic and the self-serving rolled into one.
"The descent down to the Chiquibul chamber takes you from dense green jungle to barren rocks that disappear into the darkness. You venture down into the cave feeling slightly as though we have landed on another planet"
"Exploring un-chartered areas of jungle was amazing! Discovering our own waterfall and diving into the plunge pool was the biggest thrill!" [Copyright © 2008 Trekforce Worldwide. All rights reserved.Registered Address: Trekforce Worldwide Ltd, 530 Fulham Road,London, SW6 5NR]
These are quotes from the Trekforce website that specialises in Gap Year Holidays offering a mix of adventure, and noble deeds.
In Burke's eyes it is disorder, the barbarous, awe, gloom, and the heathen that are sublime. This is the opposite of the ordered life of the city, of civilisation. Sublime and later Romantic landscapes become other. This inevitably causes a tension between the urban and the rural. Between the landscape of work and the landscape of leisure. Between the centre and the periphery. Metropolitan culture and the culture of the countryside. City dwellers would like the Sublime landscape to remain unchanged in its otherness. To this end these Sublime and Romantic landscape are designated as parks and nature reserves and presumably the people in these places must remain unchanged too. How should we react to this: by rage, and terror; should we tremble; live in darkness? After all many of us would like the place we live to be special and the Sublime and the Romantic are such seductive epithets it is easy for us to internalise them and perhaps to feel wonder.
These signs are ready to be placed in the landscape to alert motorists that they are in danger of entering a sublime landscape and the ensuing arguments raging about them and the descending fog of words.
... For Gray and Walpole, though, the mountain experience was different. Intellectually skeptical, they could make themselves reverent as a form of aesthetic play. What they were interested in, along the high mountain passes, was not a true epiphany with the omnipotent Almighty, but an experiment in sensation. Their journey was designed to take them close to the edge, to toy with disaster. Where earlier mountain travellers had recoiled from mountain terror, Walpole and Gray revelled in it. They might have taken as there text the revealing remark by one John Dennis, who, on crossing the Alps in 1668, thought he had "walkd upon the very brink in a literal sense, of Destruction ... The sense of all this produced in me ... a delightful Horrour, a terrible Joy and at the same time that I was infinitely pleased, I trembled." (Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. 1995. HarperCollins Publishers, Great Britain. p. 449)
Over time the Grand Tour has mutated to Cook's Tour and now to the Gap year. People destined for higher things [mainly higher education] seek adventure, thrills, good works and culture. This is the repayment of imperialist capitalism's debt and the method of globalised capitalism. The altruistic and the self-serving rolled into one.
"The descent down to the Chiquibul chamber takes you from dense green jungle to barren rocks that disappear into the darkness. You venture down into the cave feeling slightly as though we have landed on another planet"
"Exploring un-chartered areas of jungle was amazing! Discovering our own waterfall and diving into the plunge pool was the biggest thrill!" [Copyright © 2008 Trekforce Worldwide. All rights reserved.Registered Address: Trekforce Worldwide Ltd, 530 Fulham Road,London, SW6 5NR]
In Burke's eyes it is disorder, the barbarous, awe, gloom, and the heathen that are sublime. This is the opposite of the ordered life of the city, of civilisation. Sublime and later Romantic landscapes become other. This inevitably causes a tension between the urban and the rural. Between the landscape of work and the landscape of leisure. Between the centre and the periphery. Metropolitan culture and the culture of the countryside. City dwellers would like the Sublime landscape to remain unchanged in its otherness. To this end these Sublime and Romantic landscape are designated as parks and nature reserves and presumably the people in these places must remain unchanged too. How should we react to this: by rage, and terror; should we tremble; live in darkness? After all many of us would like the place we live to be special and the Sublime and the Romantic are such seductive epithets it is easy for us to internalise them and perhaps to feel wonder.
These signs are ready to be placed in the landscape to alert motorists that they are in danger of entering a sublime landscape and the ensuing arguments raging about them and the descending fog of words.
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