Sublime and Ridiculous

By David Kitchingman in All Sorts

examples from religion, art and sport highlight how the sublime and ridiculous seem like two sides of the same coin

SUBLIME AND RIDICULOUS
They're an odd but familiar couple. I was reminded of them in a roundabout way last weekend. On Friday night and Saturday morning I attended the Faith Thinking Course on 'Science, the Bible and Theology: Historical Perspectives', presented by Associate Professor John Stenhouse. On Sunday I dropped in at the Art Gallery and viewed an exhibition of works by four contemporary New Zealand artists currently working in Dunedin, entitled 'Ridiculous Sublime.' The common denominator between these two attendances was Thomas Paine, the 18th century English-American revolutionary
writer, and a fierce critic of Christianity.
At least that's what he became. Born of an Anglican mother and Quaker father he was a contemporary of John Wesley and became intrigued with Methodism and the way Wesley took his message to commoners. Paine noted that 'Methodism demonstrated that the excluded majority were a social force to be reckoned with. Commoners do not need to be talked down to, ignored, pushed aside, or hanged for criminal offences.' One of Paine's well-known sayings was: 'The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.' Sounds familiar? 'The world is my parish', said Wesley, and: 'Do all the good you can'. Where they parted ways was in defining the good they tried to do in the world.
Paine's name and especially his famous work, The Age of Reason, cropped up in the Faith Thinking Course which covered the so-called warfare between science and religion over the centuries. Then I discovered that the 'Ridiculous Sublime' exhibition at the Art Gallery drew on a quote from the same work (Part II, 1795): 'The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.'
On further investigation, I found that the original context of the quote was Paine's demolition job on the Biblical account of how Joshua made the sun stand still upon Mount Gibeon. Paine argued that it 'shows the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth [my italics] to have stood still.' Such was the ridiculousness of the attempt to depict an act of divine sublimity that day. One can sense Paine's derision as he lingered over the closing words of the passage (Joshua 10:14): 'And there was no day like that, before it, nor after it [his italics], that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man.'
Paine wasn't quite the first to express the tight interplay between the sublime and the ridiculous. Some 20 years earlier, a French author, Fontenelle, put it even more succinctly: 'From the sublime to the ridiculous is only one step.' Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have expressed the same thought as he turned back home after his pivotal defeat in Russia.
Turning back home to a less epic stage in the Dunedin Art Gallery, how are the two epithets applied to artistic works? The Gallery suggests that 'the distinct vision of a contemporary artist can offer a new lens through which to see our everyday - reshaping the intersections between the familiar, the ridiculous and the magnificent.' A critic, Monique Hodgkinson, writing in Critic, agreed that the works of the four exhibitors, Nick Austin, Jane Dodd, Scott Eady and Rachel H. Allan, are 'simultaneously kitsch and stylish, artistic and absurd, hilarious and thought-provoking'.
In the world of modern art especially, it would be widely accepted that 'ridiculous' and 'sublime' often jostle for position. But so too in just about every field of human endeavour ─ I'm not quite sure about mathematics, but it's probably the case. Certainly in sport and politics it's true. A gold medal Olympian may swim sublimely one day and act like a chuff the next. A politician may make an imposing speech one
evening only to be brought down to size in the newspaper cartoon the next morning.
But are there any spheres in which the risk is supremely high? I suspect it must be in the areas of ethics, religion, spirituality and the like, for the simple reason that the higher you aim the bigger you may fall. Christianity of course is not immune. We can merely note how Thomas Paine had a field day in exposing the pomposity of Biblical literalism.
Jesus seems to have been supremely conscious of the dangers and held up some behaviours for ridicule. A stark example is the parable of a Pharisee, strutting the temple stage, and a tax collector, tucked away in a corner. Each offers a prayer, one of thanksgiving, the other of confession. One is ridiculous, the other sublime. End of story? Not quite. Generations followed and many Christians make a fetish out of confession and a few even indulge in self-flagellation. If 'we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table' does that make God's dog more acceptable?
As Paine so perceptively wrote: 'One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous.' Things that are noble and magnificent are never far from things that are trivial and laughable. We really have to reckon with the ridiculous and the sublime as virtually two sides of the same coin. There is good news and bad news. There are hazards and hope in nearly every situation. While remaining wary of the hazards, the great challenge is to spot the chance to turn a faintly ridiculous situation into something sublimely hopeful. Can we think of one?
David Kitchingman