In the spring of 2023, I had the great misfortune of seeing a truly horrific play telling the story of Saint Joan of Arc, titled “Joan and the Fire”. Between the musical performances, the constant twirling of ribbons on stage, and the presence of a “unicorn” in light up fuzzy boots and drag makeup in a scene made to represent a mushroom-induced psychedelic trip, it felt as though Joan was being tortured in front of a crowd for the second time. This performance could not have provided sharper a contrast to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s stark yet moving La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and its brilliant performance by Renée Jeanne Falconetti. In this movie, practically every second feels endowed with the sublime, with each part of the production honoring Joan’s incredible story. While “Joan and the Fire” and La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc deviate slightly on the focus of their timelines and narratives, they ultimately tell the same story.
Joan’s story is one imbued with the sublime, and it is a story that has power both in a simple narrative recounting and in an extravagant and artistic telling of it. While I will address the proper presentation of these stories at the “low” level later, I will first discuss the sublimity of the high level first. For class, we read chapter 7, “Adam and Eve”, from Erich Auerbach’s masterpiece Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. In this chapter, Auerbach addresses the stylistic differences between sermo gravis/sublimis and sermo remissus/humilis, or the elevated and low styles of writing in antique rhetoric. He explains that while these two approaches were kept separate in antiquity, Christianity merges them, creating a powerful style befitting of medieval mystic writing. Importantly, this style also introduced a new sublimity “in which the everyday and the low were included, not excluded, so that, in style as in content, it directly connected the lowest with the highest” (154). This style brings the mysteries of the Bible into new light, inviting us to consider the riddles and questions that the sometimes-simple, sometimes-esoteric text offers us.
In class, we discussed the beauty of the Junius manuscript, looking at the way in which Genesis and Exodus were written in an epic style in Old English. We saw the language, rich and poetic, brimming with its own florid descriptions of the biblical scenes so sparsely described in the actual Old Testament, as an example of the sublime sermo gravis that Auerbach explained. Yet, as Professor Fulton Brown aptly pointed out, this version was one sung in mead-halls by “barbarians”, not painstakingly analyzed by Saint Augustine or Saint Jerome.
This point would surely have fascinated the writers and intellectuals at the court of Louis XIV, as they took up sides in the “Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” (the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns). In brief, scholars of 17th century France fervently took up arms to either defend the claim that the ancient authors were superior to those the modern era, or vice versa. The Anciens believed that the writings of antiquity were endowed with a certain “wild” sublimity, being of a truer and purer sprit by virtue of their ancientness, uncorrupted by modern mores. Perhaps this same thinking applies to the Junius manuscript, which tells the great Biblical narrative in a way that excites the mind towards the world of “Spear-Danes in days gone by.”
To further apply the work of the Anciens to our class discussion, I turn to the writing of their leader, poet and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux. In his preface to a translation of Longinus’ On the Sublime, Boileau discusses the difference between a sublime style (one with advanced rhetorical style) versus a text with true sublimity. He uses the beginning of Genesis to explain his definition of the true sublime: the extraordinary, the surprising, and the marvelous. For Boileau, the inherent power of “God said: Let there be light; and there was light” is so astonishing and beautiful that it does not need heightened language to convey its majesty. Of course, Boileau is not against the appropriate use of a sublime style in other contexts, but his point that there is an inherent sublimity in the acts of God is an important one.
So—now to connect these different ideas. I believe that like Joan’s story, and like Boileau says, there is an inherent sublimity in these religious narratives. When presenting or retelling stories of such import, we come face to face with the difficulty of properly honoring them. One way to do that is to share them through the sublime language of the Junius manuscript, or the sublime acting of Falconetti in Dreyer’s film. Yet to relegate these stories solely to this realm is to ignore the other part of what Auerbach tells us makes Christian writing so powerful: the presence of the sermo remissus. There is perhaps nowhere that this humble, low language to depict these sublime events is more on display than in the York Mystery Plays, which we examined in depth in class. These plays are farcical, enacted by one’s own neighbors within the limits of a wheeled cart. It is hard to see the sublime of God’s actions in these productions, yet they do not feel disrespectful to the stories they tell in the way that “Joan and the Fire” so clearly felt. I believe that the sublime beauty of these mystery plays lies in the honesty and beauty of human nature to tell our own story, and to share and take part in the story of our own creation. This figurative depiction, though foreign to us, holds truth in its commitment to the story it shares. While somewhat silly-appearing at first glance, the York Mystery plays reveal our dedication and love for tradition and belief, and our desire to see ourselves in the majestic narrative of the universe. This is something beautiful and sublime in itself—something far more powerful than a play like “Joan and the Fire”, where there is no recognition of or love for the piety and power of the original story.
Sarah Muhlbaum
Auerbach, Erich. 1957. Mimesis.
Auerbach, Erich. 1957. Mimesis.
So many thoughts! I appreciate your effort to give a proper definition of the sublime, but it feels (like Ken's!) somewhat "off-stage.” I would have liked to hear more in detail about the difference between the Joan play and the movie as a way of thinking about what the York plays do that is like or unlike having light-up fuzzy boots contrasting with, for example, the fall of Adam and Eve. Could you give specific examples from the text of the play to show what sparked your comparison with the Joan play? Is it the problem of showing spiritual events acted in the middle of the everyday? Or is it the unwillingness that modern playwrights have in acknowledging the sublime? Or something else?
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