Comments on Des Pres' "Terror and the Sublime"

Abstract

As I first read Terrence Des Pres' relevant and moving paper, what played in back of my mind was not image he ends with of that majestic fire cloud brighter than a thousand suns, but rather images of that great terror of twentieth century, Nazism and its horrible culmination in Holocaust. It may have been my knowledge of his previous work on survivors of death camps that brought those fitful images to my mind. More likely it was poignant human quality that informed his paper. When I read his unfolding definition of terror including the forms of power which cause danger or pain and threaten self-preservation, and which aim particularly at diminishment, disfiguration, mutilation and finally annihilation of human image,' I could only think of a human demonic power and not a natural, albeit sublime, one. The mirror of our terror somehow reflects a human face-or did for me, at least. This was a small point, more an observation than an argument. But I came to write up my comments on paper, it took on a larger and larger significance. I recalled a remark by Simone Weil. On seeing a newsreel of one of Nazi's massive theatrical and military displays that became familiar to us in thirties, she confessed that, in midst of her disgust and hatred, she felt something attract her. I don't recall if she spoke of sublime, but awe she felt seemed to come from sense of power shared, luxury of giving oneself up to it. This is very close, I think, to what Des Pres is describing when he speaks of how power which threatens our disfigurement or annihilation becomes sublime-or is, it were, sublimated by feeling as if we ourselves were source of power we behold. In this essential sense, I think we can agree that source of terror will bear a human face, even if only our own.