Avello Publishing Journal Vol. 1, No. 1. 2011

The Sublime Void Ø

Jason Wakefield

DIONYSII LONGINI

DE

SUBLIMITATE

COMMENTARIUS

ceteraque, quae reperi potuere in ufum.

Cambridge University Library's rare books room houses an archive of ancient Greek and classical

Latin manuscripts (including repaired texts) containing the concept of the sublime in various

different forms. These publications are riddled with misprints, errata, typographical errors, dubious

pagination, and textual inconsistencies that makes one immediately question the authenticity of the

scribe's manuscript copy corrections against the examplars. This combined with the ambiguous

nature of the Phoenician roots of the aforementioned archaic Greek sources, throws doubt on the

validity of all the lexicography and philology that has been the measure of the concept of the

sublime thus far in Oxbridge classical scholarship. The historiography of the concept of the sublime

precedes any analytical interrogation, and after inspecting the fragments and parchments that forms

some of the referential material of works such as the text falsely attributed to Λογγῖνος (Longinus)

Περὶ ὕψους (On the Sublime)1, the paleography (παλαιός) potentially falsifies the subsequent re-

readings and philosophical successors who have inherited the concept. Handling these concepts,

should be the same as handling the rare books themselves, using the greatest care, with book-rests

to protect the spines and book-weights to hold open the leaves. The conceptual rests being

structured with philology and the conceptual weights consisting of paleography. Attention needs to

be paid to the variations in font sizes, calligraphy and line-spacing between different copies of the

same folios. 1 'Any historical discussion of the sublime must take into account the fountain – head of all ideas on that subject – the

pseudo – Longinian treatise, Peri Hupsous, known for over two centuries as Longinus On the Sublime' (Monk 1960: 10).

1

Alain Badiou’s ontological project in L'être et l' événement (Being and Event) is structured

by an axiomatic form of mathematics catalyzed by the end of Plato's Parmenides and Book IV of

Aristotle's Physics. Clayton Crockett re-reads this ontology as an elaboration of the Kantian

sublime, in which the mathematical sublime is separated from the dynamical sublime in order to

extinguish subjectivity from being. It is important to preface Crockett's re-reading with an outline of

the mathematico-logical structure of Being and Event and a genealogy of the concept of the sublime

from works such as the text attributed by some classical philologists to Longinus. This structure is

a mathematical framework which presents nothing except the Multiple in the being qua being

discourse. Being qua being allows itself to be sutured in its void during this discourse. This

discourse must be distinguished from Kant's philosophical discourse because philosophy is

separated from ontology even though, paradoxically, the kernel of philosophy is ontology. This

kernel, as a meta-ontology, has its de-stratification as an evental occurrence of being. Badiou

asserts, in Meditation Seven, that the categories of Kant cannot help us grasp the multiple of

multiples. The ancient Greek reference material drawn upon by Badiou and Kant share an

ambiguity and potentially corruptive nature. Not only is the authorship of several key texts

ambiguous, but the variations between the translations of the texts themselves require a close re-

examination of the original manuscripts.

The rarity of the availability of the original manuscripts of these thinkers ancient Greek

reference points puts the whole of Kant and Badiou's respective aesthetic, epistemological,

metaphysical and mathematico-ontological edifices at risk, as their core foundations are potentially

corrupt and false. Subtle textual differences and errata between source manuscripts can potentially

change the whole trajectory of Kant's (Burkean - inflected ) concept of the sublime and the

mathematical framework of Badiou's ontological enterprise. A re-reading and close examination of

the textual anomalies between the source texts not only sheds light on the potential of classical

philology to invalidate the entire subsequent discourse of modern philosophy from ancient Greece

to the modern day, but it also brings in to disrepute philosophy as a multi – lingual discipline. A

genealogical succession of errata is often embellished and further distorted through inconsistencies

and problematics of translation and interpretation. There is often a lack in Kant's 1790 Kritik der

2

Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement) and Badiou's Being and Event of textual analysis and

juxtaposition between ancient Greek source material.2 A close, philological reading of the rare

manuscripts attributed to compiling the texts such as Plato's dialogue Parminides and Aristotle's

Φυσικῆς ἀκροάσεως (Physics) is lacking from Badiou in Being and Event. Badiou is meticulous in

his referencing of the translations of the texts he is using, but he does not take in to the

consideration the validity of the original manuscripts themselves. Subtle changes in syntax, nuance

and etymology between the original document or manuscript and every successive reproduction of

the ancient texts may potentially distort and falsify every subsequent reading. Greek phrases do

permeate Badiou's Being and Event, but there is no sustained comparison between the copies of the

nameless and forgotten Greek scribes who composed the original sources. The ambiguous origins

and foundations of Badious' entire discourse that are based on ancient Greek texts may perhaps

invalidate all the hypotheses reached in his magnum opus. If the fundamental sources are corrupt,

then a lot of the axiomatic formulae derived from the sources can not be authentically validated.

The actual author of On the Sublime is unknown and approximately one third of the codex is

missing. Some scholars have wrongly attributed the treatise to Cassius Longinus and others to

Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The number of persons of this name Dionysius in the history of Greek

literature is vast and there is no certainty that there is only one literary Longinus either. The origins

of the concept of the sublime are ambiguous. A scholar embarking on a concrete analysis of the

early papyri, parchment, manuscripts and extant books containing the concept would need much

longer than the eighteen years it took Edmund Castell to compile his Lexicon Heptaglotton

Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Aethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum (1669).

This is because 'texts are not fixed' (McKitterick 2003: 97). Περὶ ὕψους is fluid and mobile, not just

at the time of writing, but in its production and publication.

Crockett's forthcoming Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology Multiplicity and the Event

suggests that ‘Badiou’s philosophy is quasi-Kantian insofar as it is obsessed with the conditions of

possibility for an event to occur, a pure irruption of novelty beyond being.’ My perspective diverges

2 The introduction to Being and Event cites Kant's salutation to the event of mathematics birth in the work of Thales but provides no source or reference. Also of critical importance is 'of certain products that are expected to reveal themselves at least in part to be a fine art, we say that they have no spirit, even though we find nothing to censure in them as far as taste is concerned. A poem may be quite nice and elegant and yet have no spirit.' Kant Critique of Judgement tr. Werner S. Pluhar. 1987. Cambridge: Hackett.

3

slightly from the quasi – Kantian reading of Badiou, but retains some of the mathematically sublime

conclusion of Parmenides that all is one; as Being and Event is punctured with logical connectors,

relations linking variables, formulas containing parentheses / braces / square brackets, quantified

variables, free variables, assemblages of signs with strictly defined rules and the logical principle ex

falso sequitor quodlibet. Perhaps preceding the poetical, Hellenistic Longinus embroilment in the

dynamical sublime is the mathematical sublime as manifested in the void and the excess of the

sublime. To clarify, the void may seem incomprehensible as the void does not present anything or

have any elements.3 Yet this is the true essence of the sublime as the void is a subset of any set,

possessing its own subset, which is the void itself! One can intuitively grasp the mathematical

sublime in its universal inclusion because 'the void is an empty set, the null set Ø, which is “the

unpresentable point of being of any presentation' (Badiou 2005: 86). Despite Aristotle firmly

rejecting this hypothesis, this encounter with the mathematical sublime was as relevant to Longinus4

in the 1st century B.C as it is to Badiou today. Aristotle refused to separate the void from that of the

place, so in terms of inventio (invention), dispitio (arrangement), style and presentation (elocutio),

memoria (memory) and delivery (actio) there can be no unpresentable null set Ø of the void

presented because one cannot think in an empty place.

Crockett's Being a Sublime Event: A Critique of Alain Badiou's Magnum Opus5 suggests on

page nine that 'this inexistence indicates the place of the void, which is necessary for the

constitution of an evental site. An evental site inaugurates a form of historicity.' The concept of the

sublime, in its mathematical incarnation, perhaps has a historicity which can be traced through a

3 Tim Crane (Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge University) has a paper forthcoming in 2012 on the problem of non-existence.

4 H.L Havell's translation of Longinus On the Sublime follows that of Jahn (Bonn, 1867), revised by Vahlen, and republished in 1884. Parallels can be drawn between Aristotle's emotion-charged axiom that 'being is said in several manners' and Cicero's mastery of narrative, stasis and ethos:

In his first oration against Catiline, for example Cicero abandoned convention and opened with a series of emotion-charged questions rather than with a calm exordium: Quo usque tandem abutere, Catiline, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? - “How long Catiline, will you abuse our patience? How long will that madness of yours continue to mock us?” (I. 1). In addition, he, more so than any of his contemporaries, was a master not only of narrative and stasis but also of ethos, which he used effectively in two ways – to portray his clients in the most favourable terms and demolish the characters of his adversaries.' (Havell 1890: 293)

5 This Avello Journal article is a chapter from a larger book project on Deleuze and Badiou, that reads Badiou’s critique of Deleuze in Gilles Deleuze: The Clamor of Being and criticizes it, in order to open up Crockett's own interpretation of Deleuze. See Clayton Crockett, Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity and Event (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming).

4

succession of textual events joined together like the relations linking variables in equations. This is

embedded deeply and implicitly in the poetics of the lost pages of the treatises concerning

sublimity. These lost, forgotten pages form the void-set marked by the name Ø. Yet they remain

included within our genealogy of the concept of the mathematical sublime. The poetical aspect of

this connection between the sublime Ø and its genealogy is at the crux of my argument.6

'The void is included in everything' (Badiou 2005: 87). The void left by the missing pages of the

treatises on the sublime is in a position of universal inclusion. Despite two thirds of the Longinus

On the Sublime manuscript being missing, we should not forget it is an element of the multiple

readings throughout the history of meditations on the sublime from the pre-Socratics to Badiou.

This adds weight to the sublime void in 'things unsaid have sometimes a greater affect than said'

Πίνδαρος (Pindar) and 'on this occasion I assumed a part of your eloquence, for I said nothing'

(Cicero).

In the copy of Aristologia Pindarica by Πίνδαρος (Pindar) in Cambridge University Library's

rare book room, repaired in 1936, there seems to be four pages missing. The remaining pages are

mis-numbered, with broken text on line 16 of page 9 with slightly different fonts and sizes. The text

fluctuates between Greek and Latin verse, leaving one with the impression that when the original

data is examined from where the concept of the sublime in lyric poetry originated, there is little

concrete consistency and authenticity. This is because much of this lyric poetry is based on papyri

and fragments of single leafs of parchment codex that have critical signs more commonly found in

Greek texts rather than Latin literary papyri. 7Unless figures such as Burke and Kant have actually

travelled to libraries such as those of Cambridge, St. Mark (Venice)8 and the Vatican City9 to consult

6 Horace Ars Poetica:

title remains a significant obstacle, creating problems for readers over the centuries because it necessarily engenders the expectation of a treatise along the lines of Aristotle's Technê Rhêtorikê. At the heart of this issue is the word “ars.” The Indo – European root of ars, means to join closely, to fit. [...] The Greek equivalent is arti, meaning “just” or “exactly,” and artios, meaning “suitable,” complete, or exactly fitted.” How these words were used in early Greek is uncertain, but we find Homer using artios in both the Iliad and the Odyssey to signify speaking to a specific purpose. (Iliad, 14.92; Odyssey, 8.240). (Williams 2009: 384)

7 If we turn to Fragmentum litergicum we find uncertain origins and African symptoms. 'The liturgy is manifestly a translation from the Greek' (E.A Lowe).

8 The Venetus A is the oldest existing copy of Homer's Iliad and it is housed in this library built in the 1500's.9 Several key pre – Caroline manuscripts are housed here 'The codex palatinus of Virgil is one of the oldest in

existence' (Lowe: xiii).

5

the original manuscripts of their sources, it is plausible that they have misunderstood the concepts

of the dynamical sublime and / or the mathematical sublime. As Kant never strayed further than a

few miles from his home town of Königsberg, it is unlikely he ever attempted to validate all his

sources or properly checked Burke's sources to add weight to his Kritik der Urteilskraft.

Rather than enter in to an argument pro or contra Longinus on Caecilius' prejudice against Plato

de rerum natura, I will open three copies of Virgil's Aeneid I encountered in the rare books room of

the UL. 10 Two of these copies are two volumes of the Strahan (1767) translation, the other is the

Beresford (1794) translation. Volume one and two have variations between the calligraphy and line

spacing but this is not as important as the content of the text itself in Book VII:

The Beresford :

To turn the Trojan King : -

Aye:- fate forbids. - might

Pallas burn the archive fleet,

and whelm its warriors In wave

by one man's fault Enwrath'd the

frenzies of Oileus' Son? (Virgil: 1794)

The Strahan:

The Trojan King from Latian Shores?

For why? The fates forbid. And could

Minerva burn the Grecian fleet, and

plunge amid the waves

The Greeks themselves, for one mans fault,

for crimes Oilean Ajax only dust attempt? (Virgil: 1767)

10 Cambridge University's main library. I also consulted the Seeley Historical library and English Faculty library on their Sidgwick site.

6

These very subtle differences can change the whole course of one's thought, depending on the

translation at hand. The several different versions of Longinus On the Sublime I encountered in the

rare books room are a lot less subtle in their errata / differences but the principle remains the same

when formulating a concrete aesthetic theory (in Kant's case) or a mathematical theory (in Badiou's

case). The founding axiomatic principles are in danger both aesthetically and mathematically. Let us

put down these tangible pieces of papyri and parchment read by Demosthenes, Plato, Homer and

Virgil and turn to the abstract parts of Kant's dynamical sublime. It is here where empiricism is

played off against transcendentalism and a glimpse of Wordsworth's tranquil sublime11 appears

playing empiricism off against empiricism. Crockett argues that 'Kant is already conflating the

dynamical sublime with the mathematical sublime in his discussion of the mathematical sublime'.

My suggestion is that this is true, but not in the sense of any confusion on Kant's part, but rather in a

deliberate sense in the way that Wordsworth plays empiricism off empiricism. Kant's project is an

epistemological one, even though he follows Aristotle's aesthetic configuration of forms. Beauty

resides in the subject, not the object, even though it sounds like Kant is discussing the object in his

distinctions between the quantitative sublime / qualitative sublime and pure beauty / dependent

beauty.

Man kann das Vermögen der Erkenntnis aus Prinzipien a priori die reine Vernunft, und die Untersuchung der Möglichkeit und Grenzen derselben überhaupt die Kritik der reinen Vernunft nennen : ob man gleich unter diesem Vermögen nur die Vernunft in ihremtheoretischen Gebrauche versteht, wie es auch in dem ersten Werke unter jener Benennung geschehen ist, ohne noch ihr Vermögen, als praktische Vernunft, nach ihren besonderen Prinzipien in Untersuchung ziehen zu wollen. (Kant: 1790)

11 See Ferguson 1992: 143. Also, as feminists, let us remember the importance of Dorothy Wordworth's place in English literature. Even though she almost wrote almost no prose for publication, her journals show an intense understanding of the sublime in nature that rivals the poetry of her brother.

7

To summarize my argument thus far, the faculty of knowledge concerning the concept of the

sublime up to and including Badiou, is based on faulty a priori principles. We can not call the

fictional Platonic dialogues of Parmenides 'pure reason.' The theoretical deployment of Έλληνες

(Greek) and lingua latīna poetry with mathematics does not constitute solid a priori knowledge for

the formation of the concept of the sublime in what Kant describes as pure reason. It is on this basis

that one would have to add Kant to the company of Hegel in what Lacan and (Badiou's friend)

Žižek call the most sublime of hysterics. 'In other words, Hegel's philosophical discourse is centered

on $ as the gap between Δ/a and S/S1 —> S'/S2, the subject as the dynamic, productive moment of

negativity made possible by the unsuturable parallax splits rupturing consciousness from within'

(Johnston 2008: 264). There is a twist to this Lacanian matheme which can be applied to this article,

not to diagnose the weaknesses in the Kantian critical – transcendental framework, or to separate

the link between the Lacanian Real and the Kantian thing-in-itself of Žižek's The Sublime Object of

Ideology but in derailing Δ/a into S/S1 —> S'/S2. To clarify, my argument is moving from the

particular immediacy of the original source texts themselves into the universal, generic concepts of

theorists of the sublime.

The concept of the sublime is well worn from centuries of agreements, disagreements and

determinations. One of Deleuze's interventions on Kant's Critique of Judgement is called The Idea

of Genesis in Kant's Aesthetics. 12 The Elizabeth Rottenberg translation of Lyotard's Lessons on the

Analytic of the Sublime is much more substantial however and relates to Badiou directly in the

pages stating that the infinite is thinkable as a whole. To be specific, it is Badiou's contemplation of

Parmenides thought that all is one that ties their mathematical approach to the sublime together.

Permit me a return to Badiou's void-set marked by the name Ø, and how this gap can used to

articulate the blanks in memory caused by the sublime affects of a combination of sex, drugs and

rock 'n' roll. If we consider an excess of the mathematical sublime in terms of a surplus of cash

12 Deleuze (2004) Desert Islands and other texts 1953-74. Semiotext(e).

8

currency, combined with the mathematical formula of the void as a drug – induced lack of

consciousness, we have a new playing ground for the concept of the sublime. This may seem

theoretically vacuous, but that is the whole point of the void in Badiou's mathematics. If we think

of the sublime as a mathematical synthesis of the drug - induced void and excess of finances, then

we have new terrain to explore. This is perhaps the terrain of the underworld's capo di tutti capi13

and not the terrain of the classical philologist. Bizarrely, the two sometimes share the same

existential framework, within a space of what Deleuze14 and Guattari call deterritorialisation. This

existential framework does not have its foundations in the strange, quasi- Kantian defense that the

SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann gave in his trial for helping organize the holocaust, or in the

Heideggerian silence on the holocaust, but in the book that Nietzsche did not write but his sister

published from his notes she named The Will to Power. 15

The will to power for the pursuit of the mathematically sublime is perhaps what elevates

soldiers to capos in the Sicilian mafia hierarchy. La Cosa Nostra emerged in the mid-nineteenth

century around the same time as Nietzsche's birth, perhaps then we can posit the mathematically

sublime as an ideological reaction to the rise of capitalism during this era. In 1867 Marx published

Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Capital). This is a Hegelian approach to analyzing

business, money, profit, commodities and wage labour. The spiritual, idealist sense of the absolute is

replaced with the material capitalist exploitation. Badiou's was taught by the famous Marxist

Althusser 16in 1967, thus this is not a digression from my preliminary argument.

13 Italian: Boss of all bosses. 14 See Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and Heymans' Deleuze & Guattari's Becoming-Animal and the Romantic

Discourse of the Sublime. 15 The question remains as to how many aphorisms are missing and how many have been doctored out of the 1, 067

published in the second edition of The Will to Power (1906). 16 See Kaufman's The Desire Called Mao: Badiou and the Legacy of Libidinal Economy. 2007. Postmodern

Culture.Vol. 18. No 1. This essay explores the synthesis of Marxist economic theory with Freudo – Lyotardian libidinal currents. In terms of painting and Kantian aesthetics, Lyotard answers the question of what is postmodernism with positing 'Thou shalt not make graven images' (Exodus) as the most sublime passage in the Bible. (Lyotard 1979: 78).

9

What we have in the formation of the Sicilian mafia is a combination of the Marxist recognition

of the importance of the transformation of money into capital and the accumulation of capital with

Nietzsche's sister's thirst for power. 'Famous pictures feature Hitler looking admiringly upon a bust

of (a then deceased Nietzsche), and one of the aged Elisabeth beaming with Hitler by her side'

(Acampora & Ansell-Pearson 2011: 3). Using the organized criminal network of the Sicilian mafia

as our model, perhaps we can draw a parallel between this and what the avid – Nietzsche reader

Heidegger terms a community of people [Volk] who preserve authentic self – hood. Each member of

the mafia becomes a self-made-man when they are promoted to the position of Capo, however they

remain at the mercy and under orders of the wider family. Michele Zagaria, one of the top mafia

bosses in the Naples region of Italy was arrested a few weeks ago after evading capture for sixteen

years. The irony of this is that during his time avoiding the Italian authorities he helped contract the

construction of a prison! Zagaria ran his clan like a dictatorship, much like the Volk of the Third

Reich was organized and controlled. The psycho-pathological forces at work within the Italian

forms of mafia organization share elements of the Nietzschean will and the Heideggerian

acceptance of the finite nature of time. This gangster orientation towards the mathematical sublime,

misuses and abuses the intentions of Nietzsche's will-to-power17 and Heidegger's being-towards-

death.

Here, the image of Cuba we get from someone like Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (his 'dirty Havana trilogy') is revealing: the Cuban 'being' as opposed to the revolutionary Event – the daily struggle for survival, the escape into violent promiscuous sex, seizing the day without future-oriented projects. This obscene inertia is the 'truth' of the revolutionary Sublime. (Žižek 2002: 8)

In a footnote to this point on the revolutionary sublime, Žižek claims that 'the proof of true fidelity

to a leader is not that one is ready to take a bullet for him; over and above this, one must be able to

take a bullet from him.' This highlights the obscenity of the revolutionary aspect of La Cosa Nostra

17 See Rüdiger Bittner's Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks (2003) for some of the suppressed manuscripts that have remained unavailable in English for several decades.

10

in the nineteenth century in its antipathy towards the Italian government, where we have the

rebellious mafia opposed to to the supreme authority of the State. This obscenity has an element

of irony and hypocrisy, as we see in the figure of Mussollini, Head of Governement [Capo del

Governo], the same abuse, misuses and distortions of the Nietzschean will-to-power that is inherent

in the struggles of the Capo di tutti capi of La Cosa Nostra against the state.

Hitler personally bequeathed a collected works of Nietzsche's to Mussolini at the Brenner Pass in

1938. Using Badiou's terminology, this happened outside of being-qua-being, in an event of

absolutely contingency. What if we stretch this event in another direction, in the direction of the

void – set Ø, where we have two heads of state, who if reduced to an emptiness masked by

symbolic inter-subjective relations, are in themselves a nothingness. This is not a nothingness in the

sense of Sartre's L'Être et le néant, but in the Žižekian sense of The Sublime Object of Ideology:

However, this is not all; if it were, the subject could be reduced to an empty place in which his or her whole content is procured by others, by the symbolic network of intersubjective relations. I am in myself a nothingness, the positive content of myself is what I am for others. (Žižek 1989: 46)

There is a sublimity inherent in this void of nothingness. This sublimity is in the awe it inspires in

others, much like the hand-written musical notation of Nietzsche and his friend (turned enemy)

Wagner. Individual notes have no aural affect18 with out an audience to perceive it, however a

composition of notes, with an audience, leads to music festivals and events such as the Bayrether

Festspiele. 19 This has a direct relationship to the political manifestation of the Fōrster-Nietzscho-

Heideggerian existentialism of the will-to-power's ideological place in the Hitler / Mussolini

meeting (as a Badiouan event) on the Brenner Pass. Paradoxically, as a singular, isolated event there

18 For fascinating research on the rhythmics of the voice (drawing upon Braidotti and Herzog) see Milla Tiainen's publications as a guide to new approaches to the concepts of the beautiful and the sublime.

19 Annual music festival held in Bayreuth, Germany. In the epigrams and interludes of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil makes use of Italian in specifically musical terms. On the ontological significance of music and decadence see Christoph Cox Nietzsche, Dionysus, and the Ontology of Music in Ansell Pearson ed. A Companion to Nietzsche. Oxford: Blackwell 2006. & Ellis Benson Pious Nietzsche Decadence and Dionysian Faith Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008.

11

is no significance or rupture in the set, but as a symbolic event it is a void Ø in the ethical course of

1938's political landscape. This philosophico-mathematical nexus, dances to the rhythms and songs

of Wagner, who was one of the more favored composers of both Mussolini and Hitler. The

sublimity inherent in this void of nothingness is, in Burke's analysis, the terror and horror of the Ø.

In conclusion, Parmenides' notion of all is one might have a theological parallel in Blake's All

Religions Are One. 20Here Blake21 speaks of all sects of philosophy coming from the poetic genius,

adapted to the weaknesses of the individual. Parmenides22 typology of hypotheses is an

epistemological weakness of his incomprehension of the revolutionary, mathematical and

dynamical sublime. The beautiful, Kantian thrill that comes over us at the idea of the sublime, can

fill the void Ø in its representation; even if the object is coarse or barbaric, as when it is represented

aesthetically (such as in Blake's illuminated printing or in the figure of death, as Milton articulates

it) we feel magnitudo reverenda intensely. 'Nature's sublimity, however, gives way to the sublimity

of the post – Fordist city in a striking scene in which Alex briefly enters the city limits of Los

Angeles' (Nilges 2008: 59). This intensity which inspires awe is often due to our lack of

apprehensio of the sublime, hence the need for the void Ø to describe the gap.

Into the Wild (2007) is not the non – fiction text adapted to film that we shall cease our

genealogy of the sublime with. Mr. Nice (2010) adapted from the autobiography of the Welsh

underworld legend / former MI6 agent Howard Marks is our conclusive point of departure. Marks,

whilst considering a switch from physics to philosophy for his Oxford University Masters degree23

had an idea which later culminated in the thought that 'I found no one completely understood moral

philosophy and that non-comprehension was by no means a bar to contribution' (Marks 1998: 46).

20 See Yovel's (1998) Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews for ideas on the religion of sublimity. Pennsylvania University Press. 21 Art, immanence and transcendence can be found in Colebrook's Blake, Deleuzian Aesthetics, and the Digital.

Continuum. Forthcoming 12/1/2012. 22 For Parmenides the Absoluteness of Being is the fundamental principle of philosophy, see Zhang Shiying's chapter

in Alain Badiou's The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic (2011). ed. & tr. Tzuchien Tho. Victoria: RePress. 23 After reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, Marks returned to Oxford to study History and

Philosophy of Science. He was taught by Dummett a fellow of All Souls who later became Oxford's Wykeham Professor of Logic.

12

This sublime non – comprehension has many folds and pleats that ordain my leading article. In the

interest of precision and lucidity, one will refine and compress these folds in to a single epiphany.

Marks was elected to organize the musical entertainment for his Commemorative Ball, a year after

the Rolling Stones where booked by Magdalen College just before they became rock 'n' roll

superstars. Marks response to this election was to book the Kinks whilst he and his friends filled

Oxford with cannabis smoke. The intoxication of cannabis creates a void Ø in the fabric of one's

consciousness. This is a sublime puncture in the Leibnizian coherence of Marks mind from nights

tripping out on LSD and smoking cannabis. On another physiological level, stage-fright is the

closest feeling Marks now receives in comparison to the orgasmic experience of the sublime that he

used to feel crossing international borders with tons of smuggled cannabis.

13

Appendix

Edward Elgar added an orchestral score to Jerusalem, the hymn that Charles Parry set to music and derived from William Blake's 1804 Preface to Milton. In juxtaposition with the divine malice Nietzsche showed to the paradigmatic pathological horror of Wagner in The Case of Wagner: A Musicians' Problem (1888), here instead we have the ethically beautiful and the sublime, filling the void – set Ø.

14

Bibliography

Acampora, C. D. & Pearson, K. A. 2011. Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Continuum.

Badiou, A. 1988. L'être et l' événement (Being and Event) London & New York : Continuum. 2005.

Blake, W. 1926. The Prophetic Writings intr. D.J Sloss & J.P.R Wallis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

15

Buchanan, I. 1998. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti – Oedipus. London: Continuum.

Burke, E. 1998. On the Sublime and the Beautiful London: Penguin.

Crockett, C. Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity and the Event. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming.

Crockett, C. A Theology of the Sublime. London: Routledge, 2001.

Deleuze, G. Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Ferguson, F. 1992. Solitude and the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Individuation. New York & London: Routledge.

Johnston, A. 2008. Žižek's Ontology a Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity. Northwestern University Press.

Kant, I. 1987. Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement). (1790) tr. W. S. Pluhar. Cambridge: Hackett.

Kant, I. 1974. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View) tr. Mary J. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Leibniz, G. W. 2007. Theodicy BiblioBazaar.

Longinus. 1870. An Essay on the Sublime tr. H. A. Giles. London: J. Cornish & Sons.

Longinus. 1871. An Essay on the Sublime tr. J. M King. London. UL Rare Book Classmark: Sc. 14.26 (Not borrowable).

Longinus. 1694. Dionysiou Longinou Peri Hupsous Trajecto ad Rhenum: Ex Officinâ Francisci Halma. UL Rare Book Classmark: Z.9.22. (Not borrowable).

Lowe, E. A. 1972. Latini Antiquires A Paleographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts prior to the Ninth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lyotard, J.F. 1991. Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. tr. E. Rottenberg. Stanford University Press.

Lyotard, J.F. 1979. La Condition Postmoderne: Rapport sur le Saviour. Les Editions de Minuit.

Marks, Howard. 1998. Mr. Nice. London: Vintage.

Monk, S. H. 1960. The Sublime – A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII – Century England University of Michigan Press.

Mussolini, R. 2006. Duce, Mio Padre (My Father, il Duce: a memoir by Mussolini's son) tr. A. Stojanovic. Milan : RCS Libri S.P.A.

16

McKitterick, D. Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order 1450-1830 Cambridge University Press.

Nilges, M. 2008. The Anti-Anti-Oedipus Mediations Journal of the Marxist Literary Group. Volume 23, No. 2.

Parry, H. C. & Blake, W. 1916. Jerusalem. London: J Curwen & Sons.

Pindar. 1556. Aristologia Pindarica Basileae. UL Rare Book Classmark Y.3.24. (Not borrowable).

Sweet, H. 1971. The Epinal Glossary Latin and Old English of the Eighth Century (photo-lithographed from the original ms. by W. Griggs). London: Trübner and co.

Tiainen, M. 2005. Säveltäjän Sijainnit (Locating the Composer). Jyväskylän Yliopisto.

Virgil. 1767. Aeneid. tr. Strahan, A. London: A.Miller & T. Cadell. UL Rare Book Classmark: 7700.d.651 – 651. (Not borrowable).

Virgil. 1794. Aeneid. tr. Beresford, J. UL Rare Book Classmark: Ff.11.45. (Not borrowable).

Žižek, S. 2002. Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates. London & New York: Verso.

Žižek, S. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London & New York: Verso.

17