Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime Landscape

1 - Polarized Values

9 1 Po­ lar­ ized Val­ ues What are the po­ lar­ ized val­ ues? They in­ clude dark­ ness and light, chaos and order, body and mind, mat­ ter and ­ spirit, na­ ture and cul­ ture, among oth­ ers. Every cul­ ture has its own set that is sub­ tly dif­ fer­ ent from those of other cul­ tures. With all of them, there is a fam­ ily re­ sem­ blance—a sim­ i­ lar ev­ o­ ca­ tion of val­ ues such that one pole con­ tains the “neg­ a­ tives” of dark­ ness, chaos, body, mat­ ter, and na­ ture, and the other pole, the“pos­ i­ tives” of light, order, mind, ­ spirit, and cul­ ture. (The in­ verted com­ mas are put there as a re­ min­ der that the val­ ues are re­ ver­ sible.) These bi­ nar­ ies under­ lie a ro­ man­ tic geog­ ra­ phy for the fol­ low­ ing rea­ sons: they focus on the ex­ tremes ­ rather than on the ­ middle-range; they af­ fect our feel­ ings and judg­ ments to­ ward ob­ jects and peo­ ple in the or­ di­ nary en­ coun­ ters of life, but also—and more cen­ tral to ro­ man­ tic geog­ ra­ phy—in the en­ vi­ sion­ ing and ex­ pe­ ri­ enc­ ing of 10 polarized values large, chal­ leng­ ing en­ vi­ ron­ ments such as the ­ planet Earth with its nat­ u­ ral sub­ di­ vi­ sions of moun­ tain,ocean,trop­ i­ cal for­ est,­ desert, and ice pla­ teaus, and their human counter­ part in chal­ lenge— the city. Boost­ ing the ro­ man­ tic fla­ vor of these en­ vi­ ron­ ments are in­ di­ vid­ u­ als who seek ad­ ven­ ture and some­ thing else—some­ thing more mys­ ter­ i­ ous that they are un­ able to ar­ tic­ u­ late. Ad­ ven­ tures of the lat­ ter sort may be char­ ac­ ter­ ized as quest, and quest—as in the quest for the Holy Grail—is at the core of ro­ mance. But first, we need to turn to the bi­ nar­ ies be­ cause they both de­ fine the lim­ its of what is ac­ cept­ able in the nor­ mal op­ er­ a­ tions of human life—geog­ ra­ phy—and hint at pos­ sibil­ ities be­ yond—ro­ man­ tic geog­ ra­ phy. Dark­ ness and Light “In the be­ gin­ ning God ­ created ­ heaven and the earth. And the earth was with­ out form, and void; and dark­ ness was upon the face of the deep. And the ­ Spirit of God moved upon the face of the wa­ ters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good: and God di­ vided the light from dark­ ness.” These fa­ mil­ iar ­ verses at the be­ gin­ ning of Gen­ e­ sis are sup­ ple­ mented by ­ verses in the first chap­ ter of the gos­ pel ac­ cord­ ing to Saint John. “In the be­ gin­ ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In him (that is, in the Word) “was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shin­ eth 11 polarized values in dark­ ness; and the dark­ ness com­ pre­ hended it not.” A man was sent from God “to bear wit­ ness of the Light, that all men ­ through him might be­ lieve. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear wit­ ness of that Light. That was the true Light, which light­ eth every man that comes into the world” (John 1:1, 4–6, 8–9). God is Light or, to put it the other way, Light is God. In the human world, light is in­ tel­ lec­ tual il­ lu­ mi­ na­ tion or spir­ i­ tual en­ light­ en­ ment. More than other re­ li­ gions, such as Bud­ dhism, light in Chris­ ti­ an­ ity is given a ­ richly var­ ied sym­ bolic mean­ ing in lit­ er­ a­ ture, art, and archi­ tec­ ture. Thus, when Dante ­ passes be­ yond the crys­ tal ­ sphere of the out­ er­ most star, he is said to have en­ tered a ­ Heaven that is “pure light, in­ tel­ lec­ tual light, full...