Laocoön

“According to our notions, there are phenomena, which we conceive as being essentially sudden in their beginning and end and which can be what they are only for a brief moment. However, the prolongation of such phenomena in art, whether agreeable or otherwise, gives them such an unnatural appearance that they make a weaker impression the more often we look at them, until they finally fill us with disgust or horror.” – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781).
 
The face of the Trojan priest –
whose body, and his sons’,
devoured by snakes,
writhes in pain –
merely sighs

Yet we are haunted
by his cry
which imagination
amplifies

Like a phantom
pregnant
with meaning
climaxes
and dies

Sublime

“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” – Edmund Burke (1729-1797).
 
That which killed the cat is, 
for us, essential. 
desire for novelty. 
Yet, before Death comes,  
do we take less pleasure 
in four seasons, repeating, 
than in three hundred and twenty? 
 
My tooth aches and you strike me with a hammer 
just as that great gooseberry Ivan warned, 
once he’d finished swimming, 
chopping circles round the tranquil pond 
and blowing  
horrible shadowblack rings  
of dirty pipesmoke 
 

But then you claw out the offending fang 
and lay the weapon down 
and delight flows through me 
You offer up a cup of wine 
and pleasure runs in blood. 
 
We drink until the cellar is 
a mausoleum 
a sealed crypt of pleasing woe 
with idle bottles strewn as corpses 
and amongst them we lie 
indifferent, disappointed, grieving. 
 
The sickness claws 
as the air runs out 
I take comfort in the beauty of your eyes 
Light pools that sparkle above an infinite depth 
 
But Death stands here vast 
O King of Terrors 
All gaze, all wonder! 

On Beauty as a Symbol of Morality

“Taste as it were makes possible the transition from sensible charm to the habitual moral interest without too violent a leap by representing the imagination even in its freedom as purposively determinable for the understanding and teaching us to find a free satisfaction in the objects of the senses even without any sensible charm.” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
If common sense is vulgur
I seek communion with genius
Whose wings have been clipped by taste
That it may lay its golden eggs forever
According to quota and recipe
Imaginiation, beaten with understanding,
Sautéd in spirit
Seasoned to desire and served as beauty.
Buildings majestic ringed
By magnificent trees and smiling fields
Sunkissed in tender colour
Thus we are painted and morally stained.

Exposition

“In relation to the feeling of pleasure an object is to be counted either among the agreeable or the beautiful or the sublime or the (absolutely) good (iucundum, pulchrum, sublime, honestum).” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
Iuncundum
The sated appetite
Bellyful

Honestum
At once, at twice
At forever always

Pulchrum
Disinterestedly pleasing
Preparing us for love

Sublime
Resisting sensual interest
Arousing esteem
And fear
A finite portrait of an unattainable sitter.

On Nature as Power

“Power is a capacity that is superior to great obstacles. The same thing is called dominion if it is also superior to the resistance of something that itself possesses power. Nature considered in aesthetic judgement as a power that has no dominion over us is dynamically sublime.” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
Resisting evil
We find ourselves
no match
for it. And
Fear rises
like bubbles of nitrogen
Shimmering in imagination.
By nature sublime
The mind quakes.

On the Mathematically Sublime

“That is sublime in comparison with which everything else is small… That is sublime which even to be able to think of demonstrates a faculty of the mind that surpasses every measure of the senses… Nature is thus sublime in those of its appearances the intuition of which brings with them the idea of its infinity.” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
Looked through the wrong way,
The telescope shrinks giants,
Casting them distant
diminished.
The microscope, respected,
Amplifies the dust mote
Up to the magnitude of a world.
Comprehend the galaxy on Orion’s belt
Apprehend the war prevented,
shapeless mountain mass graves
pyramidal tombs of ice
a dark and raging sea of blood,
Monstrous and terrible,
Colossal and magnificent.
I think the infinite therefore,
noumenon vibrating,
Moved from calm contemplation,
grounded in supersensible substratum,
Sublime.

Negative Pleasure

“(the feeling of the sublime) is a pleasure that arises only indirectly, being generated, namely, by the feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital powers and the immediately following and all the more powerful outpouring of them; hence as an emotion it seems to be not play but something serious in the activity of the imagination.” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
He was wrong 
I looked out over the churning water 
That covered the earth forever, it seemed, 
And saw, out there, the tiny brown
Boat bob and sink and glug a bubble 
The breath held, the heart stopped 
Poised on the scumyellow foamcrest of the moment, 
Now 
And then: the world drowned in the saltdead flood of grief and terror 
And I turned my eyes  
From the sea to the seadark sky 
Shuddering 
 

Apodictum

“it turns out that everything flows from the concept of taste as a faculty for judging an object in relation to the free lawfulness of the imagination.” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
If there is one thing I know for certain 
It’s that I shouldn’t, 
No, I shouldn’t, 
But I do, and so do 
You, by necessity 
The jellied eye rolls round in its darkwet cave 
In a free lawfulness of understanding 
Purposive without end 
Judgmentally peculiar 
There is no accounting for 
Taste. 

Shapes Play

“Taste is always still barbaric when it needs the addition of charms and emotions for satisfaction, let alone if it makes these into the standard for its approval.” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
The source is form 
And never matter 
Beauty exists at the core 
Or nowhere 
Shapes Play 
Play Shapes 
And all those parerga 
Pigments and bells 
Cinchings and dyes 
Can only please 
The Barbarian 
From whom we flee 
A hunt we are bound 
To lose. 

The End

“Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, insofar as it is perceived in it without representation of an end.” – Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
 
We find pleasure 
Without concept 
In the purposive form 
Of beauty 
Aesthetic and 
 
Stark. 
 
Liplike curves 
Poised apart 
Eyelashes meshing 
Locking entangled 
Pour me into you 
Forever.