Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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in “German Romanticism from the nineteenth century” and “the northern European
experience”. 97 He qualifies these statements by pointing out that his interests are not
limited to these aspects. He does, however, acknowledge his “strong German
connections” with respect to his mother’s German background, and the feeling that he
used to have “a connection with the whole German thing”. 98 (One also gets the
impression that while he may have felt this in his twenties, he has moved on from this
to some extent.) When he visited Germany in 1982-83, he was fascinated by what he
describes as “the whole German schism”, referring to an apparent contradiction in the
German personality – chivalrous and civilized, yet capable of barbarism. He argues that
the Germans are a divided people, at war within themselves, whether this is “outwardly
depicted by the Berlin wall, or inwardly or more secretively, by the circle of barbed
wire of the concentration camp”. 99 It was an interesting reflection on his mother that he
also saw her as being “divided in spirit”, in the sense that although she likes speaking
German to any Germans who visit, she has said she will never go back to Germany. 100
One important Romantic concept relevant to a discussion of Ward’s work is the notion
of the sublime. The Romantic interest in this area grew out of theories of the sublime
that had originated in the eighteenth century, developing in two directions. The first
direction was the “rhetorical sublime”, used by critics to investigate “qualities of the
soul in art” (taste, rules, traditions), and the other was sublimity “as an affective
response to natural phenomena (states of consciousness, pleasures of the imagination,
and so on)”. 101 The leading theorist of the latter school of thought was Edmund Burke,
who differentiated between the sublime and the beautiful: “the beautiful is small,
smooth, polished, light and delicate, while the sublime is huge, rugged, irregular, dark
and chaotic”. 102 The sublime was associated with pain, danger and terror, in other
words with the strongest emotions humans are capable of feeling. Twitchell poses the
question: “But why would anyone want to experience the sublime? The answer is that
within terror there is an element of delight, provided of course that there is no real threat
of personal harm. Hence a painting of a shipwreck, or a fire, or an avalanche, or an
97
Lynette Read, interview with Vincent Ward, 11 December 1997.
98
Lynette Read, interview with Vincent Ward, 11 December 1997
99
Lynette Read, interview with Vincent Ward, 11 December 1997.
100
Lynette Read, interview with Vincent Ward, 11 December 1997.
101
Twitchell, Romantic Horizons: Aspects of the Sublime in English Poetry and Painting, 1770-1850 13-
14.
102
Burke quoted in Twitchell, Romantic Horizons: Aspects of the Sublime in English Poetry and
Painting, 1770-1850 14.