The term “Sublime” is understood as the highest excellence of artistic expression in literature. Longinus, the author of the treatise On the Sublime, finds five important sources of sublimity: (1) the power to conceive impressive thoughts, (2) the capacity for strong emotion, (3) the proper use of figures of thought and speech, (4) nobility of diction, and (5) dignity of composition.
To explain the ideas of Longinus’s On the Sublime, Emma Duffy-Comparone’s recent short story called Marvel Sands is the most applicable type of literary work that corresponds to the concept of the five sources of Sublimy.
The first source of the sublime has to do with the writer’s greatness of thought. The use of images in this font is helpful because it helps readers understand the writer’s concepts, which may appeal to one or more of the five human senses. Several parts in the Marvel Sands passage could be classified as the writer’s way of showing the reader the intended image of the work, rather than telling them. And some of them are as follows: (1) using the first person perspective when telling the story, the readers experience the foolishness of the main character to leave sand on the floor and not put the bills in the same way in the tray and ( 2) the backdrop of seagulls and silence reveals his mature vision and reflects his still learning world.
The second source of the sublime is genuine emotion. If some emotions, such as anger, require that the personality of the emotion be believed to exist, even though it does not actually exist, the author made it possible for readers to feel the intuitive feeling of the fictional character throughout the story.
The third source of the sublime is the poetic use of language. There is a line in the story where the author used a particular figure of speech called metonymy: “When I got home, I could see the TV flickering blue through the living room window.”
The fourth source of the sublime is diction which includes the choice and arrangement of words. In the Marvel Sands story, the character said the following lines: “I felt a wave of laughter in my chest and I swallowed it”, “I was standing outside the cockpit, watching storm clouds build up in the west like big bruises”. “And when you really look at them, it’s all too obvious that the use of stylistic embellishments (simile and hyperbole) is the only way for the author to express her ideas through figurative language.
The last source of sublime is the dignified and elevated arrangement of diction for the greatness of the composition. The descriptive type of storytelling shows the author’s technique of letting the readers participate in the experiences of the characters.
This analysis leads to Longinus’s belief that “great writing does not convince; it draws the reader out of himself.”
