A Medical Sublime
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A Medical Sublime Bradley Lewis 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Inspired by a passage from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, this article considers the possibility of a Bmedical sublime.^ It works through a history of the sublime in theory and in the arts, from ancient times to the present. It articulates therapeutic dimensions of the sublime and gives contemporary examples of its medical relevance. In addition, it develops the concept of sublime-based stress-reduction workshops and programs. These workshops bring the sublime out of the library and the museum into the lives of the healthcare community—patients, families, clinicians, staff, concerned others—in the service of better navigating human vulnerability and finitude. Opening the cannon of aesthetic theory and the arts as resources for the human condition is at the heart of health humanities. The sublime can be an invaluable tool in this task. Keywords The sublime . Medicine . Therapeutics . Aesthetic theory . Existential suffering . Death and dying . Longinus . Kant . Nietzsche . Wordsworth . Shelley . Tolstoy . Lyotard . Foucault . Abstract expressionism
Introduction Near the end of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the main character, has a short conversation with her local physician and family confidant, Doctor Mandelet, who plays a small but pivotal role in the novel. Edna and the doctor are at the bedside of Edna’s friend, Adele Ratignolle, who has just completed a painful and distressing labor and delivery. Edna experiences Adele’s pain as a form of Btorture^ and responds with a deep emotional upheaval of her own. BSeized with a vague dread,^ an Binward agony,^ and Boutspoken revolt^ at the Bways of Nature,^ she walks away slowly with the Doctor into the spring night. Outdoors, the air is mild and caressing, and Bup—away up, over the narrow street between the tall houses, the stars were blazing^ (Chopin 1994, 104–105). Edna tells the Doctor that she is possessed by
* Bradley Lewis [email protected]
1
Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University, 1 Washington Place #609, New York, NY 10009, USA
Journal of Medical Humanities
the terror of a deep Bdespondency and suffering.^ Waking up to the reality of her life, she has become acutely aware of the mistaken choices she has made and the agonizing pain she will cause her loved ones, particularly her children, if she tries to make changes. The Doctor reaches out to hold Edna’s hand. He respects that her suffering is private, but he wants her to know that he is available for her: BMy dear child, you seem to me to be in trouble.. .. If you ever feel moved [to talk], perhaps I might help you. I know I would understand, and I tell you there are not many who would—not many, my dear.. .. Come and see me soon. We will talk of things you never have dreamt of talking about before. It will do us both good.^ The Doctor tells Edna that he too has had his own form of waking up. He has come to realize that ordinary human experience is often, perhap
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