The sublime in contemporary representations of the origin

Abstract

This article explores the relationships between the contemporary representations of the origin and the expressive forms of the sublime. On the one hand, the origin forms an archetype/s linked to the genesis or creation, but it is also characterized by a sort of ‘morphology of the unrepresentable’, being an event that no one has ever witnessed, connected to chaos, nothingness and the abyss. On the other, as conceived (starting from Ps.Longinus) in relation to the notions of ‘greatness’, ‘wonder’ and the ‘ineffable’, the sublime becomes the special grammar of the origin. Accordingly, their relationship assumes extreme importance in the contemporary maturation of the traditional concept of ‘representation’ towards the ‘non-mimetic’ and the ‘unrepresentable’, both in painting, through the searching for absolute primeval energy, and in the interpretation of the tragic, the grotesque and the absurd in literature.