The sublime was a key concept in the work of Harold Bloom, one of America’s most eminent literary critics. For Bloom, the sublime was a sense of awe, when reading something that exudes power and grandeur, that encapsulates what we’re all here for. Bloom’s concept of the American Sublime were genius writers whose writing “rendered a secular version of theophany: a sense of something interfused that transforms a natural moment, landscape, action, or countenance.”
In short, it’s genius that is so profound you see God: but not a God in a white beard and a toga, but a god more metaphorical, something I would say is a sense of understanding why you care about this nonsense at all: because people have created something this perfect. Whatever you want to say about Bloom, he celebrated this moment of joyous, euphoric observation better than any critic I know. It’s not a coincidence that I came up with the idea for this blog just as he was passing away at the age of 89, but you’d want it to be.
What I aim to do in this blog is share that sense of joyous, euphoric observation about sport: it’s what I know, what makes me happy. It’ll be a gif, or a photo, or a video, or possibly a piece of writing. Like Bloom, I guess I have a bias: I love the technicolor brilliance of early color photography, the simple and brilliantly coloured and cut jerseys and caps, the heroes that have become modern day mythology for many fans. I’ll try and keep it in check a little better than he did. Or maybe not.
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The Sports Sublime 