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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2021
IN THE SECTION OF A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful entitled “The Cries of Animals,” Edmund Burke writes:
Such sounds as imitate the natural inarticulate voices of men, or any animals in pain or danger, are capable of conveying great ideas; unless it be the well-known voice of some creature, on which we are used to look with contempt. The angry tones of wild beasts are equally capable of causing a great and awful sensation… . It might seem that those modulations of sound carry some connection with the nature of the things they represent, and are not merely arbitrary; because the natural cries of all animals, even of those animals with whom we have not been acquainted, never fail to make themselves sufficiently understood; this cannot be said of language. The modifications of sound, which may be productive of the sublime, are almost infinite. Those I have mentioned are only a few instances to show on what principles they are all built.
Unlike human language, which is ultimately arbitrary and potentially endlessly interpretable, the cries of animals are straightforward, clearly communicative, and in fact perhaps superior to language, in that animal sounds are “capable of conveying great ideas.” These sounds are not rational expressions, but they ring true.
Burke's thinking about animal sounds corresponds to a certain extent to Schelling's notes on music, in Die Weltalter. For Schelling, music is a mnemonic device, reminding us of an “inner insanity” (inneren Wahnsinn) in a movement that is not linear but essentially circular, with detours.
Nothing is more similar to inner insanity than music, which most clearly imitates this ur-movement through the consistent, eccentric ebbing and rising of tones. (Music) is itself a turning wheel that proceeds from one point and despite detours always returns to the beginning.
[Denn nichts ist jedem inneren Wahnsinn ähnlicher als die Musik, die durch das beständige excentrische Ausweichen und Wiederanziehen der Töne am deutlichsten jene Urbewegung nachahmt und selbst ein drehendes Rad ist, das, von Einem Punkt ausgehend, durch alle Ausschweifungen immer wieder in den Anfang zurückläuft.]
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