Humphry Davy and the Sublime

Abstract

This chapter explores the poetry and the science of the chemist Hum phry Davy and his fascination with the sublime. In the work of Davy during and beyond the 1790s there is a special relationship between poetry and chemistry. When Coleridge asks ‘What is poetry?’ and ‘what is a poet?’ in his Biographia Literaria he uses a number of terms in his answer to this question that are to be found in contemporary chemistry and which may well be the result of his earlier connection with Davy (Biographia, VII; II, 15). Specifically, Coleridge uses the word ‘sublime’ as a verb in Biographia to describe the poetic imagination, making reference to the chemical process of sublimation. Chemical metaphors help Coleridge to define his understanding of poetry. His friend Humphry Davy, poet and chemist, similarly sees a connection, using the aesthetic category of the ‘sublime’ as an adjective to describe the discipline of chemistry itself. Davy appropriates the sublime for science in this period because of its association with grandeur, awe, power, and for the role played by the imagination, fear, and pleasure.