This presentation is designed to accompany a conference paper on the apocalyptic sublime.

1. The Apocalyptic Sublime
Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville,
Mary Shelley, and Cixin Liu

2. Wanderer above a Sea of Fog
Caspar David Friedrich, 1818

3. Seashore with Shipwreck by Moonlight
Caspar David Friedrich, c. 1830

4. The Deluge
John Martin, 1834

5. The Last Judgment
Hans Memling, 1471

6. Lamentations and mournful sounds rose from deep caverns and
caves; many voices were heard groaning in the air; the leaves of
the trees shook without any breath of wind; animals howled in fear
and, taking flight leapt over precipices. The church bells fell to
ringing, moved by some unknown force, sending throughout the
land their message of death as if they were tolling the funeral knell
of mankind. The mountains gaped wide and vomited out clouds
of flame and smoke. The ocean’s waves grew dark. In the windless
air, they rose up moaning, then crashed thunderously on the shore,
flinging dead bodies everywhere. All the comets, which had terrified
humanity since the days of creation, converged on the earth,
reddening the sky with the terrifying presence. The sun seemed to
weep, its face covered in tears of blood. (Grainville, 102-3)

7. The Great Day of His Wrath
John Martin, 1853

8. How diverse and admirable are the works of the Creator! ... How
myriad the suns the burn in the sky! ... Here are planets, covered in
fruits and flowers, that are like delightful gardens ... And there, ruined
worlds roll through the firmament—sterile wastelands, masses of
rock where venomous reptiles and savage animals fight with one
another for their vile prey. More distant still are suns of immense
magnitude, flaming furnaces ceaselessly pouring out torrents of light
which flood through space. Elsewhere other stars, pale and almost
extinguished, emit their last glimmers of light. Thus has God provided
infinite variety for mankind. (Grainville, 111)

9. [A]s soon as the earth had lost the moon, her
guiding star, the degeneration of our world
advanced more rapidly. The resources they
had developed to stave off the general decay
lost their power. Men were profoundly
discouraged on seeing the fields, where they
had labored mightily, produce nothing but
brambles. (Grainville, 36)

10. Destruction (from The Course of Empire)
Thomas Cole, 1836

11. Desolation (from The Course of Empire)
Thomas Cole, 1836

12. Imaginary View of the Louvre in Ruins
Hubert Robert, 1796

13. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving glaciers of Chamounix,
rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the leafless groves of
tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the loud avalanche,
and hill-tops, the resort of thunder-storms. Pestilence reigned
paramount even here. ... Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a
scene like this, whereon to close the drama. Nature, true to the last,
consoled us in the very heart of misery. Sublime grandeur of
outward objects soothed our hapless hearts, and were in harmony
with our desolation. ... Our misery took its majestic shape and
colouring from the vast ruin, that accompanied and made one with
it. ... This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our
feelings, and gave as it were fitting costume to our last act. Majestic
gloom and tragic pomp attended the decease of wretched humanity.
(Shelley, 338-9)

14. Der Watzmann
Casper David Friedrich, 1825

15. Giant Mountains with Rising Fog
Caspar David Friedrich, 1820

16. They ... waited for the most magnificent scene of the play: the flattening of
the Sun. ... When the Sun began to two-dimensionalize, the naked eye could
only see that its brightness and size appeared to increase suddenly. The
latter was due to the rapid expansion of the flattened portion of the Sun on
the plane, but from a distance it appeared as though the Sun itself was
growing ... [A]s Pluto pulled closer to the Sun, even the naked eye could see
the grand spectacle of a star collapsing into two dimensions. ... While the
three-dimensional Sun was setting, the two-dimensional Sun was rising. A
flat star could still radiate its light inside the plane, so the two-dimensional
Solar System received its first sunlight. The sides of the four two-dimensional
planets facing the sun—Neptune, Saturn, the Earth, and Mercury—all took
on a golden glow, though the light only fell along a one-dimensional curved
edge. The giant snowflakes that surrounded the Earth melted and turned
into white vapor, which was blown by two-dimensional solar wind into two-
dimensional space. Some of the vapor soaked up the golden sunlight and
appeared as if the Earth had hair that drifted with the wind.
An hour later, the Sun had completely collapsed into two dimensions. ...
Everything in the three-dimensional world died after collapsing into two
dimensions. Nothing survived in a painting with no thickness. (Liu, 524-6)

17. Darvaza
Julian Bell, 2010

18. Disaster Master on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EQ8V-fybv4