“The world will be saved by beauty”

Ed. note: It appears that the blogosaurus I’ve been trying to work on is simply not going to come together. At least not any time before the heat death of the universe. Because the subject will not leave my mind and because I think I’m onto something even if I can’t express that something without coming across as a total moonbat, I’m going to dump its raw material (and its few completed bits) on you. Perhaps the standard Wise and Insightful Commentariat Discussion will bring the order and sense to it that I could not.

Here goes:

—–

The link between freedom, truth, and beauty has been throwing itself at me for the last few months.

By “beauty” I don’t necessarily mean arts or aesthetics as per any standard canon. Beauty might also be in the mathematical sense, as when the mind has struggled for ages with a seemingly unsolvable problem, then the solution arrives suddenly and strikingly — and the thinker recognizes it as true because it is “beautiful” or “elegant.” Similarly, it could mean those moments when, after fumbling to learn some out-of-reach skill you suddenly get it, and know you’ve gotten it. Those transformative moments when the world changes and you become a slightly (or markedly) different person. A person with a new perception or a person operating on a higher plane. It could mean a sense of awe that lifts us out of our mundane selves.

—–

The title quote, “The world will be saved by beauty,” is from Dostoevsky via that other complicated Christian, Dorothy Day.

Day — who took her do-gooding seriously enough to spend her life among the poor, the rejects, the drugged, the dangerous, and the deranged — saw beauty in people no one else cherished. But she was also an aesthete who loved classical music, flowers, and other pure sensory delights.

Still, given that Day was merely quoting Dostoevsky who was merely putting the words into the mouth of one fictional character who was in turn quoting another fictional character, the phrase’s provenance as prophesy is even poorer than most things that pretend to be prophetic.

No, beauty is almost certainly not going to save the world. But then, neither will the world be saved by politics, do-gooding, wars, religion, or that famous catch-all, “love,” which everybody’s in favor of because nobody has the foggiest idea what it is. I don’t believe the world will be “saved” by anything, and as usual efforts to “save” it will begin as delusions and end up as disasters.

Now that we have that out of the way: Still there’s something to the thought.

—–

I mentioned the other day that I was reading excerpts from a classic of Eastern Orthodox monasticism called Philokalia. Philokalia is an untranslatable Greek word. It means both “love of good” and “love of beauty.”

Think about that. To an Italian (as I know from long–ago language classes) — and apparently also a Greek — the words “beautiful” and “good” make easy neighbors. In (formerly) rock-ribbed, Protestant, moralistic American English, not so much. In fact, our language and culture harbor the suspicion that too much admiration of beauty is a bad thing.

For instance, traditionally it’s been okay to be awestruck by the beauty of nature — as long as we immediately stop and remind ourselves that this beauty is merely a side benefit provided for us via an authoritarian, omni-surveillant Creator who gives it to us on conditions of a stern moral agenda. Getting entranced by nature qua nature, or worse envisioning ourselves as an integral part of its beauty, has been (and in many corners still is) considered irresponsible, immoral, and dangerously pagan.

Even when we don’t think we’re making moral judgments, thanks to our language, we frequently are. For instance, we look at a painting and say it’s either “good art” or “bad art.” Those are moral terms. An Italian, looking at the same picture, would say it’s “beautiful art” or “ugly art” — aesthetic judgments. (When I searched for the term “bad art” in Italian, I found it only in translations of an Oscar Wilde quote — and Wilde was clearly and amusingly reflecting on morality. Interestingly, he still seemed to believe the world would be saved by beauty even as he was degraded, humiliated, and dying.)

Culturally, we tend to be suspicious of beauty except in its most slick, superficial, and commercial forms. It’s okay these days to admire an attractive face, a pair of impressive boobs, or six-pack abs. It’s still less okay to think deeply about beauty in any deeper senses and to consider what significance it has.

Do we respond to beauty or consider something beautiful because we intuitively recognize the truth in it? And is that truth sometimes something TPTB would rather we didn’t perceive, appreciate, or follow?

Is there an innate link between beauty and good (philokalia) that our very language prevents us from perceiving? (Never mind that many artists are not “good” people or that the beauty of nature is filled with cruelty and death.)

Is the beauty we experience when we break through to a higher level after struggle telling us something about what it is to be human? And is it something that those who imagine they can control the world don’t want us to consider?

Is true beauty dangerous because it strikes sparks in our hearts and points the way toward independence of mind and spirit?

—–

There. That’s it. Random thoughts. A few finished passages. Raw material for a thought that will neither form (yet) nor go away. This turned out to be a blogosaurus after all, just not a fully organized or elegantly persuasive one. Make of it what you will.

In closing, here’s Emily Dickinson:

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth – the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.