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starladyMy fan essays on Young Wizards wonthe poll handily; this post, while brief, is a necessary prelude to the more extended effort (for which I will have to learn the html for footnotes, woe is me). I wrote the following for a course in philosophical theology in 2005; it's an extract from a response paper to assigned readings that rapidly devolved into talking about the Lone Power, by way of Dante.
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three_weeks_for_dw!
Moving on to the far more interesting topic of beauty, all I could think about in the beginning of the piece was the ending of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus ("The rose stands pristine in name; we hold the names alone.") This led me to thinking of the celestial rose at the end of Dante’s Paradiso (trans. Mark Musa):
Into the gold of the eternal Rose,
whose ranks of petals fragrantly unfold
praise to the Sun of everlasting spring,
in silence—though I longed to speak—was I
taken by Beatrice […]. (xxx.124-8)
O Light Supreme, so far beyond the reach
of mortal understanding, to my mind
lend now some small part of Your own Self,
and give to my tongue eloquence enough
to capture just one spark of all Your glory
that I may leave for future generations; (xxxiii.67-72)
If I had turned my eyes away, I think,
from the sharp brilliance of the living Ray
which they endured, I would have lost my senses. (76-8)
I know I saw the universal form,
the fusion of all things, for I can feel,
while speaking now, my heart leap up in joy. (91-3)
And one is so transformed within that Light
that it would be impossible to think
of ever turning one’s eyes from that sight,
because the good which is the goal of will
is all collected there, and outside it
all is defective that is perfect there. (100-5)
O Light Eternal fixed in Self alone,
known only to Yourself, and knowing Self,
You love and glow, knowing and being known! (124-6)
A this point power failed high fantasy
but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning,
I felt my will and my desire impelled
by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars. (142-5)
I’m confused by Sherry’s statement that the definition of beauty varies greatly from person to person. I think our aesthetic conceptions of what is pretty/pleasing on this earth differ, and certainly what traits/(physical) characteristics we find attractive are different (de gustibus non est disputandum), but I don’t buy the argument that beauty, true beauty, is subjective. I think it’s universal, much as Simone Weil seems to do.
From what I could tell from the article I think Weil and I would get along famously. Sherry criticizes her for being abstract, but as we see from Dante above (or even from Plato), it’s simply hugely difficult to speak concretely about beauty. We know it when we see it (or better, conceive of it), but what do we see? Hard to say. Sherry himself seems to acknowledge this when he discusses all the other concepts which ‘beauty’ in its pure form is implicitly and explicitly bound.
I certainly agree. Allow me to quote Diane Duane again, from High Wizardry this time:
Stirring as that passage is (and striking in its similarity to Dante), it wasn’t that quotation I was thinking of when I was considering the nature of beauty, but this one, from The Wizard’s Dilemma:
I suppose I’m going about this backward, using examples of the beauty of the Lone Power to try to prove the nature of beauty. But on the other hand, I don’t think that beauty in its purest form is really ‘safe.’ A trite example of what I mean would be Helen of Troy: “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Illium?” True beauty—the beauty a divinity would possess—is as dangerous as it is awesome in the old sense of the word.
Indeed, I made a little list of the components of which I think beauty would partake, and I’ll just rattle them off now to try to bolster my point: elegance; grace; simplicity; aesthetically pleasing; glorious; terrible; attractive; awesome; heartbreaking; dangerous; harmonious; luminous; illustrious; shining.
I have a bit of a problem with the last three. The traditional light/dark dichotomy has unfortunate ramifications as far as race relations go, so I don’t like to use it too liberally, and in this context it can be misleading. Perhaps a better word for beauty would be ‘illuminating’—but evil (which for the sake of argument we will assume the divine is not)/darkness can be beautiful as well, as well as shining (“No light/but rather darkness visible…”).
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the root of beauty is probably amoral. In the context of the divine beauty would of course be good, but in can exist in other, ‘evil’ contexts as well—which would only increase its terror. Indeed, I think we would find evil beauty far more unnerving than good beauty. Or maybe, like the Lone Power in Duane’s novels, evil would be beautiful despite its destructive nature…
Here seems like as good a place as any to note that, as Sherry rightly notes, the original Greek does indeed have wider ranges of meaning than just ‘beautiful.’ It also strongly connotes ‘noble’ (the same word in its superlative form is the root of our English word ‘aristocrat’ and its relations), and there is at least an implication that it also partakes of the good, at least in the common Athenian formula.
Speaking of the descent down the snake into incoherence, I think I’ve done that very thing to myself. I agree with Weil in her belief that divine/transcendent/eternal beauty is indeed immanent in the world. Certainly it accords with my own perceptions. It never ceases to amaze me how even the most familiar vistas can be transformed by a certain moment into something truly, for lack of a better word, beautiful, sometimes breathtakingly so.
By the same token, I don’t share Sherry’s concern about Weil’s belief that those who ignore or deface beauty are seen to be committing some sort of religious fault. If they’re so small-souled (and I’m thinking of the Dursleys in Harry Potter here) as to be unable to perceive or worse to be totally insensitive to beauty, I don’t think I really want them sharing my post-death cloud anyway. Certainly they’d be unable to tune their harp, let alone carry a tune.
In regards to this entire discussion, I think it’s simply best to let John Keats have the last word: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Also, check out these Young Wizards icons by
stripped, for three_weeks_for_dw!Moving on to the far more interesting topic of beauty, all I could think about in the beginning of the piece was the ending of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus ("The rose stands pristine in name; we hold the names alone.") This led me to thinking of the celestial rose at the end of Dante’s Paradiso (trans. Mark Musa):
Into the gold of the eternal Rose,
whose ranks of petals fragrantly unfold
praise to the Sun of everlasting spring,
in silence—though I longed to speak—was I
taken by Beatrice […]. (xxx.124-8)
O Light Supreme, so far beyond the reach
of mortal understanding, to my mind
lend now some small part of Your own Self,
and give to my tongue eloquence enough
to capture just one spark of all Your glory
that I may leave for future generations; (xxxiii.67-72)
If I had turned my eyes away, I think,
from the sharp brilliance of the living Ray
which they endured, I would have lost my senses. (76-8)
I know I saw the universal form,
the fusion of all things, for I can feel,
while speaking now, my heart leap up in joy. (91-3)
And one is so transformed within that Light
that it would be impossible to think
of ever turning one’s eyes from that sight,
because the good which is the goal of will
is all collected there, and outside it
all is defective that is perfect there. (100-5)
O Light Eternal fixed in Self alone,
known only to Yourself, and knowing Self,
You love and glow, knowing and being known! (124-6)
A this point power failed high fantasy
but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning,
I felt my will and my desire impelled
by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars. (142-5)
I’m confused by Sherry’s statement that the definition of beauty varies greatly from person to person. I think our aesthetic conceptions of what is pretty/pleasing on this earth differ, and certainly what traits/(physical) characteristics we find attractive are different (de gustibus non est disputandum), but I don’t buy the argument that beauty, true beauty, is subjective. I think it’s universal, much as Simone Weil seems to do.
From what I could tell from the article I think Weil and I would get along famously. Sherry criticizes her for being abstract, but as we see from Dante above (or even from Plato), it’s simply hugely difficult to speak concretely about beauty. We know it when we see it (or better, conceive of it), but what do we see? Hard to say. Sherry himself seems to acknowledge this when he discusses all the other concepts which ‘beauty’ in its pure form is implicitly and explicitly bound.
I certainly agree. Allow me to quote Diane Duane again, from High Wizardry this time:
The Lone Power rose up, slowly, like one discovering walking after a life of lameness. And Kit and Nita and Dairine all gazed, and speech left them. Nita’s eyes filled with tears as she wondered how darkness could be so bright. Lightbringer He was, and star of the morning; and like the morning star, He needed the darkness, and shone brighter in it, and made it blessed….
“Home,” He said, gazing upward; just the one word. Nita found herself looking into endless layered vistas that were not a mere radiant mirror, like Timeheart, not a repair, a consolation for the marred world, but something deeper, closer to the true heart of things, fiercer, more dangerous and more beautiful, something that had never gone wrong to begin with, that the Lone One had never had power to touch; a reality that burned like fire, but still was sweeter than water after thirst, and fed the thirst itself, and quenched it again in delight and more desire; a state so much more solid and real than mere physical being and thought that Nita held on to herself for delight and terror, afraid she would fade away in the face of it like a mist in full sun. Yet she wanted to see and feel more of it—for she knew that there was more. How many more realities like this, piled one on another in splendor, towered up into the burning depths of creation, each more concrete, more utterly real than the last? Even the Lone One and the Defender looked stilled and diminished in all Their strength and beauty as They gazed up into the light.
(471)
Stirring as that passage is (and striking in its similarity to Dante), it wasn’t that quotation I was thinking of when I was considering the nature of beauty, but this one, from The Wizard’s Dilemma:
The light it gave at first seemed little, but swiftly it lit up all that place, and even chased the shadows briefly from the Lone One’s face…a sight that made Nita turn away—for the terror of It, to some extent, she could stand, but the beauty of It, seen together with that ancient deathliness, was difficult to bear.
(378)
I suppose I’m going about this backward, using examples of the beauty of the Lone Power to try to prove the nature of beauty. But on the other hand, I don’t think that beauty in its purest form is really ‘safe.’ A trite example of what I mean would be Helen of Troy: “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Illium?” True beauty—the beauty a divinity would possess—is as dangerous as it is awesome in the old sense of the word.
Indeed, I made a little list of the components of which I think beauty would partake, and I’ll just rattle them off now to try to bolster my point: elegance; grace; simplicity; aesthetically pleasing; glorious; terrible; attractive; awesome; heartbreaking; dangerous; harmonious; luminous; illustrious; shining.
I have a bit of a problem with the last three. The traditional light/dark dichotomy has unfortunate ramifications as far as race relations go, so I don’t like to use it too liberally, and in this context it can be misleading. Perhaps a better word for beauty would be ‘illuminating’—but evil (which for the sake of argument we will assume the divine is not)/darkness can be beautiful as well, as well as shining (“No light/but rather darkness visible…”).
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the root of beauty is probably amoral. In the context of the divine beauty would of course be good, but in can exist in other, ‘evil’ contexts as well—which would only increase its terror. Indeed, I think we would find evil beauty far more unnerving than good beauty. Or maybe, like the Lone Power in Duane’s novels, evil would be beautiful despite its destructive nature…
Here seems like as good a place as any to note that, as Sherry rightly notes, the original Greek does indeed have wider ranges of meaning than just ‘beautiful.’ It also strongly connotes ‘noble’ (the same word in its superlative form is the root of our English word ‘aristocrat’ and its relations), and there is at least an implication that it also partakes of the good, at least in the common Athenian formula.
Speaking of the descent down the snake into incoherence, I think I’ve done that very thing to myself. I agree with Weil in her belief that divine/transcendent/eternal beauty is indeed immanent in the world. Certainly it accords with my own perceptions. It never ceases to amaze me how even the most familiar vistas can be transformed by a certain moment into something truly, for lack of a better word, beautiful, sometimes breathtakingly so.
By the same token, I don’t share Sherry’s concern about Weil’s belief that those who ignore or deface beauty are seen to be committing some sort of religious fault. If they’re so small-souled (and I’m thinking of the Dursleys in Harry Potter here) as to be unable to perceive or worse to be totally insensitive to beauty, I don’t think I really want them sharing my post-death cloud anyway. Certainly they’d be unable to tune their harp, let alone carry a tune.
In regards to this entire discussion, I think it’s simply best to let John Keats have the last word: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”