In our addiction to irony we denigrate the emphatic impact of beauty on the soul, distance oursevles from the immediacy of the esthetic experience. Beauty is a sudden, surprising opening of the boundaries of the universe, an identification of the perceiver with the object perceived. One is struck by a line of music, a stormy sunset, the shiny elytra of a Japanese beetle, and for a moment the center of the universe is no longer securely contained within one’s skull. The flower becomes the center of the universe.
We counter the compelling by demoting it to “information.” Use that value-neutral term rather than “art” or “craft” or “poetry” or “thought”, and the danger is reduced. And if that evisceration proves insufficient then irony serves as a further defense, the jaded ridiculing of the beautiful and good so as to reduce its ability to knock us from our safe seats in the centers of our worlds.
Thank you, Chris. Well said.
Yep.
Here is one for you:
“That the world is loveless results directly from the repression of beauty, its beauty and our sensitivity to beauty. For love to return to the world, beauty must first return, else we love the world only as a moral duty: Clean it up, preserve its nature, exploit it less. If love depends on beauty, then beauty comes first, a priority that accords with pagan philosophy rather than Christian. Beauty before love also accords with the all-too-human experience of being driven to love by the allure of beauty” (James Hillman from “The Practice of Beauty” in Uncontrollable Beauty, ed. Bill Beckley, with David Shapiro).
Beautiful, Chris