The World will be Saved by Beauty
In Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, Ippolit Terentiev’s asks Myshkin: "Is it true, prince, hat you once said that beauty will save the world?" and then mockingly adds: "What kind of beauty will save the world?" "The world will become the beauty of Christ," Dostoevsky answers in one of his notes to another novel, The Devils. But Myshkin gives no answer to Terentiev's question; elsewhere in the novel he remarks: "Beauty is an enigma". So, as Dostoevsky believed, can beauty save the world? Truly, I don't find a shred of evidence that it has done so in the past and doubt if it will do so in the future. Civilisations, like the early Japanese Heian, whose outlook on life was almost entirely aesthetic, were not saved by their commitment to loveliness from ulti- mate destruction. t Nor was the great and civilised city of Baghdad saved from Timor’s Mongol hordes in 1220 or the city of Cordoba, at one time the most civilised in Europe, from Christian attacks. Venice also dec lined in power and virility until at the very end of the 18th century, when Napoleon granted it to his opponents. Power has power over the beautiful. But, maybe 'save' can be interpreted in other than a literal manner. Maybe the beautiful can never be expected to withstand a bur tal military attack: its value lies elsewhere: in its civilising mission, its slow-burning capacity to sensitise and educate, to dignify, to lift living from the bourgeois realities of costs and benefits to those more elevating aspirations. Beauty has also been the great teacher of respect, reverence if you prefer. To see the beauty of a child, a woman, a man, a tree, a butterfly, a landscape, is to have compassion for it. It is the numinous quality of beauty which not only issues a direct challenge to the values of our age but, as Dostoevsky suggested, can be the source of its salvation. According to Bruce Wiltshire in Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction, the contemporary rejection of beauty lies at the root of the addiction which characterises modern industrial society. No one has yet proved the connection between addiction, beauty and current levels of psychosomatic disease, but to look at the present scale of emotional disturbance suicide, impulsive behaviour, alcoholism, gambling and chronic fatigue is to see a pattern of stress and the consequent search to escape from it. There may be no hard scientific data link ing these factors, but there is a considerable amount of informal evidence in our streets and prisons. One might also remember that an estimated 330 million people worldwide suffer from depression and there is increasing incidence of cancer, respira- tory illness, stress disorders, birth defects, and fall ing sperm counts. There is no rea son to assume that any of these diseases can be attributed to the growth of ugliness as a by-product of economic growth. But there is every reason to suspect that the absence of beauty is one of a number of contributory causes. If so, it has to be said that if the consumerist culture has given generously with one hand -comfort, opportunities and liberation from drudgery for a start- with the other it has taken an incalculable amount. It has made us restless; has encouraged haste, ambition, stress and greed; it has promoted dissatisfaction with what exists and a desire for more - more money in particular. Yet, however, many products we choose to purchase, more never proves enough.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed in the Article above are John Lane personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not in any way responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. The article belongs to its respective owner or owners and this site does not claim any right over it.
Courtesy: John Lane and Speaking Tree ,Times of India
The World will be Saved by Beauty
In Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, Ippolit Terentiev’s asks Myshkin: "Is it true, prince, hat you once said that beauty will save the world?" and then mockingly adds: "What kind of beauty will save the world?" "The world will become the beauty of Christ," Dostoevsky answers in one of his notes to another novel, The Devils. But Myshkin gives no answer to Terentiev's question; elsewhere in the novel he remarks: "Beauty is an enigma". So, as Dostoevsky believed, can beauty save the world? Truly, I don't find a shred of evidence that it has done so in the past and doubt if it will do so in the future. Civilisations, like the early Japanese Heian, whose outlook on life was almost entirely aesthetic, were not saved by their commitment to loveliness from ulti- mate destruction. t Nor was the great and civilised city of Baghdad saved from Timor’s Mongol hordes in 1220 or the city of Cordoba, at one time the most civilised in Europe, from Christian attacks. Venice also dec lined in power and virility until at the very end of the 18th century, when Napoleon granted it to his opponents. Power has power over the beautiful. But, maybe 'save' can be interpreted in other than a literal manner. Maybe the beautiful can never be expected to withstand a bur tal military attack: its value lies elsewhere: in its civilising mission, its slow-burning capacity to sensitise and educate, to dignify, to lift living from the bourgeois realities of costs and benefits to those more elevating aspirations. Beauty has also been the great teacher of respect, reverence if you prefer. To see the beauty of a child, a woman, a man, a tree, a butterfly, a landscape, is to have compassion for it. It is the numinous quality of beauty which not only issues a direct challenge to the values of our age but, as Dostoevsky suggested, can be the source of its salvation. According to Bruce Wiltshire in Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction, the contemporary rejection of beauty lies at the root of the addiction which characterises modern industrial society. No one has yet proved the connection between addiction, beauty and current levels of psychosomatic disease, but to look at the present scale of emotional disturbance suicide, impulsive behaviour, alcoholism, gambling and chronic fatigue is to see a pattern of stress and the consequent search to escape from it. There may be no hard scientific data link ing these factors, but there is a considerable amount of informal evidence in our streets and prisons. One might also remember that an estimated 330 million people worldwide suffer from depression and there is increasing incidence of cancer, respira- tory illness, stress disorders, birth defects, and fall ing sperm counts. There is no rea son to assume that any of these diseases can be attributed to the growth of ugliness as a by-product of economic growth. But there is every reason to suspect that the absence of beauty is one of a number of contributory causes. If so, it has to be said that if the consumerist culture has given generously with one hand -comfort, opportunities and liberation from drudgery for a start- with the other it has taken an incalculable amount. It has made us restless; has encouraged haste, ambition, stress and greed; it has promoted dissatisfaction with what exists and a desire for more - more money in particular. Yet, however, many products we choose to purchase, more never proves enough.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed in the Article above are John Lane personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not in any way responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. The article belongs to its respective owner or owners and this site does not claim any right over it.
Courtesy: John Lane and Speaking Tree ,Times of India