Dostoyevsky once let drop the enigmatic phrase: “Beauty will save the world.” What does this mean? For a long time it used to seem to me that this was a mere phrase. Just how could such a thing be possible? When had it ever happened in the bloodthirsty course of history that beauty had saved anyone from anything? Beauty had provided embellishment certainly, given uplift—but whom had it ever saved?
However, there is a special quality in the essence of beauty, a special quality in the status of art: the conviction carried by a genuine work of art is absolutely indisputable and tames even the strongly opposed heart. One can construct a political speech, an assertive journalistic polemic, a program for organizing society, a philosophical system, so that in appearance it is smooth, well structured, and yet it is built upon a mistake, a lie; and the hidden element, the distortion, will not immediately become visible. And a speech, or a journalistic essay, or a program in rebuttal, or a different philosophical structure can be counterposed to the first—and it will seem just as well constructed and as smooth, and everything will seem to fit. And therefore one has faith in them—yet one has no faith.
It is vain to affirm that which the heart does not confirm. In contrast, a work of art bears within itself its own confirmation: concepts which are manufactured out of whole cloth or overstrained will not stand up to being tested in images, will somehow fall apart and turn out to be sickly and pallid and convincing to no one. Works steeped in truth and presenting it to us vividly alive will take hold of us, will attract us to themselves with great power- and no one, ever, even in a later age, will presume to negate them. And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three.
And in that case it was not a slip of the tongue for Dostoyevsky to say that “Beauty will save the world,” but a prophecy. After all, he was given the gift of seeing much, he was extraordinarily illumined.
Excerpted from Beauty Will Save the World: The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
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6 comments:
Yeah, but whose world and for who? The bodies of women, arguably the most beautiful-looking creatures to walk this earth, are being used to sell everything from ice cream to guns. Like the saying goes "if a man could have sex in a cardboard box, he wouldn't buy a house". The moth and the flame come to mind.
Sorry to shit all over this beautiful sentiment, I want to believe it too, but the evidence so far doesn't support it. More like: "The best way to enslave people is to use love and beauty against them, because they are as eternal as life itself." In Dostoyevsky's defence, he's dead.
Hmmmmmmmm.
You make a very convincing argument, for that's how it is. But i do believe you're missing the ... "spirit" of the message.
Truth, goodness and beauty.
Truth is what the courts say, we all know how twisted, convoluted and ugly it has become.
Goodness has failed, where people are left outside to die because people have lost courage.
Beauty remains, for even a child can see the beauty in a flower. That will live on, after the destruction of guns, courts, and shopping malls. I think malls would be the world's answer to beauty, the vain stereotyped plastic ... it DOES undercut us at every turn. But who of us really buys into it?
We KNOW it is ugly, in our hearts. Everyone knows, we just, pretend.
Ponder it awhile my friend, there's really a whole lot in this that runs really deep.
peace and love and beauty ;-)
I think you're right. Bad mood today, and I'm focusing on the evident and missing the X-factor--faith.
*chuckle*
you and me both. this is just, a favourite concept i've been thinking about for a long while now.
Solzhenitsyn went through the worst this world has to offer, and made it.
thats my inspiration, until you've survived a soviet gulag in siberia, don't complain LOL.
peace
Beauty is equivalent to Love, for me.
The beauty in a mathematical equation, a child's hair, a bird's song. All are representatives of the force which powers the Universe, which is Love.
Love,
T in J
PS and pstonie, I get there too sometimes. I do a passable imitation of Grumpy Old Woman, some days :)
Both beauty and love break down the subject object barrier, i think.
A Lin Yutang quote comes to mind, i can't recall it exactly, to paraphrase:
The illusion that the west has faught so hard to maintain, is the same that the east has fought to subdue.
About really connecting with each other, and our universe.
peace and love
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