Ah, yes, Beauty!
Thank you for raising this point, Andrew, which might even deserve its own thread.
Beauty is the great casualty of the anti-aesthetic theories of Pomo/Marxism/Feminism.
I agree with Robinson Jeffers who goes as far as saying that - "Beauty is the sole business of poetry."
But, as you ask, what is "beauty"? Is it only a sensual experience? Jeffers says, "beauty is not always lovely". It can be terrible. This relates to Romantic theories of the "sublime" (Edmund Burke). And yes, beauty (as Shelley says) can be "intellectual" - mathematicians often use the word about formulae. There can be beautiful ideas, feelings, situations, as much as beautiful objects. Any experience which causes us to draw a sharp breath is aesthesis, the aesthetic effect.
And we can't live well, or for long, without beauty.
The Beauty of Things.
- Jeffers
To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things--earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars--
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality--
For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant--to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
|