Scarry begins with the assertion that beauty prompts a copy of itself; that is, once beauty is experienced by the senses, people long to replicate it, whether through writing, music, or visual art , to comment on it, and to find new ways to make the original beauty more evident, more intensely experienced. She goes as far as to say that beauty is the cause of begetting children; the whole body longs to reproduce a beautiful human being. She writes, ”This phenomenon of unceasing begetting sponsors in people like Plato, Aquinas, and Dante the idea of eternity, the perpetual duplicating of a moment that never stops. But it also sponsors the idea of terrestrial plenitude and distribution, the will to make ‘more and more’ so that there will eventually be ‘enough’” (5).
Likewise, the desire for education, in Scarry's view, is a result of beauty. People are willing to move from place to place in order to be in the path of beauty. We submit our minds to teachers whose insights might "increase the chance that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet suddenly cuts through a certain patch of sky” (6). Looking at my own journey so far, I would definitely affirm connection between beauty and education. Most of my major life decisions have been guided primarily by my (or my parents') commitment to a particular academic institution or educational goal. For instance, my parents sacrificed a great deal of money and time (40 minutes each way every day) to send me to Merion because of our shared belief in its mission. I followed my desire for "more" to Catholic U in D.C., to work at Cristo Rey in Houston, and here to Loyola Chicago, all for continued education, and I have been incredibly blessed by the remarkable teachers who have pointed me toward those "comet sightings," both internal and external. It has been my yearning for connection to the Divine through learning that has determined my path.
Scarry analyzes parts of Homer's The Odyssey and gleans three primary realities of beauty from Odysseus' encounter with Nausicaa when he washes up on shore:
1) Beauty is sacred.
2) Beauty is unprecedented.
3) Beauty is lifesaving (17-18).
She also clarifies the ways in which beauty is bound up with truth:
1) It is associated with the immortal.
2) Its “clear discernability” provokes our longing for truth without satiating it, since beauty also reveals to us our ability to make mistakes (22).
”The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterward one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction—to locate what is true” (22).
A key question for Scarry is whether or not the metaphysical referent -- the belief in beauty's connection to the immortal -- is necessary to confirm beauty's abundance and relationship to truth (23). If the realm of the sacred is not believed in or aspired to, then a problem arises for beauty: how can something beautiful be so without some sort of metaphysical explanation? What is the reason for the weight and attention we give it otherwise? "If [beauty] calls out for attention that has no destination beyond itself," Scarry suggests, "[it] seems self-centered, too fragile to support the gravity of our immense regard” The possibility that beauty and the immortal (or the Divine, as I most comfortably refer to it) are not necessarily connected can leave people feeling bereft and void of meaning (32-33).
Looking back, I struggled through this confusion while determining my post-undergraduate plans. After fifteen years of encountering God in the music and theatre I was performing and studying, I began questioning the life trajectory for which I had always planned (you know, Broadway and all). Bereft indeed! If beauty is self-centered, then what the heck have I been doing with my life?! The most difficult aspect of my JV year was feeling disconnected from my artistic outlets. I felt a deep sense of loss and desire to reconnect, and I am still negotiating the way that desire can play out in my life today. I am convinced that music and theatre can be modes of spirituality for some people. In the beauty of a Bernstein Score or an Arthur Miller script, God is there. And I know I am not alone in that belief.
Referring to her spiritual experience with Matisse's art (, Scarry posits that "beautiful things...always carry greetings from other worlds within them...What happens when there is no immortal realm behind the beautiful person or thing is just what happens when there is an immortal realm behind the beautiful person or thing: the perceiver is led to a more capacious regard for the world.” (33). The question seems to be, then, not whether or not the Divine is present in beautiful things or people, but whether or not the viewer is able or willing to name it as such. I am immediately drawn to relating this to the "God in all things" notion within Ignatian spirituality, among other spiritualities, I'm sure. (To be honest, it also might just be a more multi-layered way of expressing that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"...)
THE PALM TREE by HENRI MATISSE
In addition to the impulse toward begetting, Scarry includes the tendency toward error as a key attribute of being in the presence of beauty. What happens when something that used to be beautiful to you ceases to be so? And conversely, what happens when something you failed to appreciate emerges as remarkably beautiful in your sight? She writes, “This genre of error...has the peculiarity that when the beautiful person or thing ceases to appear beautiful, it often incites the perceiver to repudiate, scorn, or even denounce the object as an invalid candidate or carrier of beauty. It is as though the person or thing had not merely been beautiful but had actually made a claim that it was beautiful, and further, a claim that it would be beautiful forever” (36).
Lastly, Scarry sides with Kant, who observed that pleasure we take in beauty is uniquely inexhaustible; no beautiful thing, no matter how enduring, could outlast our yearning for beauty itself (36-37). Like many people, I have always struggled with the grief of transitions; I tend to invest my whole heart into experiences, relationships, artistic and ministerial endeavors, so moving on from them can take a real toll on my spirit for awhile, regardless of my excitement about and confidence in new adventures. Leaving my community and students in Houston as well as my most recent departure from my youth group kids in Cicero offer prime examples of this ache in recent years. During these times of change, my mom always reminds me that experiences and relationships last as long as they are meant to, as we grow into the people we are called to be. "Yeah, I know, Mom, buuuut..."
FUERZA YOUTH GROUP on my final night with them, 08.06.12
I could not help but think of Col when I read Scarry's assertion that “...the work that beautiful persons and things accomplish is collectively accomplished, and different persons and things contribute to this work for different lengths of time, one enduring for three millennia and one enduring for only three seconds” (37).
And so it is with our own crazy, beautiful life stories. We cannot compose them on our own; they are accomplished collectively. Different persons and things contribute to them for different lengths of time, as mysterious and sometimes painful as that reality can be sometimes. And in the midst of the beautiful and not-so-beautiful (or not-perceived-as-beautiful?), the clearly Divine and the covertly Divine, we come to know the God in ourselves, in others, and in the "something more" that is simultaneously present, yet always out of reach.
Work Cited
Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999. PDF.
http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/scarry00.pdf
© 2012 Katie Davis
No comments:
Post a Comment