Platt Holden (pholden@worldnet.att.net)
Fri, 20 Mar 1998 05:20:21 +0100
Hi LS:
I like beauty.
For me the word evokes a sense of completeness. When all is said and done,
when all the arguments have been exhausted, the one factor remaining
unaffected and unsullied is beauty.
On first reading *Lila,* my thoughts tumbled and jumbled from one chapter
to the next, ranging from confusion, to doubt, to certainty and back again
as if I were caught inside a rolling barrel. But, when I came to the end,
still confused but vaguely excited, I felt that sudden surge of
completeness that only beauty can bring as I read Pirsig's description of a
walk he took with Dusenberry and John Wooden Leg, the Cheyenne Indian chief
and a woman named Laverne Madigan from the Association of American Indians:
They followed the dog silently for awhile.
Then Laverne asked John. "What kind of dog is that?"
John thought about it and said, "That's a good dog."
For me those three lines were beautiful. My mental fumbling and tumbling
suddenly ceased, and the light of understanding enfolded me.
"That's a good dog." "That's a good painting." "That's a good tune."
"That's a good idea." "That's a good person." All poetry in the language of
life -- what we live for.
The more I've thought about since then, the more beauty seems to transcend
all other values and patterns of value that have brought us thus far along
the evolutionary path. Let me summarize those thoughts.
First, beauty transcends the survival imperative. It's not needed. Viruses,
ferns, maggots, snakes, weasels and whales all get along nicely without
beauty. We humans like to associate beauty with sex, but it's a tenuous
connection at best as the overwhelming presence of plain people attests.
The urge to merge dominates.
Second, beauty transcends evolution. While it may serve a minor
evolutionary purpose, it's essence belies the notion of progress. Are our
present buildings more beautiful than the Parthenon? Are our present
churches more beautiful than Chartes? Are our present dishes more beautiful
that Greek vases? Are our musical compositions more beautiful than Mozart
or Bach? Beauty doesn't get better with time.
Third, beauty transcends society. It imposes no duties or obligations. No
one can sue you for choosing one color over another, one song over the
next. While government may ban certain works of art or use them for
propaganda purposes, it cannot prevent you from seeking and responding to
beauty. Society's pressures are irrelevant, except by those who mistake
passing fashion for beauty.
Fourth, beauty transcends intellect. It is never true or false. It just is.
It supersedes logic and escapes all efforts by intellect to pin it down and
measure it. It leapfrogs symbolic communication by informing directly. Like
the universe itself, it has no intellectual meaning beyond its own
presence, and has no purpose other than to delight. Unlike intellect, it
assumes nothing, presumes nothing. Yet it breathes fire into the
physicist's equations and guides them and all thinkers through the murky
mazes of puzzlement to the sunlight of understanding. The aesthetic
experience at its highest intensity breaks through the intellect's
dependence on time, space, mass and distinctions of all kinds, and in a
memorable if but fleeting moment, lays bare the unity of all.
Finally, beauty addresses the cruelest paradox – the path of glory leading
to the grave. Beauty enables us to temporarily transcend the specter of
death to join the eternal. As Rollo May put it. "We hear the songs of
angels in a symphony, we bow a moment to communicate with infinity, and
then return to digging potatoes."
When the old Indian chief said, "That's a good dog," there was for me a
moment of great beauty. Then it was back to digging potatoes. But the
memory will not pass and echoes again for me in this poem by Robert Nathan:
So beauty passes ever out of reach,
Save to the heart where happiness is home.
There beauty walks, wherever it may be,
And paints the sunset on a quiet sea.
There is something about beauty that sets it apart and above other values.
I have no idea what that something might be. But it is very, very real.
Platt
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