Beauty, A Consolation For The Broken
Beauty will save the world… Dostoevsky told us this.
Umm… hang on, didn’t you use that quote in a previous blog post? Yes… yes, I did. But I think we should delve a little deeper into the thing.
About two months ago, I finished reading, The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This, hands down, had to be one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read — it took a lot of stopping and starting, reflecting and periods of anxiety, along with many moments of conflicting emotions (I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry), before treacherously reaching the final end of a book, I believed, would surely be the end of me.
In one of the bleakest chapters in world history, Solzhenitsyn systematically goes through the untold horrors of the 20th Century, Soviet slave labour camps. In true Shakespearean portraits of its victims—men, women, and children—Solzhenitsyn details the constant humiliations, the beatings, the tortures, the rapes, the starvation diets of gruel and bread crusts. He describes the work; harsh and meaningless, hour after hour, day after day, without respite. These pages are peppered with gruesome story, after gruesome story, after gruesome story… adding a pinch of dark humour here and there. Yet, we also get to witness the astounding moral courage (thank goodness!) of the incorruptibles, who, defenceless, endured great brutality and degradation, giving witness to the immense and courageous power of the human spirit. Grisly as this book was, the feat this great author crafted can only be described as nothing less than a literary masterpiece! So much so, he earned the Noble Prize, and, in his award-winning speech, he ponders on Dostoevsky’s enigmatic proclamation: ‘beauty will save the world.’ A man, who endured so much deprivation, so much hardship, reflects and poses these considerations:
“What sort of a statement is that? For a long time, I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes… but whom has it saved?”
And, I would add… if beauty will save the world, then what kind of beauty was Dostoevsky alluding to?
Living in today’s culture, it might seem odd to perceive such a phrase; where the very notion of beauty — having been revolutionised by players, such as Andy Warhol, who among others, began "capitulating" to consumerism through their art, had altered the perception of beauty significantly. “Department stores are kind of like museums” and “Art is what you can get away with” – were some of his mantras, and to a certain degree, epitomised his philosophy. The art world had been hijacked, and with it, the flood gates were opened — paving the way for the heroes, or shall I say, heroines of the modern-day suppliers of so-called “beauty.” Leading the charge: the Kardashians and Jenner’s – adorned in Balmain, leather-strapped corsets and collagen riddled – their weapons of choice: garish designer handbags on one hand, and the iPhone documenting every selfie, every duck face and every nudie on the other. We witness this onslaught every-single-day. The battle occurs at full speed ahead; infiltrating the culture and leaving in its wake mountains of charred and corrupted souls. From social media, to reality TV – all the way up to art and architecture – it seems as though our minds are constantly being proliferated with superficial, base and disordered perceptions of what authentic beauty is. Joseph Ratzinger makes note of this phenomenon, when he says: “…the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed, instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy.”
If this is what is being pressed upon us by today’s standard – how, in a narcissistic, feigning culture, where we are drowning in our own materialism and hedonism, ever inspire one to come out of ones self to discover; and, as the inexplicable line states, to save the world?
In another of Dostoevsky’s short stories, White Nights, the main protagonist solicits a pressing question to a young girl with whom he had just met. In an unsuccessful attempt to extract anything meaningful about her life, he asks his new friend in great perplexity:
“…but how could you live and have no story to tell?”
After reading this line, my heart became arrested – this question… so simple, so unassuming, so lucid… oozed with so much profundity: ‘how-could-you-live-and-have-no-story-to-tell?’ It made me realise, if you have a life on this earth, it is almost impossible to not have a story to tell. And like all great stories, just like the stories told by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, life is riddled with all sorts of cruelties, difficulties and anguishes – this is the unfortunate reality of life.
The Great Artists’ of the past knew this — they understood and were well aware that human life is filled with chaos and suffering. LIFE- IS-SUFFERING, is the axiomatic rhetoric that is continuously being drilled into the students and audiences of the popular intellectual and clinical Psychologist and Professor, Jordan B Peterson. The Great Artists of the past knew this, but they didn’t reside to it – because they also knew that there is a remedy for life’s bleakness, and that is… beauty. And the beauty that I speak of, is not merely subjective, as many post-modernists would have us believe, but a universal human need. We need it to the degree that we literally cannot live without it… just as we literally cannot live without bread or water! “We do not want merely to see beauty,” intones C.S Lewis, “…though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”
Vincent Van Gogh tells us, “Art is to console those that are broken by life.” True and Authentic Art, I believe, has an incredible capacity to provide solace. We crave order in the chaos — perhaps this is why we are drawn to what is beautiful; to help supplement the mayhem in our lives and provide it with some stability, consolation and peace. Jordan Peterson echoes this point when he speaks about how art, music – in particular, expresses this synonymous need for order. He states: “Music speaks meaning. It shows what life would be like if it was ordered and harmonious… and you were dancing along with it properly. It gives you an intimation of psychological integrity.” Joseph Ratzinger further reiterates this when he asks: “What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation — if not beauty?”
There is nothing more important than beauty – for when we are touched – and I mean, truly touched intimately by this great stuff, then as the Greek Philosophers of Antiquity pointed out, it will lead us toward the other transcendentals: Truth and Goodness. J.R.R Tolkien was infamous at pointing out that, “…evil and ugliness seem indissolubly allied.” Beauty is the armament against this affiliate – it is a powerful weapon. Without beauty - without the sublime - life would be dismal and tragic. Its greatest capacity is that it is able to redeem our sufferings; and ultimately, sustain hope.
I’ll finish up by letting Solzhenitsyn, through his Noble-Prize speech, wrap up his stance: “So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?
In that case, Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world”, was not a careless phrase, but a prophecy? After all, HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.”
In his closing letter to The Artists, Karol Wojtyla urges: ‘Artists of the world, may your many different paths lead to that Ocean of beauty, where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy... beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future.” As a culture, we need to rediscover the gems of this hidden virtue — and a virtue, it truly is. I don’t believe there to be any other option other than our rightful duty — especially as Artists, to take up arms against the culture of decadence, and fight for what is True and Good and first and foremost, for what is Beautiful.