What is Beauty? A Study of Aesthetic

I have just returned from walking around a section of yard that encircles the barn, itself encapsulated with trees surrounding the ten-foot swathe or so of mown grass. I started walking before the settling of twilight, not particularly feeling like doing anything, but spurred on in my effort to escape the bars of my own mental prison. There are times where my life seems just as my walk did when I first started down this circular loop of lawn: I was going round and round, but never arriving anywhere. But I soon found, as the exertion began to kick in, that there was something exhilarating in the experience. Scientists would tell us that exercise releases endorphins, which are Mother Nature’s natural pick-me-ups. I will take them at their word, because in my limited experience of looking through the lens of a microscope, it was often beyond me how they could so precisely label all the organelles in a cell or speak with such confidence about other microscopic mysteries within the body. Very often, I could see an interesting looking blob of something or another, at times making out certain indistinct contours and lines, but rarely did I ever see the crisp clarity of the minutely detailed diagrams in our text. Still, I will take them at their word, believing that the reason indeed that I feel so much better is because my body has been busily pumping endorphins through its invisible chemical pathways.

There are times we all need to become grounded, and I couldn’t help but think as I walked, my shoes biting into the earth with each step, that “grounded”was an appropriate term. There is just something about getting away from all the manmade fanfare and being alone with the brushstrokes of God’s own hand: something soothing, strengthening about the solidness of the soil below me, firm beneath my feet.

Throughout my day today, I felt hollow, empty, devoid of meaning. I could spin out a hundred and one hypotheses to explain such sentiments, but of what avail is this? When I get feeling this way, the last subject I want to spend hours and hours in contemplation over is my own despondency. I am the one I want to get away from, after all. I knew, however, that a bit of exercise would revive me, and soon I was in the flow of a steady pace, my strides gradually lengthening and becoming more solidly steady.

The twilight started to set, the night slowly enfolding me in its translucent cloak. We all have our favorite times of day, whether morning, noon, or night;mine, of course, is night. The insects began to crescendo into a joyous cacophony of violin bows against strings of adjacent appendages, and I marveled that such small creatures could make such mesmeric music by merely rubbing their legs together. When was the last time you made music with your legs?

The hues around me began to deepen and twinkle, the way they are wont to do as the light grows dim. The path I have worn in the grass turned a dusty jade, the lawn around forming a dark verdant color that opened into the lush softness of the outcropping lawn, transformed in the twilight into a glade with inlets opening into the vastness of the meadowy lea beyond. One could easily imagine rings of fairies, hands joined, dancing euphorically, singing in their mysterious tongue, weaving melodies foreign to mortal ears.

Beside me, the trees took on a darker green and the sky above began to fade to midnight blue, the stars dancing with each step I took, an occasional firefly flittering about the boughs and the branches. My imagination was soon immersed in the magic of the moment, my thoughts crystalline, enraptured. I could feel the flush spreading across my face from exertion, yet I felt as if I could continue walking forever. A short distance beyond through the grove of trees, a fire beckoned, its orange flames reminding me briefly of memories of Halloweens gone by. I imagined some of the orange pumpkins, the hayrides, the bonfires, and the blackness of night, a dark beauty enveloping me. My thoughts, however, soon softened as I began to think of how I felt no loneliness, despite the fact I was completely alone in the middle of this mystical moment.

I thought of how I sometimes wish I could share these moments with another and wondered if it would be the same. Somehow, it seems, some pleasures are best savored by oneself. Then I thought to myself how we, as believers, say we are never alone, and I briefly analyzed my essence to see if I could detect His presence. I didn’t feel differently, yet I felt at peace with myself and the moment. I began to think how others favor other times of day, and I thought to myself ways in which this walk might be different and yet the same in the early hours of morning. It was then that a hymn of rare beauty filled my mind, its melody filling me with quiet content.

It is my mother’s favorite and has long been my own as well. Nearly all the old hymns have words of beauty, yet somehow the melody lines don’t always seem so amiable to my ears. I am not suggesting that they sound harsh or that they are not well written or memorable. Few pieces of music from any genre, however, strike me as being mellifluous within the very notes they contain, excepting perhaps classical music. (This is not to say these various songs and styles are not enjoyable in their own way—I love many, many diverse styles of music—it is just that few are what I would describe as being truly evocative or hauntingly beautiful.) This song, however, is a rare exception, perhaps not haunting per se, but beautiful nonetheless, its words and it message blending in timeless synchronicity, perfectly balanced, a delicate strand of musical lace swirling softly over the ears like a wisp of hair fallen from the coronet of a princess. Though it was written for those early morning hours, it seemed to fit the tranquility of the night air around me. The moment and the music reminded me of “Romance,” a piece of art (pictured here in miniature) found at Monsieur Renaissance : la page des citations. Are you familiar with “In the Garden” by C. Austin Miles?

I was recently reading an article on moral relativity and postmodernism entitled “No Room for Truth, Part 1” by Gene Edward Veith, Ph.D., featured in Teachers in Focus. (Archive note: Article link no longer available.) This excellent two-part essay laments the breakdown of objective truth, objective standards, and valid rules of conduct. It goes on to speak of centuries past, when classicism was concerned with the true, the good, and the beautiful:

Likewise, in Spiritual History 101: How Did We Get to the Edge?, Catholic Christian apologist and professor at Boston University Peter Kreeft talks of these same three “prophets”: beauty, goodness, and truth. He claims:

Today I wish to speak mostly about beauty. Perhaps there is something to be said for aesthetics, something applicable to our personal lives. What is beauty? Maybe we can wrench our own meaning, apart from Kreeft, from John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which ends with these famous lines:

Picture Keats, pondering a piece of pottery from ancient Greece at arms length, engrossed in the scenes encircling the vase. Behold! a maiden fleeing from her ravenous suitor: “Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, / Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve; / She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, / For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.” Yes, it is true, he says: you will never kiss her, fair youth. But she will never grow old either; her youthful beauty will never fade away; this moment of unrelinquished passion will never die. The lusts of our flesh are most impassioned before the quenching—a moment forever frozen on the Grecian urn—after the honeymoon is over the giddiness gives way to the deeper love. Beauty, it seems, serves as the guardian of the gateway, the lesser prophet beckoning toward the narrow gate through which so very few shall ever pass, truth and goodness abiding within.

Earlier in the same stanza (II), Keats speaks of unheard melodies sounding sweeter than heard ones, and continues in stanza III with the mention of “happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed / Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu.” Simply put, though the Shakespeares of our times grow old and die, their art lives on, immortalized in the music of song, dance, painting, and poetry. In this life, reality is fleeting; abstractions from reality, however, can last many lifetimes—hence, “beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

Though beauty seems to correspond in some way to an external object, its response ultimately lives within the mind alone. Unheard melodies are sweetest—unfulfilled expectations often breed disappointment: our imaginations promise things experience doesn’t always seem to offer—yet, as C.S. Lewis maintains, beauty’s elusive presence beckons beyond itself; the yearning it inspires speaks of an “untold” reality yet to be seen. His premise is that all yearnings have sources of perfect fulfillment, even though they are rarely perfectly realized in this imperfect world. He is, of course, looking ahead toward the world to come where the old order has passed away and all things are made anew. Such flashes of ineffable beauty and yearning are mere foretastes of realities far grander, for how could our minds conceive of something greater than themselves, if, in fact, this something did not exist?

The effect is never greater than the cause; a stack of platters do not crash to the floor simply because a fly alights upon them (though a hurtling bowling ball supplies sufficient cause); the idea is no greater than the mind that gives it birth, no greater than the fodder from which it was formed. Yet, despite this truth, we have in our minds the idea or sensation of something beyond our minds, something greater, and the cause of this impression must be at least as great as the impression it conceived; the idea’s cause has to be at least as great as, if not greater than, the notion it has effected, however imperfectly conceived in an imperfect mind.

Chuck Swindoll was recently summarizing the thoughts of a forgotten scholar (my apologies) on one of his programs: before the fall, he said, truth and reason informed our emotions and our emotions in turn drove our wills, allowing for sinless perfection. In the present day, our emotions inform our reason (thereby polluting it) even as they are driving our wills, making pleasure our idol—“if it feels good,” our culture cries, “do it!” We have confused gift with Giver again, seeking after beauty without pursuing the One who makes all things beautiful in their time.

Evelyn Underhill can’t resist a mind-numbing take on the topic, offering her own nod to the now-famous “Keatsian” urn:

The idea of being overawed at the sight of a “godlike face or form” from the world beyond things brings to mind a section of Aurora Leigh from British poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), poet laureate nominee following William Woodsworth’s death in 1850 (she took her last name from her husband Robert Browning, fan and fellow poet of renown, whom she married in 1846):

So what is beauty? For the moment, let us leave behind the Transcendent to which created beauty points and consider the attributes of beauty’s Immanence within the realm of things. Perhaps we could say that beauty includes elegance? But what is elegance? We could no doubt safely conclude that part of what constitutes elegance is harmony. In music, for instance, when something is harmonious, the waveforms of sound form complementary patterns achieving an aesthetically pleasing combination of frequencies; frequencies which are the raw material of the notes pleasantly blending in melody and song. These vibrations have to be brought into some kind of order and unity in order to harmonize: harmony require some kind of structure. This harmony is the ordered balance of the number of vibrations of sound per second, synchronized in pulses of rhythmic symmetry. This structure is fashioned from the building blocks of rhythm, melody, and harmony, in that order: for without rhythm you have no melody, without melody you have no harmony; wherever harmony exists, rhythm and melody are also to be found. This trinity must work together in unity if there is to be internal harmony.

When harmony is achieved in a work of art, such as a fine painting, the waveforms of reflected light, or color, bring about a pleasing balance and order to the eye. Again, there must be some kind of structure, however abstract, of light, line, space, form, composition, color, and meaning so that every aspect of the work comes together into a unified whole, well-balanced, and finely ordered.

We have noted that harmony, symmetry, and balance are all elements involved in elegance. But there is something else we must say of the framework of elegance: it is ordered simplicity. Too many musical notes all at once sound “busy,” too many lines and colors strewn about a canvas seem cluttered. When we speak of subtle nuances and variations on a theme, we are not speaking of drastic alterations, but slight changes that give a piece texture and clarity of detail. We should also note that while simplicity can be simplistic, simplistic does not equate simplicity; simplicity is not measured so much on its austerity, but on its uncluttered unity, harmony, and internal cohesion.

On a purely practical note, elegance in artwork generally consists of long, slender shapes: fat, dumpy ones do not typically conjure such visions of grandeur. Sinewy shapes—a swan’s neck, the boughs of a willow, wrought-iron archwork—engender respect, poise and gracefulness their hallmark. Musical ambiance is spatial in scope: major, minor, and modal. Within a given melody, the further apart two notes appear within the musical scale, the more melodramatic the mood. Music with many fifths, ninths, and other more drastic intervals sports a much more sweeping flair. Music consisting of small, incremental distances between sequential notes is usually soothing, relaxing, tranquil. The same piece of music can employ diverse elements and be called elegant, balanced, harmonious. Dissonance can be used with resolution to create textures that render a piece poignant and powerful; it is all in the structure into which the variety of variances are poured. Perhaps that is why we call such works “compositions”? ;)

So what makes a certain face beautiful? When I first learned that Leonardo da Vinci, the original Renaissance Man, and other great artists—Raphael, Titian, et al.—used mathematical ratios to properly proportion faces, I was intrigued. Most of us do not often think of mathematics as being pleasing to the senses, much less associated with facial beauty. Yet there is the order in your structure again.

In Facial Beauty and Fractal Geometry, Jürgen Schmidhuber of Switzerland offers some interesting insights into the female faces that are rated the most objectively attractive. He used computer modeling to finesse faces on rotated squares to the second power. Evidently, at least in this scenario, apparent beauty amounts to how simple a woman’s face is perceived to be: the easier her face was to mentally encode into a person’s mind, the more attractiveness she was deemed to possess. You might find this technical article of particular interest; it includes full-color digital illustrations at the end which demonstrate the geometric overlay involved in this kind of mathematical manipulation of the human face. I should doubt it is every day you have opportunity to read of such things, unless you happen to be a plastic surgeon or specializing studio artist.

Here, we again have this idea of simplicity and order surfacing, though I suppose this is what one would naturally expect to find in an ordered universe. Paul Dirac (1902–1984), British physicist and Nobel laureate, says as much: “God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe” (Scientific American). As I have cited in Monsieur Renaissance : la page des citations, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) writes that “Beauty is merely the Spiritual making itself known sensuously.” Also featured in the selfsame, Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), Italian reformer and preacher proffers another insightful thought:

What is being referred to here is obviously an inner spiritual beauty and simplicity. In Sunday Simplicity, I write: “Truth shares a common origin, firmly anchored in a Single Source; this simplicity making possible the complexity of all reality and truth. This Single Simplicity is the Origin and Object of all the paradoxes, the Reconciliation and Redemption of all the opposites.” I would further maintain that inner beauty is a reflection of inner simplicity, of having all sides grounded in this Single Source of which I speak. About such a life, there is something supranatural, elusive, filled with subtle mystique.

On a similar note, have you ever noticed that among the moments a person is most beautiful is when the face is completely relaxed? For those of you who are married, have you ever noticed that your spouse often looks strangely more beautiful or handsome when sleeping? I would tend to think, during waking moments, that true inner simplicity is often similarly conveyed through relaxed facial features; that when one is at peace inwardly, peace is reflected outwardly on one’s face.

It is also true that we consider a smiling face to contain more beauty, but there are two things to be noted about this: it is a widely known fact that it takes fewer facial muscles to smile than frown, hence again, the face is more relaxed, and furthermore, smiling is often associated with approval, acceptance, and friendliness, which appeal to our longing for love and affirmation. This latter element undoubtedly ties in to the perceived physical attractiveness of another as well; not surprisingly, we tend to like people who like us. If we perceive that someone is romantically interested in us, we are often flattered by this, even if we do not wish to pursue a relationship. If the person happens to be someone of somewhat average appearance, they become more attractive to us, which we in turn tend to project on the next person who reminds us of them. This is a cycle of attraction that could eventually ripple out to virtually every person alive.

I do not think it would be fair to strictly equate facial beauty with simplicity or responsiveness, however, though these are major factors. I think familiarity is also a keynote feature. Though I would question the whole of Freudian analysis, one aspect I do believe is accurate in the majority of instances is that we tend to be physically attracted to persons resembling our opposite sex parent or other such role model. In my own case, I have noticed this to be true, though it soon branches out unpredictably. Among the first girls to whom I found myself attracted were petite, ebon haired, and brown eyed just like my mother. Since that time, the woman I have been most attracted to have become more and more varied. Each time they will remind me of someone, and when I settle on the semblance with surety, I find that it usually traces back to a particular close female relationship I have developed previously, as I have similarly alluded to in In the Dry Seasons of Life.

Finally, our feelings of physical attraction to a stranger include perceived personality and behavioral characteristics. Once again, I think this has much to do with familiarity, though I think there are some universally desirable characteristics, especially for the believing Christian. These, of course, would be the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Personally speaking, the women I am most interested in relationally are the ones whose beauty does not come so much “from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes” but from their “inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight (1 Peter 3:3–4).” When you combine this type of inner beauty with tasteful outward adornment that accents the feminine mystique, you have an all but irresistible recipe that weaves circles around this poor old head of mine.

So what is beauty? We have noted that immanently it can include elegance, harmony, symmetry, and balance, that it is ordered simplicity, that is has internal unity, that familiarity is a factor, that it is something that takes place within the mind in response to outward stimuli, that it is a glimpse from beyond, whispering of worlds to come. We have noted it is especially evident in a life of Simple Beauty, a life where Spirit dominates matter. It includes the practical and the poetic, the analytical and the artistic, the Structurer and the structured all woven together into one harmonious whole. Beauty is the guardian at the gate, the lesser messenger aside goodness and truth, who are themselves servants of the Most High. Beauty flows from the same Fount from which springs all that is. Beauty—true beauty—is God’s precious gift, which He weaves liberally throughout the bittersweet: it is the sunrise, the nightfall, the tender touch, the sparrow’s song, the newborn’s cry, the light, the warmth, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the sky. In sum, beauty is God’s promised expression of goodness in the truth of His timeless eternity.

“Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity.”

Subscribe to Le Penseur Réfléchit, the Mr. Renaissance bi-weekly newsletter.

Previous E-mail | Next E-mail