(BEAUTIFUL, BUT DAZED AND CONFUSED)
“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty”
I am tired of people talking about beauty.
I can’t stand those freaks (is freaks the right word?) on TV who claim the last pill which will make you fitter in one week or magazines full of teenagers who sell their self like food at the grocery store. Beauty in not necessary, beauty is not the only chance you have to be successful, beauty is not the only talent that matters. Beauty beauty beauty. It’s a non-sense word: how can you define something changing every year, which is different for each person or culture all over the world?.
Emerson got wrong saying that. And this is not because times have changed and he couldn’t realize how the society would have grown and developed. He says that everyone should have his own interpretation of Nature, which is beauty, and then beauty is God, and God is, well God is what he is. But hang on for a minute: how can you talk about beauty if is something that nobody can understand if not by his own thoughts? It’s useless to talk to someone about something that he can get just if he doesn’t listen to you. And what if your interpretation of Nature goes against the fact that you are the only one who can be “face to face” with God? What if you have the same idea of someone else? What if you realize that you have the essence of Nature its self in your body and your egotism doesn’t have to vanish at all? Then do you have to follow your mind or Emerson’s belief (which say to follow your mind!) ?. The word beauty is too difficult to use with such a great meaning as Emerson and we do: we pretend that it gives an instant and clear message of what we want to say but it depends to who’s listening to us and the time and the place where we are.
I can’t understand why we keep on following desperately the change of beauty and why Emerson uses such a confusing word to describe Nature (maybe because is a indescribable concept?).
If his goal was to perplex people, well, I can say that he actually dazed me.
Cecilia,
ReplyDeleteI love the way that you take Emerson to task in this post, and I think we can all agree that his dense prose often leaves us 'dazed and confused'. But I wonder if you don't actually have more in common with him than you realize. I think Emerson would absolutely join you in your dismissal of a transient 'beauty' that changes from one year to the next (fashions, fads, etc.), and you and he would be very much on the same page in terms of rejecting our society's vain attempts to attain and sustain a sort of artificial beauty that's trumpeted on the covers of fashion magazines and by the promoters of 'pills'. Could it be that Emerson is talking about a much more enduring sense of beauty (the sort we find in the Natural world), one that he feels is actually universal in its appeal? We haven't really talked much about Emerson as a 'Platonic Idealist'--but your post makes me think that we should. Thanks for the reminder--and for the very thoughtful and engaging post!
I do not actually believe that Emerson or everyone after Platoon would be proud of having platonic ideas. I think about Platoon as a man who realized how utopic were his thoughts but kept believing in them, then he just lied to his self because he wasn't able to accept his fail. Whatever, Emerson makes the mistake of saying a theory before making an hypothesis: he doesn't care about those doubts which are caused by the ambiguous terms and phrases that he uses.
ReplyDeleteHe just carry on and on instead of Platoon who understood that something in his mind was wrong (don't you think that recognize our own mistakes is a step closer to remedy?).
I do not get what is the universal sense on natural beauty (just think about how different is the way that Mayas interpreted both natural and human beauty from the Conquistadores) and how does it could be enduring (for example catastrophes which change a beautiful landscape into a desert or cover it under water).
What i suppose he refers to is a generic and fake idea of beauty in Nature with colorful birds and green leaves that we find only in Disney's movies. I do not think that it's a worth thought to write about.
I also believe that my dislike for him is because he's the actual source of my headaches but this will just increase my appreciation for Whitman.