What I have learned about Beauty

Many authors claim that beauty lies in order, in opposition to chaos, that proportion
and mathematical perfection is what makes our sensitivity take pleasure in nature
and art. Nonetheless, that may well be applied to paintings, to sculptures,
architecture, even to music and to nature itself but, what about literature? What kind
of canon can be used to achieve a beautiful text? It seems to me that the deepness
behind beauty resides more in feelings. Measure all the elements that form a
beautiful films, and you may not yet understand why is it so special. Try to rationalize
why you love so much a particular poem, and you might begin to hate it. I am not
trying to make an apology for the irrational, as this could lead to a devaluation of art.
I am, instead, saying that there is a high percentage of what we read, see or hear
and enjoy that does not appeal to reason.

I am thinking about paintings such as John Martin´s “Expulsion of Adam and Eve” or
JMW Turner´s “Eruption of Vesuvius”, but the same idea goes for Rubens,
Rembrandt and many others´ paintings. They are not meticulously calculated, they
are not the product of some sort of numerical operation. That could be the case of
famous composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, but definitely not of Beethoven
or Tchaikovsky. This kind of masterpieces seem to be much more linked to the
artists´ feelings, to the chaotic, inexplicable and lush whirlwinds inside them. The
mentioned paintings are not delicate, they do not inspire tenderness nor joy; they do
not evoke touching feelings. Rather than that, they cause admiration and awe. For
that, they could well be called terrifying, yet they do not generate rejection; they are,
above all, beautiful. It might be a good idea to bring up the word “sublime”, as that is
what those paintings really are about, and because that feeling is often what makes
something truly beautiful.

All this works of art (we can also find it in nature) share the same common factor:
they are, in a very deep sense, big. They are big in a superlative sense, they are
enormous, in the sense that we, before them, see ourselves as tiny little insects.
They impose so intimidatingly that we cannot but hold on and admire. In my view,
that is what lies behind everything we find beautiful. The tiny daisy petal also
surpasses us infinitely; the golden proportion used to paint a perfect face is also
something enigmatic, incomprehensible, out of our reach. In proportion with how
awesome something is, how mysterious and ununderstandable, that awakens our
admiration, and the only thing we can do is to contemplate. We enjoy gazing at the
stars, gazing at what goes beyond our capacities and our reasoning. For some
people, a landscape bathed by an ocean of clouds is soothing and peaceful, for
some others, it is threatening. They are two ways of looking at the sublime: one of
them consists of glimpsing the limit of our knowledge and abandoning oneself´s

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insignificant capacities in order to just enjoy what can never be really understood,
whereas the other is the typical of the scientistic, that is, to know oneself challenged
by something so big that one starts to fear that it may be far from his abilities,
although it is possible that the viewer finds that stimulation pleasant. As I see it, we
should not expect to hog the entire reality, we must realize that the fact that there is
so much beyond us is not a problem at all.

All that we like has an element of mystery, at least of surprise; we do not really know
how to explain why the rhyme between two verses attracts us. My experience in the
Tate Britain Gallery and in London overall tells me so. It is also evident that beauty
requests our presence, our motionless attention. We tend to stop and watch, stop
doing whatever we were doing to focus all our senses on beauty. If it was possible,
we would stand still staring at it forever; and if we do not want to do so, if we have
enough just with five minutes of contemplation, that is because we no longer find that
beautiful at all. Beauty attracts, it rouses a feeling of love, making us want to remain
close to what we love, closer and closer. It seems as if the discovery of beauty
equates to the longing for joining it. As soon as we find it, we want it; but we do not
want to possess it, we want to be one with it. That is, obviously, impossible. Joining
something so that the lover becomes one with it is an unattainable fantasy. But what
is in fact possible is to join it more and more, and get into an everlasting process of a
gradually increasing merger. One who loves nature will try to care for the manner he
has towards the ecosystem; one who loves music will never stop learning and
listening (and there is not an unsurpassable peak-level, that is the point); one who
loves God will try to live a saintly life; one who loves his partner will think about her,
talk to her, be with her. Knowing each other is actually joining each other, for their
will can become little by little more and more similar.

There is no love if there is no longing for being with what we love. There is no hatred
if there is no rejection to being with what we hate. When something is disagreeable,
it repels us; we know we should not remain near it because it could harm us. That is
the clear indicator that we always love what is good; the better it is, the more
beautiful we find it to be. The reason is simple. Joining what we love slowly turns us
into it, it makes us simulate its behaviour, acquire its way of being. Therefore, joining
what is not advisable, far from improving us, it worsens our nature. We start to
embrace, even if it is unintentional, what we should not, we begin to suffer a process
of corruption. If beauty exists, that is because good is not enough, good may not
appeal to us, independent of how good it is. Beauty is what sets us in motion, what
moves us to make what we do; we would not do anything if we did not like anything.
Beauty stimulates us, it makes us dream, want, love. It is the magnet that takes us to
where we are; it is, ultimately, what we live for, because if it did not exist, we would
live, but without loving. And a man like that should not care for dying, because he
has actually never lived. Living for beauty is living for what is beyond us, for what is

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more than us. Living ignoring beauty, living for ourselves, is just surviving, and
nothing more; and if we do not find anything more valuable than life itself to live for,
then we do not differ much from the rest of the animals. Our life will be wasted, as
nothing we do will matter more than the same act of doing it; the existence of that
kind of goals would be as superficial and trivial as not having goals at all, and when
we reach our time of death, we would regret having wasted our entire life and yet
fear the return to nothingness. That London has taught me too, that and all I have
written, because in London I found beauty, because in London I found love.