Beauty Will Save the World
Meaning in a world that hates absolutes.
Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote in his profound work, The Idiot, that “beauty will save the world.”
It’s easy to look at a quote like this and dismiss it outright.
It sounds naïve and can offend our “modern” sensibilities, especially in a culture that does nearly everything it can to promote ugliness as the equivalent–or sometimes superior–trait.
Before moving forward, let’s clarify one thing, I am not necessarily talking about physical beauty. It can be that, but not only. I’m talking about the beauty that calls to something deep within us to become more than we are. It’s the kind of beauty that gives a sense of order among chaos, hope within suffering, and meaning instead of nihilism. It speaks to our hearts—not just the surface-deep skin that will wrinkle, spot, and eventually fade away.
We have stories that reflect the heart being the source of beauty, from Cyrano to Quasimodo, and Cory Matthews in a particular episode of Boy Meets World called “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow” (any other 90’s kids here?). These stories reveal that true beauty lies within rather than without.
This is true, but it is also true that some things are simply intrinsically beautiful, while other things must be made beautiful.
Because of this, our discussion is not only about physical human beauty, but also the works of composers, painters, and authors that fully recognized that when we experience something beautiful, we experience something sacred.
In 2018, my wife Sidnye and I took a trip to Europe for the first time. We spent days eating baguettes and walking along the Seine in Paris, we spent a wonderful afternoon riding the train to Epernay and drinking champagne, and we rounded out our trip in one of my favorite cities.
Venice.
Upon arrival, my first goal was to get lost in the twisting canals of Venice (or to be more honest, I needed to buy a compatible phone charger, and in trying to find a store I became lost), and I quickly became completely stricken by the power of that ancient city. I walked the same streets as Marco Polo, Casanova, and Vivaldi, and it was like exploring a different world.
It was beautiful.
That night (once I found my way back home), we rambled through the empty alleys and courtyards of that preternatural place. We stumbled into a quaint and picturesque restaurant in a quiet courtyard, right past a Jazz Piano lounge. There were several other couples sitting outside the restaurant, laughing and drinking Italian wine, but the handful of tables on the patio were full.
We decided to stop in regardless, and our server brought a table out on the patio from inside the restaurant. He told us that the night was too beautiful to eat indoors and surprised us with a glass of sparkling wine for our anniversary.
Sidnye and I were blown away by the meal, the atmosphere, and the people we met. To top it off, a three-piece band playing Italian folk songs wandered into the courtyard once we’d finished dinner. A dance in the moonlight (and a tip for the band) capped off one of the greatest days of our lives.
It was good.
As we explored the city the next day, we stumbled into a six-hundred-year-old church called Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. After visiting Saint Mark’s Basilica the day before, we expected to stumble into a should-be hallowed space that was bustling with tourists taking photos, gift shops, and loud chatter.
What we witnessed was even more shocking.
There was only one other person in a building that was capable of holding hundreds. The emptiness and the echoes of our footsteps only magnified the feeling of significance in that moment, and I found myself thanking God that this place was still treated as sacred. The towering ceilings, intricate sculptures, and baroque trimmings on every square inch around the altar spoke loudly (yet, silently) about something more true than anything I’d witnessed before.
Adorning the walls of the cathedral were works by Donatello, Titian, and Bellini. These artistic titans dreamed these works and worked those dreams into paintings that depicted a story that reflects a reality so tremendous that it’s hard to describe.
In that moment, I very clearly felt the presence of God, and I broke down into tears.
I was reminded that from time immemorial, this moment was set into motion. I was reminded that the same God that inspired the beauty that we witnessed swirling around us cared deeply about us.
We stood on truly, holy ground.
This is what the phrase, “beauty will save the world” means…at least partially. We were inspired by what someone poured their life, time, and passion into. They left behind a legacy of beauty that long outlasted them, simply for two Americans to wander into an empty church, stare up at their paintings and sculptures, and weep.
Beauty will save the world.
Prince Myshkin is the titular character in Dostoevsky’s work, “The Idiot.” Because of his purity, his goodness, and his unwillingness to waiver on his ideals, the world around him viewed him as an idiot.
Dostoevsky’s point was that it was actually the idiot who could clearly see things as they truly were. Absolutes—particularly goodness, truth, and beauty—were Dostoevsky’s main concerns. He was a prophet in many ways, able to see the looming 20th century with eyes that just seemed to know what was coming. He knew that we were going to cast those absolutes aside for a shoddy replica.
As we abandon our belief in the religious substructure that holds up the scaffolding of our minds, things like goodness, truth, and beauty become irrelevant. We trade in our stories of heroes for a celebration of degeneracy (something very popular in the 21st century). We start to question the basic truths that we’ve always known about the world and about the people who inhabit it. Instead of timeless truth, we adopt this postmodern idea that your truth is your truth, mine is my own, and that these contradictions can coexist.
This is a problem.
Why?
Because absolute truth, absolutely matters.
Denying belief in the absolute makes us trade beauty and its representation of order for chaotic, unstructured, and–quite frankly–ugly, postmodern and abstract art that reflects our own misgivings with the idea of truth. Everything is left up to interpretation because there is no story being told. There is no value being presented, except for the celebration of the lack of value (which is ironically a value claim itself).
It’s no wonder why so many of our brains are broken.
We are rudderless on a sea of chaos, and very few things have the visceral power to reorient us toward meaning. The oddest part is that they wear that meaninglessness proudly...almost as if it’s good…even while arguing that “goodness” itself is arbitrary.
It is nearly impossible to find meaning in a world where the story being told is:
“There is no meaning to all of this”
“All of your suffering is pointless.”
“There is no justice in this world.”
“There is no restoration in this world.”
And who could blame us for how hard it is? The structure that helped give our lives meaning has been replaced by a completely secular surrogate, and it is proving to be an insufficient anchor for the modern human.
So, what can we do about it?
We’ll explore this more in coming weeks, but here are my thoughts:
A pragmatic approach is to consume with intention. There’s a difference between mindless consumption and mindful enjoyment, and we must do better at recognizing ugliness or beauty within what we watch, listen to, or participate in. With intention comes change, and there is a reason why we are drawn to people of kindness, compassion, and intention. It speaks to something within us that longs to aim higher, to live more fully, and to engage more with our world.
Truly beautiful things do the same thing for us. It is impossible to stand at the Grand Canyon or the base of a waterfall looking upwards and not be moved, much like it was impossible for me to stand in that Venetian cathedral without wanting to become a better human. If we are unable or unwilling to walk through our days with our eyes open, we will miss the moments where beauty calls to us from the deep places…the truer places that unite us with the Divine.
In those moments, we can see the hand of our Creator, reaching into our world and moving things into place. In those moments, we are able to reflect on the truth, and it becomes impossible to deny that there is something more…meaningful…about our lives.
“Beauty will save the world”, and guess what? We’re all a part of that world.
Open your eyes to that beauty and live. If that sort of concept makes me an Idiot, like Prince Myshkin, then count me in. Hopefully…we can all be the biggest of idiots together.
Lastly, I’ll leave you with a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
“Works steeped in truth and presenting it to us vividly alive will take hold of us, will attract us to themselves with great power- and no one, ever, even in a later age, will presume to negate them. And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three.”
What I’m Reading: The Consolation of Philosophy
For lovers of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, or just the foundational Western Lexicon, this should be added to your shelf. Both Tolkien and Lewis counted this among the works they considered most influential to their worldview.
Presented as part poetry and part conversation with “Lady Philosopy,” this book, written by Boethius as he awaited an unjust execution, is a must-read.
Good post. Admittedly, I wrestle with the acceptance of it. At times it's not easy, mainly because of the difference between fleeting beauty and real beauty. Temporal things vs. stability. As you showed, real beauty is often unappreciated and takes effort to embrace, while the fleeting is often a distraction. I appreciated the point regarding consuming with intention. It's a good reminder to resist emptiness, and aim towards the better, truer way.