Wednesday, December 06, 2006

A randomly beautiful thing

I went into Pier I imports, a home furnishings store in St. Paul, after my workshop was over. I was in the mood to find a little gift for myself. Twenty-three years ago I used to come to this very neighborhood to visit my Jungian analyst. I would tell her my dreams, weep a copious amount of tears, and head off to the nearest Haagen Daz store to lick my wounds and an ice cream cone. I was feeling a little forlorn on this day as well, a little raw from my lack of clarity about what my intention was.

My eyes landed on a vase of holiday "thingies"- little bouquets of shiny disks, randomly collected in a nosegay of beads and wires and splashes of white, red and pink. They captured this little ray of hope I was carrying inside, the hope that beauty had some redemptive value. I particularly liked the fact that they were cheap and asymmetric. I knew at once that I would put these flashy nosegays in the branches of my artificial Christmas tree, and when I got home, that is what I did. I just looked at that tree and felt irrationally pleased.


I have been enjoying Beauty Dialogues with Amy, check out her website. I thought I would share a manifesto on beauty, written by the Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral. It is helpful to the artist trying to think about beauty:


Decalogue of the Artist

I. You shall love beauty, which is the shadow of God over the Universe.
II.There is no godless art. Although you love not the Creator, you shall bear witness to Him creating His likeness.
III.You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.
IV. You shall never use beauty as a pretext for luxury and vanity but as a spiritual devotion.
V. You shall not seek beauty at carnival or fair or offer your work there, for beauty is virginal and is not to be found at carnival or fair.
VI. Beauty shall rise from your heart in song, and you shall be the first to be purified.
VII.The beauty you create shall be known as compassion and shall console the hearts of men.
VIII.You shall bring forth your work as a mother brings forth her child: out of the blood of your heart.
IX. Beauty shall not be an opiate that puts you to sleep but a strong wine that fires you to action, for if you fail to be a true man or a true woman, you will fail to be an artist.
X. Each act of creation shall leave you humble, for it is never as great as your dream and always inferior to that most marvelous dream of God which is Nature.

- Gabriela Mistral Translated by Doris Dana

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