No It Won’t

I don’t think that quotation means what we think it means.

Beauty will not save the world and anyway Dostoevsky didn’t say it and anyways he didn’t mean it neither. The line that’s led to our clichéd abuse of the idea’s akin to ‘Eskimos have 418 words for snow’ and ‘it takes 21 days to form a habit’ — tho to be fair … t’other day I saw something that said it [now?] takes 62 days.

You heard it here first.

+

FD never says it. Not even the guy in The Idiot another guy accuses of saying it necessarily said it. Hippolite, in the drawing room scene attended by most all those on the holiday sojourn, says something sorta kinda like this —

‘And did not Myshkin say that beauty will save the world? … ’

or

‘The prince says the world will be saved by beauty … ’

In addition, as the oft-quoted line in Job

‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust him … ’

— is followed by the nearly never-quoted —

‘Yet I will argue my ways to his face … ’

[and both are in the same verse for Pete’s sake!]

Hippolite follows his notioning quickly with —

‘And I maintain the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love. … ’

— a jesting gibe nearer to sarcasm than awe. Hippolite is funnin’ on that goof Myshkin, a bent brandished by nearly everybody in the book and easily the most freshman comp thing to notice in it.

Finally, for those who know ‘the rest of the story’ beauty does not save anyone or anything, let alone the world entire. Alone, as Michael OBrien argues, it cannot.

+

Beauty will not save the world — unless it means more, or other than we think it means.

Which cd be.

Argued once how-why-that the Crucifixion was beautiful — believe it still. And there is DB Hart’s idea that beauty’s the best arg ever. And along with goodness and truth, yeah … and roundaboutishly, OK.

But not like we say.

So what does?

Or will —

+

— or might?

Beauty and

O’Brien says beauty alone cannot. But he notes Dostoevsky spoke of suffering as possibly such a [re]source — and often. Sonya, in Crime and Punishment, tells Raskolnikov, ‘Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.’

Fortunately for us, suffering’s everywhere. 

Nick Cave says suffering, ‘flows through life like water’ — like the Seine or the poor, we’ll always have it. John Walton and Tremper Longman III helpfully add that no matter how much we suffer, ‘there are always those who are suffering more.’

But be of good cheer! We are in the same position as the guy in that story of how do you tell the optimist? Ringed by shining lupine eyes, razoring angry teeth, throaty hungry growls, we see suffering, our own or another’s, and can leap inside for joy: ‘We’re rich!’

+

Cross, crown; pain, gain. [Yeah, tis. Sorry.]

But as we [mis]use the [non]-quote?

Beauty will not save the world.

But and suffering might.

 

Image: illustration
by Ilya Glazunov

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Touch

In Boston in the Back Bay on Boylston the Trader Joe’s looks built for the bite-sized. The storefront is not one-third the size of the usual glass portion of a TJ’s and far less than the width an entire layout usually commands. There is one set of double doors covering both entrance and exit —

Read More »

Whee

Each animal has its glory. The dog his ears, the rabbit her tail, the dolphin their leaps. Elephant trunk Moose antlers Giraffe … duh Walrus tusks Whale tails Wolf howl Bear claw Bird caw + [We’d first say flight of course but see, think, feel they all fly and largely the same — tho the

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

I’ve Said Too Much

There’s a danger of saying too much. There’s always that. I wrote previously and succinctly about stories. Here’s a longer exploration I’ve been working on, off and on, for about a year. * Every true story starts with realizing something is out of place and involves people asking who they are in a world where things (they now see)

Read More »

Related

Happy in Our Work

To put the last first … Yes … can’t always get what we want Yes yes … we work as unto the Lord Yes yes yes … sacrifice, live, die, etc. But … what for? How then shall we live and die? + Saito says it’s this. To End All Wars — what Prisoner of

Read More »

Plague Dog

During the lockdown read The Plague, turned page next to The Book of the Dun Cow. Not an immediately clear connection not least because Dun Cow is far lesser known. Both chronicle communities within a larger one within a larger world. First, of course, is the full circle vicious and virtual, during a pandemic; latter

Read More »

Finding Level

Relationship finds its own level. Generally it looks like we [and others] choose — a boy’s entreatment rejected, an attorney makes partner, 158 million of us vote — but there is a finality to much that we ostensibly do. This is how such absurdities as determinism gain purchase, how authors can talk and be misunderstood

Read More »

Ensamples

Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via

Read More »