And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Leave a Comment / By Paul Hughes / November 18, 2024

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 a person could live so as to embody it — to re-incarnate Christ in our lives.

He did not.

Some discussion of it here.

And herein my longer treatment of it, tho not long enough.

For this we need life eternal, and the Life.

Image:
The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb [detail]
Hans Holbein the Younger, via the Public Domain

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

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"Put your thoughts in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts. "