The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty

Things strike you, so that you think of something else (that makes them)

By GIANCARLO CESANA

I t has been said that the only knowledge possible for man is “affective,” that is, tied to one’s affections. This means that in order to understand what it means to know, it is not enough to understand the electrical and biochemical circuits in the brain; we know what strikes us. If we stop to think about ourselves, we discover that we are made by what has struck us. Our memories concern the facts and the people that have struck us; the rest is not there any more. The word affection derives from the Latin affectus, which means struck, affected. On the other hand, knowing has no purpose except to catalyze action, to put out a positive energy. Madness is knowledge without energy, incapable of relating to reality. If in order to know we must be struck, it is necessary to be attracted, fascinated. Beauty and correspondence are necessary–I have to see something that is made for me.

Content cannot be perceived without form. In fact, when we come up against something that we do not like, we feel pain; but the pain is not a positive perception, it is the realization of a lack, and a lack is the most terrible thing there is in life. If we cannot perceive content without form, the problem is this: What is the content of beauty? What do we perceive with beauty? This is a very timely problem, because today it is as though beauty had no content: it is a contingent, transitory form, which sooner or later will end. Thus, it has to be used up immediately; it has to be made an object of our instinct. All you have to do is look at the relationships between men and women to understand this. So, why does beauty exist? Is it perhaps the expression of a blindness? Doesn’t it, after all, add nothing to life? If I find something that corresponds to me, will it end? Or does it speak of something else?

Beauty speaks of what we are seeking, it speaks of being loved and being wanted, because our whole life, all our efforts to do things are so that we will be wanted. Beauty without love is arid, because it is not for me, and thus it has no use. There cannot be beauty without love, without involving the affections. Beauty speaks precisely of love, it suggests the possibility that there may be a sense, a profound meaning, in things, because love is the profound meaning of things and the meaning is the relationship that exists between things. Thus, if a meaning exists, I was not made by chance; I am part of an order, I am wanted, sought out. Beauty speaks of this correspondence.

This is true even if we do not possess this destiny, this ultimate love, this meaning of things. For beauty, ultimately, is mystery. A beautiful picture, a beautiful piece of music, a beautiful woman we meet–all ultimately are mystery. Beauty asks us to penetrate into what we do not possess. This is true also in the most engrossing relationship between a man and woman, in which beauty is possessed. For in true love, possession coincides with being possessed, that is to say, with the recognition that the meaning of one’s life lies in an Other.

This leads us to the other term of the Meeting’s title: contemplation. Contemplation does not mean not taking, but means taking in order to be taken–not by things or by people, but by the Mystery who has made things and people, by the Mystery who has made beauty. It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky said that beauty will save the world, because beauty draws man into the Mystery, i.e., it fascinates. If we cannot know a content without a form, this is valid especially for God. We cannot know God if God has no form, because then He is an hallucination. God is the name of the Mystery; God is the question mark on which all our existence hangs.

In that case, it is impossible not to speak of Christ, because Christ claimed to be the form of God, i.e., the form in which God could be recognized and with Him, the humanity that has followed Him, which is us, me. God mixed Himself up with me, so to reach God you have to go through me. And because of this testimony of God, of the Mystery, I can even be beautiful! So imagine the ones who are beautiful, how lucky they are! Because unless the form of God is perceptible, all beauty is ashes. It is not the path to a human adventure.

This is a modern problem: beauty is no longer the path to anything, it is only an object of consumption, so that not understanding what beauty refers to, we no longer perceive beauty itself. Unfortunately, the world in which we live–since it feels beauty to be something ephemeral, transitory–is largely ugly. That is to say, it is not lit up by anything, because there is no road. We are habituated to the ugly; we no longer comprehend beauty.

The Meeting this year tries to say what the meaning of beauty is, which is that beauty is for a path to discovery of the meaning of things. What is beautiful is beautiful in definitive terms, because it affirms the sense, the meaning, the relationship I have with things. Thus, it changes me and, by changing me, it builds a heritage that I leave to my children, my friends, the people I know: it builds a road. The Meeting tries to say this, and it is a great challenge, because in this way the Meeting has to be beautiful. It is a truly tremendous challenge. Maybe it is worth the trouble of going, in order to take part in a challenge like this!