On Beauty by Solzhenitsyn

There is a great deal of chaos right now in the world. It seems that everywhere I turn another tragedy has unfolded. I wake up each morning wondering what is coming next. And in all of that, one can’t help but wonder what in the world makes a difference? Does it matter that I pen my novels, or that someone is busy painting their pictures? Shouldn’t we be about doing something more?

Of course, we are to be active participants in doing good on this earth. But what is good? And what changes things over time? I have my ideas. But this morning, I was reminded of the absolute authority of beauty in part of a speech that Solzhenitsyn gave many years ago, and it gave me hope. I thought I would share this with you. Today.

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Dostoevsky once let drop the enigmatic phrase: “Beauty will save the world.” What does this mean? For a long time it used to seem to me that this was a mere phrase. Just how could such a thing be possible? When had it ever happened in the bloodthirsty course of history that beauty had saved anyone from anything? Beauty had provided embellishment, certainly, given uplift – but whom had it ever saved?  

However, there is a special quality in the essence of beauty, a special quality in the status of art: the conviction carried by a genuine work of art is absolutely indisputable and tames even the strongly opposed heart. One can construct a political speech, an assertive journalistic polemic, a program for organizing society, a philosophical system, so that in appearance it is smooth, well structured, and yet it is built upon a mistake, a lie; and the hidden element, the distortion, will not immediately become visible. And a speech, or a journalistic essay, or a program in rebuttal, or a different philosophical structure can be counterposed to the first – and it will seem to fit. And therefore one has faith in them – yet no one has faith.

It is vain to affirm that which the heart does not confirm. In contrast, a work of art bears within itself its own confirmation: concepts which are manufactured out of whole cloth or overstrained will not stand up to being tested in images, will somehow fall aprt and turn out to be sickly and pallid and convincing to no one. 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.

And in that case it was not a slip of the tongue for Dostoevsky to say that “Beauty will save the world,” but a prophecy.

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Nobel Lecture” 

I can only add, a deep and abiding Amen to such remarkable words.

Much Love,

Tina