Beauty, too

(Violin d'ingres, by Man Ray)

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. So said John Keats. And the truth hurts, as many (including FOH -- Friends of Hercules) have said.

So: If B = T, and T = H, then B = H. Ergo, beauty hurts.

So say:

Christopher Morley: "Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.”

and

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man."

And even Matthew Fox: "Another part of beauty is terror.”

(that Matthew Fox? I guess so).

Carl Jung wasn't above popping a few sour grapes, either: “A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.”

Carl, I've got someone I'd like you to meet. You won’t be disappointed.

And from hurtful beauty, it's only a sideways skip to painful love:

You are the beautiful half/Of a golden hurt.” —Gwendolyn Brooks

Thief-journaliste Jean Genet, patron saint of the mid-twentieth century Paris demi-monde, knew more than a thing or two about how beauty socks its beholder in the eye: "I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty--a sunken beauty."

Perhaps what's at issue here is strictly visceral, some exquisite point of sensation that borders on excruciating.

Christopher Morley again: "In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty."

Ouch.

Okay, I'll get to the point. See, I used to think I was the only person in the world who'd ever cried at a commercial. Those made by a certain burger-flipping emporium whose public representative is a flame-haired clown, in particular. But now I know I'm not alone.

Of course, I just told this to my class of 23 students at Montgomery College, and it turns out that in that roomful at least, I am alone. Go figure.

But I think what's doing it—me crying, I mean—is not sentimentality but beauty.

Yes, you heard me. I just admitted I find some commercials beautiful.

Now I know I'm alone.

And while we're at it, I am also really wigged out by clowns. And it turns out there's a whole forum for people like me.

I love the Internet.

categories: amusement miscellany words