31-07-2023
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
In his Nobel lecture, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s made the following remark:
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”.
What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes, but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender.
It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what is distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition, and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted. In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, and convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force—they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through; then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world”, was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination. And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?
“Beauty will save the world.” Because Beauty is the Order of Nature and the Nature of Order. The qualitative measure of Beauty is the degree of our attunement with “Nature and Nature’s God (Spinoza’s Natura naturata and Natura naturans)”—with the Dao (道).
The greater the Beauty that pervades in the work of art and in the work of a person’s life, the greater is the presence of the Dao or the Order of Nature at the heart of our being and consciousness. Beauty awakens our soul from its psychcoma and ensouls our creation.
“Beauty will save the world.” Because Beauty restores sanity by making whole the divided and fragmented human consciousness. The insanity of the world to which we bear witness has a direct connection with the disappearance of Beauty and of the appreciation therefor from the arts and our culture. Therefore, the recovery of Beauty in the arts and our culture will be concomitant with the recovery of sanity in the world.
“Beauty will save the world.” Creating, sharing, and propagating Beauty in our lives and through our creative work, individually and together, constitute an essence of the work of mastering inner and outer freedom. You need not be an “artist” in terms of a socially defined profession. You need, however, be the artist in and of your life by creating, sharing, and propagating Beauty.
Ecstasy, bliss, and beatitude are all sublime happiness felt when the movement of liberation and the state of freedom are experienced. This experience is the experience of opening-up to a greater wholeness simultaneously unfolding toward and enfolding from that ultimate Wholeness which is Eternal and Infinite that is felt as ecstasy, bliss, and beatitude.
Beauty, Wholeness, and Freedom are equivalent, as Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are equivalent. Project Beauty is therefore Project Wholeness and Project Freedom as well as Project Truth and Project Goodness; and yet being corporeally perceptible and intelligible, Beauty is the more intimate.
Japanese culture is known for the refined aesthetic sensibility and sensitivity that permeates every aspect of life. The great Japanese mathematician, Kiyoshi Oka, whose beautiful essays I used to read in my junior high school years, considered something as abstract as mathematics as a class of aesthetics and as an expression of his “Japanese aesthetic sensibility (日本的情緒)” on the “plate of language (文字盤)” called “mathematics”.
Therefore, Project Beauty may have its germinal origin in my Japanese aesthetic sensibility but its value and validity as a vital and viable future vision of humanity are confirmed by Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and many other great visionary thinkers and artists before them such as Goethe and Blake.
Project Beauty can become the prime mover of the evolution of consciousness toward the Age of Imagination from the Age of Reason.
In the Beauty
In the Beauty before me, I walk.
In the Beauty behind me, I walk.
In the Beauty below me, I walk.
In the Beauty above me, I walk.
In the Beauty around me, I walk.
In the Beauty within me, I walk.
All is complete in Beauty.
—A Navajo Benediction