the wolf

again exploring the relative beauty, or ugliness we find, this passage from Hermann Hesse's the wolf stood out.

we come to a point in this short story, set in a harsh winter, with very little left for the wolves to eat - they have resorted to attacking sheep, and after an intense hunt this wolf has just been spotted and shot.

Trembling, the wounded wolf climbed through the woods in the half-light, while slowly the brown blood trickled down his flank.
The cold had let up. The sky in the west was hazy, giving promise of snow.
At last the exhausted beast reached the top. He was at the edge of a large, slightly inclined snowfield not far from Mont Crosin, high above the village from which he had escaped. He felt no hunger, but a dull persistent pain from his wound. A low sick bark came from his drooping jaws, his heart beat heavily and painfully; the hand of death weighed on it like a heavy load. A lone fir tree with spreading branches lured him; there he sat down and stared forlornly into the snow-gray night. Half an hour passed. Then a red, strangely muted light fell on the snow. With a groan the wolf stood up and turned his beautiful head toward the light. It was the moon, which, gigantic and blood-red, had risen in the southeast and was slowly climbing higher in the misty sky. For many weeks it had not been so big and red. Sadly, the dying wolf's eyes clung to the hazy disk, and again a faint howl rattled painfully through the night.

[...](the men catch him, kill him; they laugh, boast, sing and curse)

None of them saw the beauty of the snow-covered forest, or the radiance of the high plateau, or the red moon which hovereed over the Chasseral, and whose faint light shimmered on their rifle barrels, on the crystalline snow, and on the blurred eyes of the dead wolf.

even this wolf, so close to death, is the only one truly able to appreciate his surrounds. the desolation, the oppressiveness, and even his looming demise, fade away when he is no longer focussed on his own survival, but gives himself over to his fate - in that stillness he can find solitude and find beauty.

arguing for aesthetics

when i look at the world, fickle as i am, i'm able to see beauty in many places.

• Max Weber sat in a skyscraper, looking down at the goings-on in a city, and was awe-struck.
  
• in seeing the film angels and insects i now recognise the appropriate fascination we can have with the insect kingdoms.
  
• the subtitle of Dr Strangelove was How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and the testimony of many who have had the honour to witness the detonation of an atomic bomb, is that it is indeed awe-inspiring.
  
• the Grand Canyon (depending on who you believe) may have been the result of the erosion of a massive lake.
  
• the landscape of lebanon is astounding in its sparseness (even though the cedars are no more)
  
• the growth of a tumor, seen in time-lapse photography, is also a beautiful thing.

there is a short story by Herman Hesse (from which i hope to post at some stage) which explains how, even when dying, mostly due to the effects of this fallen world, we can still see immense beauty.

whether this is due to:

1. / there being inherent beauty in these things, despite many of them being a result of the fall
   
2. 2/ us being created with the ability to see good in all things, as God is sovereign over all and his good flows over into all things
   
3. 3/ our fallen nature meaning that we are able to see good in what God calls ugly

i've been swinging between the three, but would be interested in your thoughts.


particularly check out byron's blog, particularly the comments.
also see my previous thoughts on aesthetics

incipit vita nova

for the unacquainted, hermann hesse, (along with aldous huxley and gabriel garcia marquez) is one of the authors who consistently gives me a fitfull night's sleep. take, for example, this exerpt from one of his first short stories:

"Shivering, I passed among the ruins of the world of my youth, over shattered thoughts and twisted, quivering dreams, and everything I looked at dissolved into dust and ceased to live. I saw friends whom I was ashamed of knowing, thoughts I had thought only recently looked me in the face, and they had grown as alien and remote as if they had been a hundred years old and never been mine. Everything fell away from me, and soon there was a deadly emptiness and calm all about me. I had nothing more that was close to me, no loved ones or neighbours, and my life rose up in me with a shudder of disgust. Every measure was full to overflowing, every altar desecrated; there was no sweetness but sickened me, no summit I had not left behind me. Every shimmer of purity was spent, every intimation of beauty defaced and trampled under foot. I had nothing more to long for, nothing more to offer, nothing more to hate. Everything that was still sacred and unravished and harmonious within me had lost its eyes and voice. All the guardians of my life had fallen asleep. All the bridges had been severed and all horizons robbed of their blue."

Hermann Hesse, Incipit vita nova, 1899 (from Stories of Five Decades, Triad/Panther, 1976)