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Like fragile flowers threaded on masses of verdant vines interspersed at intervals, life grants us moments that are so unbearably beautiful only amongst the suffering that happens.
The sunset is evermore glorious with clouds.
Clouds enrichen the sunset.
Starlight is only visible when it's dark.
Stars can shine only when it’s dark.
Inspiration:
Three Lessons in Beauty via The Browser, a curation newsletter:
On contrast, juxtaposition and comedy as ways of enhancing the beauty of a work of art:
Ugliness or silliness are not qualities that are usually assumed to be essential for creating something attractive or worthwhile, but their presence serves to illuminate all else. A lawn shows off a tree, a bad character in a novel reveals the presence of goodness elsewhere, and absurdity suggests seriousness.
– The Browser
Like passages of beauty in music are beautiful amongst other passages.
From the article:
In his essay Testaments Betrayed Milan Kundera recalls taking lessons in musical composition from a friend of his father’s, a Jewish composer who was at that time required to wear the yellow star. Seeing the young Kundera out of the tiny Prague flat where he camped out with others whose apartments had been confiscated, the composer suddenly stopped: “There are many surprisingly weak passages in Beethoven. But it is the weak passages that bring out the strong ones. It’s like a lawn—if it weren’t there, we couldn’t enjoy the beautiful tree growing on it.” Some time after sharing this insight with his pupil, the composer was transported to Theresienstadt. Kundera was never to forget the moment: “. . . that brief remark from my teacher of the time has haunted me all my life (I’ve defended it, I’ve fought it, I’ve never finished with it) . . .”
Few of us will receive lessons in beauty under such circumstances. Yet anyone who has sought to make or comprehend art has probably come across at least a few similarly unforgettable statements—insights that, it seems, can never be exhausted.
Like the pilot and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry expressed in the book The Little Prince, a well is only so beautiful amongst the desert when you are thirsty.
“The desert is beautiful,” the little prince added.
And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…
“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well…”
I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart…
“Yes,” I said to the little prince. “The house, the stars, the desert — what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!”
“I am glad,” he said, “that you agree with my fox.”
There are some raw, beautiful moments that have happened in my life. They are made so beautiful because of the sadness, suffering and difficulty that surrounds them.
When I was in refuges & services with other young people also facing homelessness or had been out on the streets, our lives had been surrounded with betrayal, abandonment, a sense of loss – of others, of self, of surety.
But it was so beautiful because we had each other’s backs each time. I spent Christmas one time with them. We talked easily. We made food for each other. We laughed with each other and shared jokes.
Oftentimes I have forgotten this essence, but to be reminded of it now and then again serves me well.
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