บทที่ บทที่ 7 · THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY

. THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY

THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY

Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our

minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and

therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming

burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering

vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our

recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our

own when it is a thing of joy to us.

The greater part of this world is to us as if it were nothing.

But we cannot allow it to remain so, for thus it belittles our

own self. The entire world is given to us, and all our powers

have their final meaning in the faith that by their help we are

to take possession of our patrimony.

But what is the function of our sense of beauty in this process

of the extension of our consciousness? Is it there to separate

truth into strong lights and shadows, and bring it before us in

its uncompromising distinction of beauty and ugliness? If that

were so, then we would have had to admit that this sense of

beauty creates a dissension in our universe and sets up a wall of

hindrance across the highway of communication that leads from

everything to all things.

But that cannot be true. As long as our realisation is

incomplete a division necessarily remains between things known

and unknown, pleasant and unpleasant. But in spite of the dictum

of some philosophers man does not accept any arbitrary and

absolute limit to his knowable world. Every day his science is

penetrating into the region formerly marked in his map as

unexplored or inexplorable. Our sense of beauty is similarly

engaged in ever pushing on its conquests. Truth is everywhere,

therefore everything is the object of our knowledge. Beauty is

omnipresent, therefore everything is capable of giving us joy.

In the early days of his history man took everything as a

phenomenon of life. His science of life began by creating a

sharp distinction between life and non-life. But as it is

proceeding farther and farther the line of demarcation between

the animate and inanimate is growing more and more dim. In the

beginning of our apprehension these sharp lines of contrast are

helpful to us, but as our comprehension becomes clearer they

gradually fade away.

The Upanishads have said that all things are created and

sustained by an infinite joy. To realise this principle of

creation we have to start with a division--the division into the

beautiful and the non-beautiful. Then the apprehension of beauty

has to come to us with a vigorous blow to awaken our

consciousness from its primitive lethargy, and it attains its

object by the urgency of the contrast. Therefore our first

acquaintance with beauty is in her dress of motley colours, that

affects us with its stripes and feathers, nay, with its

disfigurements. But as our acquaintance ripens, the apparent

discords are resolved into modulations of rhythm. At first we

detach beauty from its surroundings, we hold it apart from the

rest, but at the end we realise its harmony with all. Then the

music of beauty has no more need of exciting us with loud noise;

it renounces violence, and appeals to our heart with the truth

that it is meekness inherits the earth.

In some stage of our growth, in some period of our history, we

try to set up a special cult of beauty, and pare it down to a

narrow circuit, so as to make it a matter of pride for a chosen

few. Then it breeds in its votaries affections and

exaggerations, as it did with the Brahmins in the time of the

decadence of Indian civilisation, when the perception of the

higher truth fell away and superstitions grew up unchecked.

In the history of æsthetics there also comes an age of

emancipation when the recognition of beauty in things great and

small become easy, and when we see it more in the unassuming

harmony of common objects than in things startling in their

singularity. So much so, that we have to go through the stages

of reaction when in the representation of beauty we try to avoid

everything that is obviously pleasing and that has been crowned

by the sanction of convention. We are then tempted in defiance

to exaggerate the commonness of commonplace things, thereby

making them aggressively uncommon. To restore harmony we create

the discords which are a feature of all reactions. We already

see in the present age the sign of this æsthetic reaction, which

proves that man has at last come to know that it is only the

narrowness of perception which sharply divides the field of his

æsthetic consciousness into ugliness and beauty. When he has the

power to see things detached from self-interest and from the

insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone can he

have the true vision of the beauty that is everywhere. Then only

can he see that what is unpleasant to us is not necessarily

unbeautiful, but has its beauty in truth.

When we say that beauty is everywhere we do not mean that the

word ugliness should be abolished from our language, just as it

would be absurd to say that there is no such thing as untruth.

Untruth there certainly is, not in the system of the universe,

but in our power of comprehension, as its negative element. In

the same manner there is ugliness in the distorted expression of

beauty in our life and in our art which comes from our imperfect

realisation of Truth. To a certain extent we can set our life

against the law of truth which is in us and which is in all, and

likewise we can give rise to ugliness by going counter to the

eternal law of harmony which is everywhere.

Through our sense of truth we realise law in creation, and

through our sense of beauty we realise harmony in the universe.

When we recognise the law in nature we extend our mastery over

physical forces and become powerful; when we recognise the law in

our moral nature we attain mastery over self and become free. In

like manner the more we comprehend the harmony in the physical

world the more our life shares the gladness of creation, and our

expression of beauty in art becomes more truly catholic. As we

become conscious of the harmony in our soul, our apprehension of

the blissfulness of the spirit of the world becomes universal,

and the expression of beauty in our life moves in goodness and

love towards the infinite. This is the ultimate object of our

existence, that we must ever know that "beauty is truth, truth

beauty"; we must realise the whole world in love, for love gives

it birth, sustains it, and takes it back to its bosom. We must

have that perfect emancipation of heart which gives us the power

to stand at the innermost centre of things and have the taste of

that fullness of disinterested joy which belongs to Brahma.

Music is the purest form of art, and therefore the most direct

expression of beauty, with a form and spirit which is one and

simple, and least encumbered with anything extraneous. We seem

to feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the finite

forms of creation is music itself, silent and visible. The

evening sky, tirelessly repeating the starry constellations,

seems like a child struck with wonder at the mystery of its own

first utterance, lisping the same word over and over again, and

listening to it in unceasing joy. When in the rainy night of

July the darkness is thick upon the meadows and the pattering

rain draws veil upon veil over the stillness of the slumbering

earth, this monotony of the rain patter seems to be the darkness

of sound itself. The gloom of the dim and dense line of trees,

the thorny bushes scattered in the bare heath like floating heads

of swimmers with bedraggled hair, the smell of the damp grass and

the wet earth, the spire of the temple rising above the undefined

mass of blackness grouped around the village huts--everything

seems like notes rising from the heart of the night, mingling and

losing themselves in the one sound of ceaseless rain filling the

sky.

Therefore the true poets, they who are seers, seek to express the

universe in terms of music.

They rarely use symbols of painting to express the unfolding of

forms, the mingling of endless lines and colours that goes on

every moment on the canvas of the blue sky.

They have their reason. For the man who paints must have canvas,

brush and colour-box. The first touch of his brush is very far

from the complete idea. And then when the work is finished the

artist is gone, the windowed picture stands alone, the incessant

touches of love of the creative hand are withdrawn.

But the singer has everything within him. The notes come out

from his very life. They are not materials gathered from

outside. His idea and his expression are brother and sister;

very often they are born as twins. In music the heart reveals

itself immediately; it suffers not from any barrier of alien

material.

Therefore though music has to wait for its completeness like any

other art, yet at every step it gives out the beauty of the

whole. As the material of expression even words are barriers,

for their meaning has to be constructed by thought. But music

never has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it expresses what

no words can ever express.

What is more, music and the musician are inseparable. When the

singer departs, his singing dies with him; it is in eternal union

with the life and joy of the master.

This world-song is never for a moment separated from its singer.

It is not fashioned from any outward material. It is his joy

itself taking never-ending form. It is the great heart sending

the tremor of its thrill over the sky.

There is a perfection in each individual strain of this music,

which is the revelation of completion in the incomplete. No one of

its notes is final, yet each reflects the infinite.

What does it matter if we fail to derive the exact meaning of

this great harmony? Is it not like the hand meeting the string

and drawing out at once all its tones at the touch? It is the

language of beauty, the caress, that comes from the heart of the

world straightway reaches our heart.

Last night, in the silence which pervaded the darkness, I stood

alone and heard the voice of the singer of eternal melodies.

When I went to sleep I closed my eyes with this last thought in

my mind, that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the dance

of life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body,

keeping step with the stars. The heart will throb, the blood

will leap in the veins, and the millions of living atoms of my

body will vibrate in tune with the note of the harp-string that

thrills at the touch of the master.