introduction to the persistence of beauty

892019 Introduction to the Persistence of Beauty

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullintroduction-to-the-persistence-of-beauty 114

ndash 1 ndash

INTRODUCTION

Purpose and Scope

Te Persistence of Beauty Victorians to Moderns articulates a range o nuanced atti-tudes towards its central topic lsquobeautyrsquo and its representation in literary as well asother cultural orms It would be incorrect to contend that the contributors takea single view o their subject Te sense that lsquobeautyrsquo ofen appears under the signo lsquoironyrsquo is probably as close to a collectively held belie as any though even hereirony is a term that covers a spectrum o possibilities ndash rom the undercutting tothe accommodating However cumulatively the volume amounts to a deence obeauty and by extension o the aesthetic Different essays explore and express theconviction that beauty like poetry in W H Audenrsquos lsquoIn Memory o W B Yeatsrsquolsquosurvives A way o happeningrsquo1 Tey argue implicitly or explicitly or beautyrsquos

value as an enduring i ofen contestable quality in a work o art a poem or a novelndash one known as an effect on the reader Tey argue too again with greater or lessdegrees o emphasis or the view that a novel or poem can be beautiul even andespecially when it questions what beauty might mean or whether beauty has value

Te volume does not aspire to be a ull-scale contribution to the philosophyo aesthetics though it is hoped that by attending to the literary and culturalthematizing and representation o beauty it will breathe resh lie into ways othinking about its subject Tat said philosophical conceptualization is ofenset productively in dialogue with artistic practice One work that broods monu-mentally over thinking about beauty since its publication in 1790 is ImmanuelKantrsquos Critique of Judgment the 1047297rst part o which (the lsquoCritique o Aesthetic

Judgmentrsquo) examines the process o deciding whether lsquosomething is beautiul or

notrsquo2 Kantrsquos criteria include the idea that the object seems beautiul in a dis-interested way3 Tey include too the notion that beauty involves lsquoa claim tosubjective universalityrsquo I a person lsquoproclaims something to be beautiul thenhe requires the same liking rom othersrsquo4 Kant is careul to distinguish betweenconceptual and aesthetic orms o knowing He does not say that the object canbe objectively known to be beautiul in conceptual terms but he asserts thatthe aesthetic or subjective response involved in calling an lsquoobject beautiulrsquo

The Persistence of Beauty indd 1The Persistence of Beautyindd 1 20022015 15574320022015 155743



2 Te Persistence of Beauty Victorians to Moderns

entails the belie that lsquowe have a universal voicersquo5 He also argues that the aware-ness o beauty arises rom a process o non-conceptual ree play as Donald WCraword explains or Kant lsquothe determining ground o the judgement [thatsomething is beautiul] is ldquothe eeling (or internal sense) o that harmony in the

play o the mental powers so ar as it can be elt in sensationrdquorsquo6 In additionKant stresses that aesthetic judgement requires us to respond to the lsquomere ormo purposivenessrsquo7 Craword glosses the matter thus lsquoKantrsquos undamental claimis that we can 1047297nd an object to be purposive in its form even though we do con-ceptualize a de1047297nite purposersquo Tere is a correspondence between lsquothe harmonyin [the objectrsquos] ormrsquo and lsquothe harmony in our cognitive powers (imaginationand understanding) in our re1047298ection on the objectrsquo8

Kant also re1047298ects on the relationship between the beautiul and the sublimein his Critique of Judgment an issue o great signi1047297cance or this volume A num-ber o the chapters raise the question o whether the beautiul might be seen asinclusive o the sublime or at least in a relationship with it that is 1047297ner than thato contrast to borrow a phrase rom Wordsworth quoted by Seamus Perry in hisessay (see end o chapter 4 below) Kant argues as ollows

Te beautiul in nature concerns the orm o the object which consists in [theobjectrsquos] being bounded but the sublime can also be ound in a ormless objectinsoar as we present unboundedness either [as] in the object or because the object

prompts us to present it hellip 9

On Kantrsquos account then the sublime involves lsquoseriousnessrsquo rather than lsquoplayrsquolsquonegative pleasurersquo rather than lsquopleasurersquo it is lsquocontra-purposiversquo rather than lsquopre-determined or our power o judgmentrsquo10 Te distinctions already seem more tobe questions o degree than absolute and the texts considered in the volume re-quently contest the validity o Kantrsquos terms S Eliotrsquos Te Waste Land (1922)or example is a poem that suggests a Modernist con1047298ation o lsquopleasurersquo andlsquonegative pleasurersquo Still as Matthew Scott puts it lsquoperhaps it is not too muchto say that as the sublimersquos ortunes rose in modern literary criticism so thoseo beauty ell awayrsquo11 It is among the ambitions o this volume to suggest therequent moments and modes o intersection between categories that sinceEdmund Burkersquos 1757 work A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideasof the Sublime and Beautiful have been seen as competing and distinct imothy

Morton suggests the association o beauty with violence while Robert Doug-las-Fairhurst quotes Roger Scruton rom his On Beauty to the effect that lsquoOurability to tell the truth about our own condition in measured words and touch-ing melodies offers a kind o redemption rom itrsquo (see chapter 2 below) Otheressays see beauty as arising rom the clash between the desire or ormal perec-tion and recalcitrant realities and are shadowed by an urge to rame beauty andsublimity as complementary rather than opposed terms




Introduction 3

Much depends here as in many post-Romantic ideas o the beautiul on the way in which the Romantic view o beauty is understood Tere seems sometimesto be a need elt in modern criticism to posit a simplistic Romantic position asthough it were Keats himsel rather than his urn who contends that lsquoBeauty istruth truth beautyrsquo12 ignoring the act that the amous apophthegm concludes along sentence beginning with the hard-headed i pained prediction lsquoWhen oldage shall this generation wastersquo13 Keats one might wish to say neither dismissesnor endorses his urnrsquos eventual moment o ventriloquized speech he holds itbeore us as a ponderable possibly illusory deeply needed ideal Scott notes as aurther irony that though beauty is sometimes elt to be a suspect ideal avouredby the Romantics lsquoit is the sublime that usually matters most to students o theRomantic imagination in its grandest incarnationsrsquo14 Ironies indeed abound Tesupposed Romantic exaltation o subjective judgement coexists with a strongawareness that lsquowe receive but what we give And in our lie alone does Natureliversquo15 as Coleridge has it in lsquoDejection An Odersquo a ormulation that betrays earthat lsquoNaturersquo may name a lieless unknowable world o objects given the illusiono meaning by our lsquoliersquo Kant overtly suggests that there is an analogy betweendiscovery o harmony in the object and the eeling o harmony in the aculties othe discoverer but his suggestion may conceal the anxiety that this matching upo subject and object is a 1047297ction a lsquopleasurable antasyrsquo in erry Eagletonrsquos wordsthat Nature lsquowas designed rsquo or lsquohuman understandingrsquo16

In act the volume proceeds or the most part on the assumption that the

Romantics in the words o Jos De Mul articulate a lsquocharacteristic tension betweenenthusiasm and ironyrsquo and are at least implicitly alert to the deconstructive shad-ows that haunt their most radiant affi rmations At the same time they hold toaffi rmations in the midst o irony De Mul argues eloquently or the abiding pres-ence o the Romantic longing or transcendence ironized as it ofen is quotinglines rom Nietzschersquos Te Gay Science (1882)(lsquoSmooth ice is paradise or those

who dance with expertisersquo) in support o his claim that lsquoLie also aesthetic liealways implies a risk or dance above the abyss o the inauthentic But it is preciselyherein that the grandeur o the undamental openness o Romantic desire hidesrsquo17

Te volume is conscious thereore o a line that runs rom Shelleyrsquos evoca-tion o lsquogenerous errorrsquo in his preatory remarks to Alastor a poem in which thePoet thinks or hopes that he has discovered in effect a type o ideal beauty to

Larkinrsquos lsquoEssential Beautyrsquo in which the kitsch iconography o modern adver-tising suggests with poignancy as well as sardonic humour the human desireor beauty18 Billboard hoardings or Larkin with their images o the perectamily say lsquorise Serenely to proclaim pure crust pure oamrsquo so many consumer-ist Aphrodites or Platonic orms that allow lsquodying smokersrsquo gullible victims oadvertising rom one perspective to lsquosense





Walking towards them through some dappled park As i on water that unocused she No match lit up nor drag ever brought near Who now stands newly clear Smiling and recognising and going dark19

Te lsquodying smokersrsquo might be seen as ooled to the end 1047297rst losing their healththen their wits to capitalist exploitation But Larkin true to his sense that bill-boards are lsquobeautiul and in an odd way sad like in1047297nitely-debased Platonicessencesrsquo hal-hints that there is some undeniable need in us that exists even i itcan be exploited20 He hal-hints too that though lsquoin1047297nitely-debasedrsquo lsquoPlatonicessencesrsquo retain their cultural validity Te 1047297gure o beauty may be lsquounocusedrsquo

but she is one that lsquoNo match lit up nor drag ever brought nearrsquo a line that swaysbetween suggesting the smokers have been sold an illusion and that they havebeen able to conceive o an lsquoEssential Beautyrsquo that lies beyond the contrivanceso the adman What lsquostands newly clearrsquo at the end o the poem is the rediscoveryo the human longing or lsquobeautyrsquo one that is both placed in an ongoing presentand lodged in vanishing temporality by the 1047297nal linersquos participles Tere is tooa disturbing sense that the lsquoshersquo glimpsed lsquoSmiling and recognising and goingdarkrsquo might be a 1047297gure or mortality as well as beauty Here Larkin recalls theKeats who writes lsquoShe dwells with Beauty ndash Beauty that must diersquo 21 even as hecreates a poem in which Beauty continually lives though always about to perish

Larkinrsquos lines like the poem and like much post-Romantic literature indicate ways in which the literary enactment o such contestation about beauty makesor a lsquodeence o the aestheticrsquo in that it results in a poem which it seems rightto call beautiul It is worth noting too the possible debt owed by the poemrsquostitle to a phrase rom one o Keatsrsquos letters which articulates the undamentallylsquocreativersquo nature o Romantic relations with beauty lsquoWhat the imagination seizesas Beauty must be truth ndash whether it existed beore or not ndash or I have the sameIdea o all our Passions as o Love they are all in their sublime creative o essentialBeautyrsquo22 Te words lsquoin their sublime creative o essential Beautyrsquo may mean lsquointheir sublimest ormrsquo or they may suggest the sense lsquoin their essentially sublime

wayrsquo they give an ardently impassioned push to the subjectivity that is howeverconceptually quali1047297ed a post-Kantian legacy Tis recognition that the imagi-nation is lsquocreativersquo o beauty will lead later thinkers to associate the longing or

beauty with consciously accepted error Nietzsche or example asserts that lsquooexperience a thing as beautiul means to experience it necessarily wronglyrsquo23 Yetthe Romantics are themselves alive to the possible association24 Consequentlythere is more than a chance analogy between the volumersquos overall stance andthat o Yeats when he states in lsquoAnima Hominisrsquo that lsquoWe make out o the quar-rel with others rhetoric but o the quarrel with ourselves poetryrsquo25 Even whenmost 1047297ercely contested beauty has a way o persisting in the texts and authors we




Introduction 5

address o insisting on its signi1047297cance It thrives that is on con1047298ict and the verycontestations o terms to which its putative presence gives rise Such con1047298ict mayresult in diffi culties inconsistencies and contradictions as is lucidly brought outby Hilary Fraser in her book Beauty and Belief Aesthetics and Religion in Victo-rian Literature Fraser shows how lsquoTe Victorians stood to inherit long-standing

problems o perception in Romantic aesthetics problems which ew were able toresolve satisactorilyrsquo26 But in our view it is not glib to say that tussling with suchlsquoproblems o perceptionrsquo is a means o turning them into productively enablingcreative possibilities and such conversions are ofen staged in nineteenth-centuryliterature as our chapters demonstrate It may be as Adorno has it that lsquoTe con-cept o an artwork implies that o successrsquo and that lsquoFailed artworks are not artrsquo

yet aesthetic lsquosuccessrsquo may result rom conceptual lsquoailurersquo breakdowns may wellbe breakthroughs so ar as imaginative lsquobeautyrsquo is concerned27

Centrally then lsquoironyrsquo as a concept running through the book and discern-ible in many o the writers we address is not a reductive notion Rather the ironycorresponds more to Romantic irony as ormulated in the work o FriedrichSchlegel that is a capacity or accommodating different perspectives juggling

with opposing attitudes and values As glossed by Umberto Eco lsquothe ironicstancersquo deriving rom Romantic irony lsquoallows the subject a double movement oapproach and withdrawal with respect to the objectrsquo irony in at least one o itsmodes lsquopreventsrsquo a merely negative lsquoscepticismrsquo it permits or Eco an interpen-etration o subject with object critic with artwork while allowing the subject or

critic to maintain (and the volume ofen suggests implicitly question) lsquohisherown subjectivityrsquo28 It is a bequest put to use in the chapters which ollow I thenature o beauty is problematic it is not by any means so our volume argues

worthless non-existent or meaningless Te book sustains the historical thesis that in the wake o Romanticism beauty

is as the title o Fran Breartonrsquos chapter has it borrowing a phrase rom RobertGraves lsquoin troublersquo and that exploring such trouble has perplexing but richlyrewarding aesthetic results We trace the ortunes o beauty across the best part otwo centuries and several literary cultures (British Irish and American) throughcareully chosen texts and authors Te authors and texts are chosen because theyare at once canonical and allow or cross-cultural comparisons Canonical authorsit will be demonstrated owe their very canonicity to their ability to test and

explore not to take or granted the problematic but crucial notion o the beau-tiul Te inclusion o British Irish and American authors allows or a width ocoverage that aims to be suggestive rather than exhaustive Running rom Char-lotte Bronteuml Dickens and Wilde to S Eliot Whitman Stevens Auden Frostand Bishop and 1047297nishing with essays on Hopkins Yeats Hart Crane and Spenderand Graves and MacNeice and with more general re1047298ections on beauty andmodernity the volume seeks to be ull o provocations to thought It is as already





suggested organized in the light o the central idea that beauty becomes the moreascinatingly con1047298icted and yet durably persistent the more it is subject to an ironyalive to possibility as well as to limitation Relevant here is languagersquos reusal simplyto obey some supposed authorial intention relevant too is its capacity to shapeunpredictable patterns and implications As Schlegel main begetter o ideas aboutRomantic irony observes in his lsquoOn Incomprehensibilityrsquo lsquoWords ofen under-stand themselves better than do those who are using themrsquo29 Te chapters remindus o the ways in which words lsquounderstand themselvesrsquo Tey endorse Iris Mur-dochrsquos cautious assent to the view that lsquoIt is as i we can see beauty itsel in a wayin which we cannot see goodness itsel rsquo ndash because lsquobeauty is partly a matter o thesensesrsquo available to us through aesthetic con1047297gurations30

Te volume involves too a historical concern with the pressures broughtto bear on and answered by the idea o beauty rom the Victorians onwards Asindicated above related issues that are examined include what are the implica-tions or dealing with lsquobeautyrsquo o the writerrsquos choice o genre Is it the case andi so why is it the case that lsquobeautyrsquo survives sel-quarrelling and contestationDoes the idea or lsquoidealrsquo o beauty change across time across literary periods andgenres and i so why is that the case What are the kinds o ormal and aestheticmeans o mediating lsquobeautyrsquo

Such questions preoccupied Henry James or whom beauty was to be oundin the construction o a novel in the very abric o orm Te architectural build-ing blocks o narrative come together lsquoto effect and to provide or beautyrsquo as the

author outlines in the preace to Te Wings of the Dove31

lsquoOnersquos work shouldhave composition because composition alone is positive beautyrsquo James tells usin the preace to another late work Te Ambassadors wherein he affi rms lsquoan idealbeauty o goodness the invoked action o which is to raise the artistic aith to itsmaximumrsquo32 It is this commitment to a rare1047297ed beauty that inspires sustains andelevates the novelistrsquos craf casting a perected lsquoglowrsquo over Te Ambassadors33 Paris the setting or the novel is a place o intrigue and machinations yet thelsquomisery at the heart o beauty elegance wealth and privilegersquo that is revealed tothe American in this European city as Adrian Poole contends is also under-stood as a ormulaic cynical stance an lsquoodious ascetic suspicion o any orm obeautyrsquo which effectively rules out lsquoreach[ing] the truth o anythingrsquo34 Jamesdisorientates an habitual mistrust o beauty through lsquothe vague inward ironyrsquo

that attends the 1047298ux o mixed emotions lsquoa 1047297ne ree range o bliss and balersquo35

Teintricate interplay and aspirations o Lambert Stretherrsquos consciousness take usback once more to Keatsrsquos elliptical equation

In Jamesrsquos earlier essay lsquoTe Art o Fictionrsquo lsquothe novel the picture the statue par-take o the substance o beauty and truthrsquo but the moral purpose o art is contingenton lsquothe quality o the mind o the producerrsquo the proound aesthetic lsquotruthrsquo o beautyis even or James dependent on the subjectivity (and discerning mind) o the viewer36




Introduction 7

We move rom 1047297ction to poetry out o a wish to highlight comparisons anddifferences between the presentation o beauty in different literary genres in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries Novels are associated with ar greater socialmateriality than poems Our organization o the chapters allows us immediately tobring into play ideas o lsquoironyrsquo a orm more commonly associated with novelistic than

poetic practices but shown by our collection to be pervasive Inevitably something othe essayistic (with its virtues o dialogue variety and interactivity) will remain sincethe collection is a volume o essays not a monograph But the effect aimed at is rede-inition and re1047297nement o coming rom different angles at a similar nexus o issues

Synopsis o Contents As noted the volume traces the treatment o lsquobeautyrsquo principally in 1047297ction and

poetry Te 1047297rst three chapters ocus primarily on the 1047297ction o three nine-teenth-century authors Charlotte Bronteuml Charles Dickens and Oscar WildeAll three essays are attentive to subsequent processes o reception Te resultis among other things a narratology o beauty Tese essays consider some othe ways in which narratives o beauty negotiate a troubled path and how theytest and blur the boundaries between realism and romance in nineteenth-cen-tury 1047297ction In chapter 1 on lsquoFemale Beauty and Portraits o Sel-Effacementin Charlotte Bronteumlrsquos Jane Eyrersquo Sarah Wootton explores a productive ambiva-lence towards beauty that can be ound in many texts studied in the volumeAs she notes Charlotte Bronteuml lsquois mistrustul o beauty on moral groundsrsquo but

lsquobeauty in different orms does not cease to instruct or captivatersquo (see chapter 1below) Wootton analyzes a narrative technique that encourages empathy with

yet inspection o the heroinersquos overt and sub-textual eelings She relates thistechnique to complex questions o gender identity and subsequent reception

Her chapter pivots on shifs between and overlappings o interpretativehorizons For Wootton Jane Eyre is lsquorooted in as well as sceptical o a mid-Vic-torian imprint o beautyrsquo an ambivalence brought into sharpened ocus when

viewed through the lens provided by Paula Regorsquos lithographs Jane Eyre Series (2001ndash2) that allow us to see with new eyes just how much scope or speculationthe heroinersquos lsquosel-regarding simplicityrsquo permits Rego Wootton shows lsquorenders

visually immediate the narrative ldquoartrdquo o sel-effacementrsquo (see chapter 1 below)in Jane Eyre A typical image (Figure 11) offers when read in the context o thenovel an image that is aware o but moves beyond apparent opposites leavingus with an impression o Jane Eyrersquos lsquoassuredness and anxiety her sel-absorptionand sel-effacementrsquo Rego emerges as commenting in her own medium on lsquotheinterplay between art as illusion and the psychodynamics o realism in the novelrsquo(see chapter 1 below) Beauty never ceases on Woottonrsquos reading to exercise a

powerul orce in the novel even as Bronteuml sets perspective against perspective





attitude against attitude kind o beauty against kind o beauty As is broughtout in the essayrsquos readings both o the novelrsquos emale characters and o Rochesterbeauty can be stereotypical yet the sign o a personrsquos uniqueness ndash a power to beemployed in the marriage market and an indication o servitude to that marketa calculable ormula but also an indeterminate mystery a sign o social controland an indication o subjectivityrsquos lawlessness

In lsquoDickens and the Line o Beautyrsquo Robert Douglas-Fairhurst observes wit-tily that i a discussion o Dickens and the grotesque might seem lsquolike pushingat an open doorrsquo an account o lsquohis attitudes towards beauty is more like tryingto squeeze through a keyholersquo (see chapter 2 below) His essay draws atten-tion to Dickensrsquos lsquosuspicion o the language o beautyrsquo yet it goes on to describethis remarkable writerrsquos lsquouncanny knack or retrieving unexpected moments obeauty rom the unlikeliest o placesrsquo a knack that he glosses with reerence toRoger Scrutonrsquos notion that lsquoto tell the truth about our own condition in meas-ured words and touching melodies offers a kind o redemption rom itrsquo (quotedin chapter 2 below) At the same time Douglas-Fairhurst comments that Dick-ensrsquos lsquorhetorical ldquobeautiesrdquorsquo in particular his uses o lsquometaphorrsquo lsquoare almost alwaysdiscovered in things rather than in peoplersquo Attached to women in Dickensrsquos

work words to do with beauty lsquo1047298oat around in a rhetorical space somewhereabove their headsrsquo Edith Dombey and Estella or example induce a quality ostatuesque 1047297xity in the prose that associates them with beauty

Douglas-Fairhurst sustains Woottonrsquos consideration o the relationship

between beauty and gender in nineteenth-century literature in the process oarguing that beautyrsquos subjective and objective status is lsquoan imaginative resourcersquo(see chapter 2 below) It is a dual status o which we become aware as charactersseek lsquoto reconcile the unavoidable acts o the world and the desire to gloss them

with personal relevancersquo Te word lsquobeautyrsquo in act lsquoacts as a bridge between real-ism and romance or how things are and how we would like them to bersquo Tat itinvolves contemplation o 1047297xity and stillness suggests that or Dickens lsquoBeautyand narrative appear to be undamentally at oddsrsquo (see chapter 2 below) theormer bound up with and resulting in lsquoclosurersquo and lsquodeathrsquo lsquodesignrsquo rather thanlsquocontingencyrsquo But in the way that Dickens articulates and explores this opposi-tion he mines a rich seam o Victorian ear and anxiety relating to the passageo time and evident in the vogue or beauty treatments whose wording serves as

means o contextualizing the novelistrsquos own obsessions Simon J James also sets beauty into illuminating contexts in his case situat-

ing Oscar Wildersquos aestheticism in the light o trial documents For James Wildersquoslsquointerventions in the relationship between art lie and aesthetic response con-stitute an important rupture with the Romantic legacies to Victorian aestheticsand still constitute an important challenge to the in many aspects still post-Romantic aesthetics o the present dayrsquo (see chapter 3 below) Wilde breaksthat is the link between the beautiul the true and the good which on Jamesrsquos




Introduction 9

account are at least ambivalently still honoured by the Romantics Wilde inhis aphoristic dicta at any rate sought to separate the aesthetic rom the moralthe text rom the world What is stake in the three trials which Wilde underwent1047297rst as plaintiff then as deendant in 1895 was an attempt by the lawyers actingor the Marquis o Queensbury and then the state lsquoto re-establish the normativeconnections between art and liersquo (see chapter 3 below)

Ironically enough or one who would disavow the idea o lsquoart as autobiog-raphyrsquo Wildersquos work has been requently read lsquothrough the lens o his liersquo (seechapter 3 below) sometimes with emphasis on the uncanny effects o echoingsand oreshadowings between the lie (or lives) and the texts W H Auden or onesaw Te Importance of Being Earnest (1047297rst perormed in 1895) as a nightmarishcomedy into which vengeul authority 1047297gures were threatening to burst Drawingon queer theory in close readings o the trial documents and their strategies o con-rontation and evasion James shows how Authorityrsquos revenge on the subversiveaesthete and transgressive lsquosodomitersquo takes the orm o lsquopunitive interpretive activi-tiesrsquo Tese activities were designed to 1047297x labels on a lie and art whose relationship

with and employment o a discourse o the lsquobeautiulrsquo is in part a means o creat-ing 1047297ctions that deny the relevance or applicability o such labels

Te next six essays look at beautyrsquos treatment in poetry the genre most ofenassociated with its literary representation Tey look in turn at S Eliot

Whitman and Stevens and Auden then at Frost and Bishop afer a glanceback at Gerard Manley Hopkins then at Hopkins (again) Yeats Hart Crane

and Spender and 1047297nally (in this group) at Robert Graves and Louis MacNeiceSeamus Perry begins his discussion o lsquoTe Beauties o S Eliotrsquo by examiningEliotrsquos sideways-on but signi1047297cant interest in lsquothe lie o beautyrsquo (see chapter 4below) as a concept I beauty names a shopworn ideal and evokes outmoded

poetic and critical practices it manages too so Perry argues to possess lsquoan unexpected sort o tenacity in Eliotrsquo Perry shows that the side o Eliot inclined todisparage lsquobeautyrsquo engages in lsquoa kicking over o the old Romantic tracesrsquo along

with less urbane or less eline comrades-in-arms including Wyndham Lewis E Hulme and Ezra Pound ndash the latter being lsquoquick to praise Yeatsrsquo as Perrynotes lsquowhen he wrote about a dog urinatingrsquo (see chapter 4 below) Tis scep-tical side o Eliot sees lsquothe rhetoric o beautyrsquo as suggesting lsquosomething slightinsubstantial perhaps a little weak-minded lacking in audacity and somewhat

old-ashioned and most certainly minor rsquo It regards a lsquoeeling or verbal beautyrsquoas likely to lead a poet astray and views with disdain the Arnoldian regard or lsquoabeautiul worldrsquo Such regard typi1047297es Perry comments lsquothat thinness in religiousintelligence that Eliot liked to call ldquoliberalismrdquorsquo (see chapter 4 below)

Yet or all his troubled or dismissive reerences Eliotrsquos lsquoown dissociation romthe rhetoric o beautyrsquo Perry goes on to argue in his essayrsquos second hal lsquowasar rom completersquo In this hal Perry highlights Eliotrsquos ability to identiy liter-ary touchstones through their verbal beauty in Hulme Pound and Massinger





among others And he moves on to make the point that lsquothere are more emphaticand even numinous invocations o the beautiul in Eliotrsquo (see chapter 4 below)as in his admiration or the beauty o Tomist thought in Dante Eliot recog-nizes like Clive Bell that lsquoBeauty is by its own nature sel-suffi cingrsquo but it lsquocannever quite sustain its own justi1047297cationrsquo and in seeking something that will sup-

ply such a justi1047297cation the writer may discover on Perryrsquos dialectical accounto Eliotic manoeuvrings a lsquomore encompassing kind o beautyrsquo illustrated bythe way in which beautiul lines in Shakespeare 1047297nd lsquoa place within the largerrepresentation o a more complete consciousnessrsquo Perryrsquos essay concludes withobservations on the unction o lsquobeautiesrsquo in Te Waste Land moments such asthe opening o lsquoTe Fire Sermonrsquo when lsquothe verse turns towards beauty and turnsaway rom it embracing and rejecting its possibilityrsquo (see chapter 4 below)

Doubleness persists as a theme in Mark Sandyrsquos essay on lsquoTe Persistence oBeauty and Death in the Poetics o Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevensrsquo akingas a point o departure Stevensrsquos beautiully enigmatic phrase rom lsquoAn OrdinaryEvening in New Havenrsquo lsquoTe enigmatical Beauty o each beautiul enigmarsquo (seechapter 5 below) the essay meditates on the renewal o the beautiul in the poetryo Whitman and Stevens through a post-Romantic and post-ranscendentalistre-evaluation o the ordinary Beauty in a very Wordsworthian (and Shelleyan)

way is at once something created and something perceived both lsquoa sense sub-limersquo and lsquosomething ar more deeply interusedrsquo in Wordsworthrsquos phrases romlsquoLines Written a Few Miles above intern Abbeyrsquo (quoted below in chapter 5)

or in Shelleyrsquos terms rom A Defence of Poetry a gif won by the imaginationrsquosability to lsquocreate or us a being within our beingrsquo and the capacity to see whatis really there lsquothe wonder o our beingrsquo (quoted below in chapter 5) But theAmerican poets as advocated by Ralph Waldo Emerson are ready to allow orthe beauty o the industrial and the man-made Tey delight in the contingent

precisely because in Whitmanrsquos case o his keen interest in maniestations o theeveryday Te American poets do not turn away rom their English Romantic

predecessors on Sandyrsquos account so much as extend a dual perspective alreadyto be ound in the English writers For all their differences Whitman Stevensand their English Romantic predecessors share a readiness to elicit the beautiulrom lsquocomplex transactions between the ofen chaotic world o ordinary expe-rience and the creative consciousnessrsquo (see chapter 5 below) transactions that

include as readings o poems such as Whitmanrsquos lsquoOut o the Cradle EndlesslyRockingrsquo reveal subtly enigmatic and beautiul conrontations with the act odeath end o and spur towards delight in the ordinary

ony Sharpe takes his starting point or his discussion o lsquoW H Auden TeLoveliness that Is the Casersquo the passage quoted by Seamus Perry in which Eliotdisparages Arnoldrsquos belie that a poet was helped by being able to lsquodeal with abeautiul worldrsquo (quoted below in chapter 6) Like Perry he comments on Eliotrsquos




Introduction 11

mixed eelings about lsquobeautyrsquo as when Eliot criticizes the Beauty-ruth equiv-alence at the close o Keatsrsquos lsquoOde on a Grecian Urnrsquo as lsquoa serious blemish ona beautiul poemrsquo (quoted below in chapter 6) the use o the word lsquobeautiulrsquoexhibiting its own residual attachment Eliot is at the head o a group o poetsalso including Stevens into whose changed sense o the world lsquoragmentaryglimpsesrsquo o an almost vanished beauty intrude Auden or his part turns outto be a poet whose considerations o beauty requently involve lsquoironyrsquo or lsquophilo-sophical reservationsrsquo (see chapter 6 below)

Sharpe explores the nexus between lsquobeauty machinery and human loversquo in poems such as lsquoHeavy Datersquo written to Chester Kallman and containing thelines lsquoWhen I was a child I Loved a pumping-engine Tought it every bitas Beautiul as yoursquo (quoted below in chapter 6) As he tracks the nuances oAudenrsquos attitudes towards beauty Sharpe recalls Sandyrsquos emphasis on the wayin which the lsquoordinaryrsquo is revalued in Whitman and Stevens yet his argumentstresses a different duality in Audenrsquos view o beauty I or Sandy a duality opensup between what is and what is imagined in Sharpersquos essay there is a sense oAuden being drawn in his thinking about beauty between lsquohuman limitationand human distinctionrsquo For one thing it is lsquonot in the nature o ldquobeautyrdquo to lastoreverrsquo or another it is not by any means lsquodesirable that it shouldrsquo and or aurther still lsquoin Audenrsquos writing beauty is always a contingent qualityrsquo Sharpedraws attention to Audenrsquos Ariel-like sense that a poem should be lsquobeautiulrsquo andhis Prospero-like imperative that it should be lsquotruersquo (see chapter 6 below) Te

essay surveys and captures the poetrsquos agile convolutions in his later work as he praises ethics yet covertly commends aesthetics Te next two essays by Angela Leighton and Michael OrsquoNeill return to

nineteenth-century dealings with beauty beore moving on to discuss twenti-eth-century poetry In lsquoSomething in the Works Frost Bishop and the Idea oBeautyrsquo Leighton remarks on the act that rom the 1870s onwards or the next1047297ve decades partly as a result o Walter Paterrsquos in1047298uence lsquobeauty would continueto 1047297gure as an alluring object o desirersquo (see chapter 7 below) She notes that aferits relative eclipse in the 1047297rst part o the twentieth century the word lsquobeautyrsquo hasreturned o late lsquowith a vengeance in titles such as Jorie Grahamrsquos Te End of

Beauty (1987) Zadie Smithrsquos On Beauty (2005) Denis Donoghuersquos Speaking of Beauty (2003) and Roger Scrutonrsquos On Beauty (2011) Her essay takes an appar-

ent detour to consider a poem by St John o the Cross which appears to rejectlsquobeautyrsquo One line offers lsquoa tiny exception to his rule o sel denial ldquoonly or some-thing I donrsquot knowrdquorsquo (quoted below in chapter 7) Tat lsquosomethingrsquo associatedin the essay with lsquocharmrsquo or the lsquo je-ne-sais quoirsquo lsquois just enough to keep beautyanglingrsquo In its provocations such a lsquosomethingrsquo ascinates Leighton in her read-ings o poems by Larkin and considered at greater length Frost and Bishop





Te reputation o the two American poets as empirical hard-headed andrealist should not hide rom us Leighton argues their interest in beauty as aninde1047297nable something even an action Tis emphasis is set in motion by reerenceto the seventeenth-century thinker Dominique Bouhours and the twentieth-century theorist Vladimir Jankeacuteleacutevitch both o whom promote an awareness obeauty as unknowable yet lsquotransitiversquo (quoted below in chapter 7) Frostrsquos multiplelsquosomethingsrsquo express an impulse to move lsquobeyond the morality o his talesrsquo towardslsquosomethingrsquo like lsquobeautyrsquo And Bishop is lsquoa poetrsquo on Leightonrsquos account not onlyo the lsquominutely observed literal but also o the literal become hyperrealisticallylegible and thereore opening up stranger perspectivesrsquo Like her sandpiper Bishopsearches or lsquosomethingrsquo that it would be crude simply to label as lsquobeautyrsquo but or

which lsquobeautyrsquo provides as reliable a signpost as any Leightonrsquos essay concludes with a lsquoPostscriptrsquo in which she meditates on the word and indeed on meditatingon a word which serves as lsquoa call to perpetual inventive answerabilityrsquo Tis Post-script 1047297nishes by discussing poems about beauty by Jorie Graham and suggests thatlsquoBeauty hellip is like poetryrsquos many sly re-routings o attention where what we thought

we understood turns into something a little hard to hearrsquo (see chapter 7 below) In the next essay lsquoTe Diffi culty o Beauty Hopkins Yeats Hart Crane

Spenderrsquo Michael OrsquoNeill ocuses on the connection between the volumersquos dom-inant concept and diffi culty lsquoBeauty is diffi cultrsquo the statement attributed by EzraPound to Aubrey Beardsley in Canto LXXX is the governing idea AnalysingHopkinsrsquos lsquoo What Serves Mortal Beautyrsquo OrsquoNeill argues that the poem bears

witness less to a split between poet and priest than to his effort to ground sensu-ous response in an overall conceptual design one dependent on his immersionin Catholic theology Te chapter sees Hopkins as a poet in whom lsquoinstinctualapprehension has to 1047297nd its intellectual justi1047297cationrsquo (see chapter 8 below)

At the same time Hopkins is not exempt rom the post-Romantic condition whereby the quester afer beauty may end up in his own words as lsquoa lonely beganrsquo(quoted below in chapter 8) knowing more about the experience o quest thanthe discovery o beauty Yet writing poetry about such lonely discoveries maybe a mode through which beauty declares itsel Comparable emphases recur inOrsquoNeillrsquos reading o poems and prose by Yeats Hart Crane and Spender In YeatsrsquoslsquoAdamrsquos Cursersquo the poem perorms a salvaging operation in the act o stagingbeautyrsquos shipwreck Crane hunts or evidences o beauty in modern America with

a ull awareness that lsquoTe Imaginationrsquo needs to move lsquobeyond despairrsquo (quotedbelow in chapter 8) OrsquoNeill reads lsquoOnly in darkness is thy shadow clear rsquo a line romthe Proem to Te Bridge as showing how beauty lsquohangs in the darknessrsquo orCrane lsquoshadowingrsquo the actual provoking lsquothe poetrsquos transorming desiresrsquo (quotedbelow in chapter 8) And Stephen Spender in politically engaged poems such aslsquoIn railway hallsrsquo rejects alse artistic consolations yet shows the continuing lure o




Introduction 13

lsquocurving beautyrsquo (quoted below in chapter) Again beauty is to adapt a line romYeatsrsquos lsquoAmong School Childrenrsquo lsquoborn out o its own despairrsquo

Fran Breartonrsquos chapter lsquoldquoBeauty in roublerdquo Robert Graves and LouisMacNeicersquo takes its title rom an impishly ambivalent poem by Graves Brearton

places Gravesrsquos obsession with the lsquoeminine principlersquo (quoted below in chapter9) or White Goddess in the context not o Yeatsian lsquolabourrsquo (also discussed byOrsquoNeill) but o the lsquocost hellip the price o beautyrsquo lsquothe duesrsquo that lsquomust be paidby woman or by poetrsquo (see chapter 9 below) I or Yeats the poet can win his

way through to beauty or Graves the poet is assailed by it Brearton arguesthat beautyrsquos cost lsquoresonates in terms o Gravesrsquos wartime servicersquo and notes thatbeauty is lsquoin troublersquo in the academy because alling oul o supposedly servinghegemonic gender relations o seeming to be lsquoirrelevantrsquo as one critic puts thecase lsquoto the more pressing concerns o history and genderrsquo (quoted below inchapter 9) In act as Brearton observes the poets themselves were alert to theintersection between beauty and such lsquopressing concernsrsquo Beauty may have beenused in an opportunistic way to endorse war but or poets such as Graves YeatsOwen and MacNeice lsquothe aestheticrsquo in Susan Sontagrsquos words lsquois itsel a quasi-moral projectrsquo (quoted below in chapter 9) In his explorations o or examplethe connection between beauty and sacri1047297ce Graves typi1047297es ways in which

poets lsquoalter and interrogate what beauty means and what power it holdsrsquo evenas lsquothey never give it up nor give up on itrsquo Breartonrsquos emphasis here is in accord

with Elaine Scarryrsquos point that beauty induces in its beholder lsquoa more capacious

regard or the worldrsquo (quoted below in chapter 9) Afer the war on Breartonrsquos account beauty changes in Gravesrsquos work romlsquothe real to the mythical and rom the homoerotic to the heteroeroticrsquo For his

part Owen worries obsessively about lsquohis relationship with beautyrsquo (see chapter9 below) and Brearton argues that his poetry achieves its own version o truthor justice precisely because o its concern lsquowith the aestheticrsquo MacNeice inher-its some o the con1047298icts present in Owen his Modern Poetry at odds with lsquoartor artrsquos sakersquo Paterian preoccupation with lsquostylersquo and lsquoPure Formrsquo (see chapter9 below) But in act the term lsquobeautyrsquo is lsquoremarkably prominent in the 1930s

workrsquo by MacNeice even i ofen quali1047297ed by an adulterating adjective the lsquoslickbeauty o geegawsrsquo (quoted below in chapter 9) or example Yet adulterationmay also bear witness to a multiplied perspective and in MacNeicersquos 1930s

poetry Brearton contends the lsquoexpansion o ldquobeautyrdquo is not its negationrsquo Te last essay by imothy Morton lsquoBeauty Is Deathrsquo transposes the volumersquos

previous textual considerations on to a more abstract and theoretical plane Mor-tonrsquos philosophical meditation on beauty takes its bearings rom the Kantian

position that beauty is lsquononconceptual rsquo that is lsquowhen I try to isolate what is beauti-ul either in the object or in my experience o it I cannot grasp itrsquo lsquovirtual rsquo thatis it gives one the sense o being lsquomagically capable o grasping the ungraspable





thing-in-itsel rsquo and lsquouniversalizablersquo though not coercively lsquouniversalrsquo (see chapter10 below) It is also an lsquoattunementrsquo Yet Kant or Morton hides the dependenceo beauty on the existence o an lsquoobject that does not depend on my transcendentalsubjective ability to turn on the lights and see it or think itrsquo lsquoTe object compelsmersquo has lsquoshamanicrsquo (see chapter 10 below) properties Chiming with suggestionsand hints in previous essays Mortonrsquos essay notes that beauty reutes lsquosolipsismrsquo

yet gives any lsquometaphysics o presencersquo the slip too In subsequent pages Mortonsuggests a violence inseparable rom aesthetic knowing and ontological compul-sion identiying beauty with death supporting his view through analyses o lsquoYouMade Me Realisersquo by the band My Bloody Valentine and lsquoI Am Sitting in a Roomrsquoby Alvin Lucier Te essay argues that beauty has a vital connection with lsquodisgustand panicrsquo and yokes together heteregeneous things Te music o My Bloody

Valentine or example acts as though lsquothe assault o a conquering army emergedas the delicate ragrance o a daffodilrsquo it proves that the sublime supplies lsquotheactive ingredient o beautyrsquo (see chapter 10 below)

Mortonrsquos essay proves a 1047297tting conclusion to a volume ascinated by beautyrsquosorce and complexity Te idea is multiorm resists de1047297nition but has staying

power It has been a persistent presence and energy in literature o the past twocenturies It continues to be at the centre o imaginative experience Beauty asthese essays show is the generator o pleasure mistrust anxiety delight thesense o strangeness the need to interpret and to re-interpret





entails the belie that lsquowe have a universal voicersquo5 He also argues that the aware-ness o beauty arises rom a process o non-conceptual ree play as Donald WCraword explains or Kant lsquothe determining ground o the judgement [thatsomething is beautiul] is ldquothe eeling (or internal sense) o that harmony in the

play o the mental powers so ar as it can be elt in sensationrdquorsquo6 In additionKant stresses that aesthetic judgement requires us to respond to the lsquomere ormo purposivenessrsquo7 Craword glosses the matter thus lsquoKantrsquos undamental claimis that we can 1047297nd an object to be purposive in its form even though we do con-ceptualize a de1047297nite purposersquo Tere is a correspondence between lsquothe harmonyin [the objectrsquos] ormrsquo and lsquothe harmony in our cognitive powers (imaginationand understanding) in our re1047298ection on the objectrsquo8

Kant also re1047298ects on the relationship between the beautiul and the sublimein his Critique of Judgment an issue o great signi1047297cance or this volume A num-ber o the chapters raise the question o whether the beautiul might be seen asinclusive o the sublime or at least in a relationship with it that is 1047297ner than thato contrast to borrow a phrase rom Wordsworth quoted by Seamus Perry in hisessay (see end o chapter 4 below) Kant argues as ollows

Te beautiul in nature concerns the orm o the object which consists in [theobjectrsquos] being bounded but the sublime can also be ound in a ormless objectinsoar as we present unboundedness either [as] in the object or because the object

prompts us to present it hellip 9

On Kantrsquos account then the sublime involves lsquoseriousnessrsquo rather than lsquoplayrsquolsquonegative pleasurersquo rather than lsquopleasurersquo it is lsquocontra-purposiversquo rather than lsquopre-determined or our power o judgmentrsquo10 Te distinctions already seem more tobe questions o degree than absolute and the texts considered in the volume re-quently contest the validity o Kantrsquos terms S Eliotrsquos Te Waste Land (1922)or example is a poem that suggests a Modernist con1047298ation o lsquopleasurersquo andlsquonegative pleasurersquo Still as Matthew Scott puts it lsquoperhaps it is not too muchto say that as the sublimersquos ortunes rose in modern literary criticism so thoseo beauty ell awayrsquo11 It is among the ambitions o this volume to suggest therequent moments and modes o intersection between categories that sinceEdmund Burkersquos 1757 work A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideasof the Sublime and Beautiful have been seen as competing and distinct imothy

Morton suggests the association o beauty with violence while Robert Doug-las-Fairhurst quotes Roger Scruton rom his On Beauty to the effect that lsquoOurability to tell the truth about our own condition in measured words and touch-ing melodies offers a kind o redemption rom itrsquo (see chapter 2 below) Otheressays see beauty as arising rom the clash between the desire or ormal perec-tion and recalcitrant realities and are shadowed by an urge to rame beauty andsublimity as complementary rather than opposed terms




Introduction 3




















Introduction 5

























Introduction 7


























Introduction 9



























Introduction 11





















Introduction 13

























Introduction 3




















Introduction 5

























Introduction 7


























Introduction 9



























Introduction 11





















Introduction 13



































Introduction 5

























Introduction 7


























Introduction 9



























Introduction 11





















Introduction 13





































Introduction 7


























Introduction 9



























Introduction 11





















Introduction 13





































Introduction 9



























Introduction 11





















Introduction 13






































Introduction 11





















Introduction 13




































Introduction 13























introduction to the persistence of beauty

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