Hart, Ruskin, and Ignatius

- John Ruskin and D. G. Rossetti

My rambling thoughts of the day ...

A fairly recent convert to christianity, I'm constantly playing catch-up with the christian take on philosophy, art, poetry ... and theology ... it's like a coconut :-) ... I know there's something good and nourishing inside, but I don't have the intellectual tools to get through the shell. It's frustrating - I feel both entranced and as dumb as dirt.

Ever since I read some of the online articles written by David B. Hart on Beauty, my mind's been spinning. I find it attreactive but I don't really understand it, and I worry ... as the article in a past post notes, can Beauty divorced from Truth and Goodness be trusted?

Anyway, I followed a strange path back to the subject of aesthetics today ... from a post at Catholic Sensibility on Geoffrey Rowell, the Anglican bishop of Gibraltar ... to some writings by the Archbishop on the Oxford Movement ... from there to The Christian Year by by John Keble ... then on to some sort of Victorian "emotionalist" movement (need to read more about this!) ... then to the Pre-raphaelite artist John Ruskin and his idea of Beauty. Below is a snip from an article - Ruskin's theory of Typical Beauty ....

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A manuscript originally intended for the second volume of Modern Painters reveals that this conception of the beautiful came to Ruskin as he gazed wonderingly upon a storm in the Alps. One dark, still July evening he lay beside the fountain of Brevent in the valley of Chamonix.

"Suddenly, there came in the direction of Dome du Goûter a crash -- of prolonged thunder; and when I looked up, I saw the cloud cloven, as it were by the avalanche itself, whose white stream came bounding down the eastern slope of the mountain, like slow lightning. The vapour parted before its fall, pierced by the whirlwind of its motion; the gap widened, the dark shade melted away on either side; and, like a risen spirit casting off its garment of corruption, and flushed with eternity of life, the Aiguilles of the south broke through the black foam of the storm clouds. One by one, pyramid above pyramid, the mighty range of its companions shot off their shrouds, and took to themselves their glory — all fire — no shade — no dimness. Spire of ice — dome of snow — wedge of rock — all fire in the light of the sunset, sank into the hollows of the crags — and pierced through the prisms of the glaciers, and dwelt within them — as it does in clouds. The ponderous storm writhed and moaned beneath them, the forests wailed and waved in the evening wind, the steep river flashed and leaped along the valley; but the mighty pyramids stood calmly — in the very heart of the high heaven — a celestial city with walls of amethyst and gates of gold — filled with the light and clothed with the Peace of God. And then I learned — what till then I had not known — the real meaning of the word Beautiful. With all that I had ever seen before — there had come mingled the associations of humanity — the exertion of human power — the action of human mind. The image of self had not been effaced in that of God. . . . It was then that I understood that all which is the type of God's attributes . . . can turn the human soul from gazing upon itself . . . and fix the spirit . . . on the types of that which is to be its food for eternity; — this and this only is in the pure and right sense of the word beautiful." (4.364-365)

... One may say of Ruskin's aesthetic theories what he said of the arts — that they are in some sort an expression of deeply felt emotion, the recasting of intensely felt experience ...

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The author of the above article goes on to shred Ruskin's theory of Beauty as inconsistant :-) but still it moved me ... I see a bit of David B. Hart in there, and also, for some reason, something of Ignatius of Loyola and his ideas of experience and consolation.

Must read, and write, more about this, but later - my head hurts :-)