My memory of this is more than a bit vague, but at some point in my education at BYU more than 60 years ago I became interested in the subject of “beauty.” I think there was some discussion–whether in a formal classroom setting or an informal discussion with friends, I do not know– some discussion of the aphorism “Truth is beauty and beauty is truth,” or maybe the other way around. Nonetheless, from that time forward the subject of beauty interested me and I tried to cultivate my taste to appreciate beauty in many forms. I wanted to understand the nature and importance of beauty beyond my own pleasure and satisfaction. I even bought a volume from the Oxford series of Short Introductions. It is Roger Scruton’s, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. As helpful as it was, it did not satisfy my desire to understand more deeply the importance of beauty.
Last night, after lo these many years, I encountered what I was looking for. It came out of two brief sentences in a talk President Gordon B. Hinckley, then First Counselor to Ezra Taft Benson, said in a talk to the women of the Church in October 1989. His theme was “Rise to the Stature of the Divine Within You,”(1) and he offered the women of the Church three suggestions to help them do so. First, he told them to get all the education they could and he spoke glowingly about education for several paragraphs. In the course of those remarks he said the first thing that caught my attention about beauty:
In the process of educating your minds, stir within yourselves a greater sensitivity to the beautiful, the artistic.... [Emphasis mine.]
As I sat back and contemplated that I realized that is behind a large part of my own effort of continuing self-education. A description of those efforts will require at least one, if not more, chapters in my autobiography if I ever get around to it. A brief example must suffice here.
When we came to Logan, Utah in 1979 where I was to teach Institute for the Church at the Institute adjacent to USU, several threads wove together at about the same time. Beyond reading Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in middle school and the 1968 Zeffirelli movie “Romeo and Juliet,” I knew nothing about William Shakespeare or his plays, except I knew of his reputation as perhaps the greatest author in the English language. I was conscious of my ignorance of Shakespeare. I had a huge “ignorance gap” and because of his reputation I felt an impelling need to fill that gap. One of my colleagues at the Institute was Canadian born and educated–Gary Bennett. I discovered in him a fellow book lover. He also loved and read Shakespeare. At the time PBS was running a series of the Bard’s plays and his example and enthusiasm set me to watching them. I also signed up for a Shakespeare class at USU which turned out to be one of the great intellectual experiences of my life. At the same time the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City was beginning to blossom and we started to take advantage of that.
I found Shakespeare difficult. Not only was much of his language archaic and almost incomprehensible, but it was also poetry, and as a genre it too proved to be very difficult for me. At USU we started with Hamlet and I actually read it eight times before I felt like I had a handle on what was going on, facilitated by a phenomenal teacher and class discussions. I created my own glossary because so many words were not in my vocabulary. To my dismay sometime later I discovered there was a glossary in the back of my textbook! Ah, such is the life of the ignorant.
I learned some very valuable things reading Hamlet eight times. I discovered that Shakespeare could be understood, if not conquered (he was a genius you know), with persistent effort and some good old “hard study time.” My confidence grew; nay, it soared to the point I decided to read and study all thirty-eight of Sir William’s plays. Moreover, the effort was worth it! Not only was Shakespeare enriching my mind and my life, he was also useful to me. He frequently dealt with subjects and issues that were very pertinent to me as a teacher of religion. I found myself telling a story, quoting some lines, or using an example from one of the plays in my classes. It was enriching and fresh–and often very powerful.
Second, and this is to the point of this essay: I found many parts of the poetry in Hamlet astonishingly beautiful and powerful language. Shakespeare’s skill amazed me. I fell in love with him. If I was conscious of beautiful language before that, it was only a faint consciousness, but this experience awakened a love for beautiful words that never died. I have a file called “Picturesque Speech” which had its origins in Professor Wilson’s Shakespeare class at USU. Understand. It is not just the beauty of the linkage of certain words that impresses. Rather, the images, associations, meanings, and feelings those words powerfully invoked in the brain and heart at times nearly overwhelmed me. The beauty of the words themselves combined with their power was truly impressive, frequently astonishing. This is a phenomenon that does not end with the initial flood of ideas, sensations, and meaning. The richness and deepness of Shakespeare’s language and thought continues giving–provoking new thought, questions, insight, pleasure.
So, unintentionally I’ve been following President Hinckley’s advice, wonderful advice for all, to “stir within yourselves a greater sensitivity to the beautiful.”
The second thing President Hinckley said in this talk came near the end. It gave me the reason for “stirring” within myself that “greater sensitivity to the beautiful”. He said:
In the pioneering days of this church when men grubbed the sagebrush and broke the sod so that crops might be planted to sustain life, many a wife and mother planted a few flowers and a few fruit trees to add beauty and taste to the drabness of pioneer life. There are so many things that you can do. Beauty is a thing divine. The cultivation of it becomes an expression of the divine nature within you. [All forms of emphasis mine.](2)
Ah! I love the positive prophetic perspective. It is simple, almost self-evident, and surely common sense to a Latter-day Saint. The trouble is, my mind is not the kind that readily sees the self-evident or the common sense, until someone with that skill points it out to me. Then I see it! And last night I saw and felt it with unusual impact. Of course, beauty is a divine thing. Surely God loves beauty and in his omniscience understands its nature, power, and purpose to the nth degree. Adam declared that the newly created world “is glorious and beautiful.” Artists, philosophers and others are fond of saying that the human form is the most beautiful of God’s creations. It seems now that President Hinckley said it, that it is common sense that God creates things of beauty, because it is his nature. It follows, therefore, when we stir up a greater sensitivity of the beautiful within and when we actually cultivate or create beauty, we are giving expression to the same divine nature within ourselves. How simple! How obvious! How true! How beautiful!
Lets think together again, soon.
Notes:
1. Gordon B. Hinckley, “Rise to the Stature of the Divine within You,” Ensign (November 1989):94-98. The indented quotations which follow are found on pages 97 and 98 respectively.
2. As a note of contrast, I’m presently reading a small book of poetry. In two of them Ralph Waldo Emerson says two seemingly contradictory things. In the first, titled “Each and All,” he discusses the fading beauty of a wife: “The gay enchantment was undone— / A gentile wife, but fairy none. Then I said, ‘I covet truth; / Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.’” He seems to be saying in this case beauty is fleeting, a cheat, but “truth” is enduring. However, in the short poem “The Rhodora” he extolls the beauty of the flower and exults: “Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why / This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, / Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.” See, Roy J. Cook, comp., One Hundred and One Best Loved Poems, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958, 5-6.
