Thus far, in our series on the various
perspectives to beauty drawn from a range of literatures from across the world, it could be gleaned with
a high level of certitude that, the concept of beauty has always been highly
subjective in its appeal, all along!
In this regard, I'd so love to give out a quote from
Terence Hawkes that syncs to a tee with this premise of the 'subjective slant to
one’s perception' – be it on beauty, on truth, on reality, etc!
Well, it’s a primer of fame and high-renown, that I’ve been so happily recommending over the years, to all my near and dear ones
in academia! It’s titled Structuralism
and Semiotics.
I quote from TH –
Every perceiver's method of perceiving
can be shown to contain an inherent bias which affects what is perceived to a
significant degree.
A wholly objective perception of
individual entities is therefore not possible: any observer is bound to create
something of what he observes.
Accordingly, the relationship between
observer and observed achieves a kind of primacy. It becomes the only thing
that can be observed ...
In consequence, the true nature of things
may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in the relationships which we
construct, and then perceive, between them.
This new concept, that the world is made
up of relationships rather than things, constitutes the first principle of that
way of thinking which can properly be called 'structuralist'.
- Terence Hawkes in Structuralism and
Semiotics
Now, with this little Hawkes-ean premise
to liven up our musings skyhigh, let’s get back, to continue - delightfully - from our
previously pit-stopped reading jaunt of sorts!
Here we go!
[And yesss! Textual quotes have been italicized
as usual, as always!]
O Pioneers!
by Willa Cather, has quite a phenomenal take on ‘beauty’ altogether! Alexandra
Bergson, the lead character of this ‘Cather masterpiece,’ comes to the
wind-swept prairies of Nebraska, as a girl and makes it a very fertile and
prosperous farm over the years! She is so transfixed and in awe with the beauty
of the land, and hence spontaneously establishes a kind of transcendental connect with
the land!
And I quote from the book -
For
the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic
ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and
glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her.
Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it,
must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before.
Alexandra feels there’s so much beauty to
the land, that her love for the land may ultimately triumph, even at the expense of her love!
To Carl Linstrum, Alexandra’s love
interest, the land had its own ‘savage kind of beauty’ to itself!
A
stranger, approaching it, could not help noticing the beauty and fruitfulness of
the outlying fields. There was something individual about the great farm, a most
unusual trimness and care for detail. On either side of the road, for a mile before
you reached the foot of the hill, stood tall osage orange hedges, their glossy
green marking off the yellow fields.
Written by Mourning Dove - also known as Christine Quintasket - Cogewea also has claim and fame to one of the earliest novels written by an indigenous woman.
The landscape, for Cogewea, was extremely
sacred, as it provided a historical record of all her native ancestors!
Then the author Mourning Dove proceeds to
give a description of the beauty of the landscape and Cogewea’s love for the
land and its Edenic beauty!
The
girl arose and stood as in a trance. Slowly, with outstretched arms she
whispered. ‘My beautiful Eden! I love you! My valley and mountains! It is too
bad that you be redeemed from the wild, once the home of my vanishing race and
where the buffalo roamed at will. Where hunting was a joy to the tribesmen, who
communed with the Great Spirit. I would that I had lived in those days,—that
the blood of the white man had not condemned me an outcast among my own
people.’
A similar descriptor to the land and its pristine beauty is doled out by Thoreau in his wonderful essay titled, ‘Walking’!
This essay is a magnificent celebration
of walking in the bosom of Nature! To Thoreau, a person who lives closest to
Nature is the most alive!
The
most alive is the wildest!
Then he proceeds to put forth his most
beautiful lines on the beauty and the charm of mother Nature, thus –
Here
is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with
such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we
are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is
exclusively an interaction of man on man, – a sort of breeding in and in, which
produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a
speedy limit!
Even as the beauty of the land and nature
are exemplified in the framework of an integrative, interconnected framework,
there are also works that portray the commodification of this pristine beauty contained
within the land!
A
Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid perfectly exemplifies this
commodification of the land and its beauty for the sake of the horde of tourists
who make a beeline to this land rich in its natural beauty.
Kincaid brings out the angst of the
native, on the sheer commodification of their land for its beauty’s sake, and
also the apathy of the corrupt and inefficient government which is hand in
glove with this corruption aka commodification with the sheer objective of
raking in the moolah, and filling up their coffers! The tourism industry in
Antigua, has an exploitative streak to its approach, which makes the native
subservient to the tourist!
Jamaica Kincaid begins the narration from
the perspective of a white tourist! To this visiting tourist then, the beauty
of the land in Antigua becomes a commodity in itself! Kincaid therefore is up
in arms against this exploitation of the beauty of her native land by such
tourists, and she attacks them, along with a more vehement attack on her own government as well, saying, any person - be it native or tourist - who makes of the native soil, its beauty and its people as commodities to be exploited, are ‘ugly human beings’ after all!
To
be contd…
image courtesy -
books - amazondotcom
quote - mindfulhappinessdotcom
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