Hannah Jackson: Class Reading Blog Posts

8/26/19- Experiences of Beauty

I was walking across campus from the Ferguson parking deck when the skies opened up above me and started dumping sheets of rain on my head. I could only make it as far as the chapel steps before the lightning and wind were too much to trudge through without ruining everything in my backpack. I stood in front of the chapel, somewhat shielded from the storm, and looked out at the trees bending and leaves flying in every direction. Suddenly, the clouds parted enough to let sunlight stream through without ending the rain and the grey was replaced with a warm golden light. Despite being soaked to the bone and shivering, I couldn’t help but laugh at the almost absurd beauty of the situation. The rain saturated every color into a deeper version of itself. Everyone had long since run inside and campus was left empty and quiet for a few minutes as if it was catching its breath. The flowers literally glimmered and danced under the raindrops and slowly people began to emerge from surrounding buildings and fill up the sidewalks to take pictures and point out rainbows. I couldn’t bring myself to look away from any part of it; there was an intense feeling that to look away would be a loss of some kind. I looked out at the pavement as if I had been dropped there from some distant time with no knowledge of what I was seeing. The only thing that kept me from running out into the grass was the laptop in my backpack weighing heavier on my shoulders by the minute. The beautiful part of the experience seemed to be the way the entire scene pulled me out and into it almost in spite of myself. As if I had to make an active effort not to disappear into everything happening around me.

9/16/19- Plato and Dramatic Arts

The discussion in "Sacred and Profane Beauty" about the dramatic arts not being an imitation of the holy but rather an expression of it was particularly interesting to contrast with Plato’s disdain for art as merely a shadow of a shadow. The idea that “the holy does not stand in a relationship with humans who speak for themselves, but only with representatives” sums up a lot of what feels missing in Plato’s assessment (87.) Plato sees art as a layer of separation from the ultimate form, substituted here for Van der Leeuw’s use of the holy, but the experience of art seems to be one of entering a space where the holy can actually reach. Plato's main complaint with art is that it leads us away from truth and into the realm of illusion but it almost seems to suggest that art is valued for its representational abilities more than anything else. In dance and dramatic arts, performers are not attempting to create a perfect immersion into reality but rather to convey something in a way that can be received by the audience. The artistic act is not a separation but rather an orienting force that angles the audience towards the holy. It therefore takes on the character not of representation but of ritual.

9/24/19- C. S. Lewis and Beauty

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

            -C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

 This quote from our first paper assignment stuck out to me in the context of Lewis’ religious conversion. Considering how he was pulled into religion almost against his will and all his attempts to disprove God, the way he speaks about beauty here is interesting. It speaks to a similar theme as Heidegger’s writings on art and aesthetics where beauty is not merely a characteristic of the work or an emotion but an active force that brings truth to Being. Beauty to Lewis here is not something to be passively observed or discussed but something that demands an interaction in a generative way. We are not just confronted with beauty we are compelled to do something about it. This irresistible call of the beautiful also plays a role in Jane Ellen Harrison’s view of ritual developing in order to connect our lives to “that peculiar contemplation of or emotion towards life which we call art” (206.) Art is not an activity undertaken for any aesthetic sense but rather for an emotional and spiritual one. In searching for a way to achieve the unity with the beautiful which he felt compelled towards, it is perhaps no surprise that Lewis felt called to the ritual of religion.

10/24/19- The Camino

It was interesting to hear about the Camino as someone who has only ever experienced it vicariously through a friend. And that vicarious experience was mostly pictures of cows and complaints about leg pain. What struck me most about both his personal framing of the experience and the presentation was the way in which everyone seemed to act as if they had ended up on the Camino through some sheer coincidence. That no matter how much planning and purpose was involved with getting there, being on the trail didn’t seem to match up to anything that could be accurately conveyed through language. The graffiti added to this sort of enclosed nature of the pilgrimage as so much of it seemed to mean something specific only to the person who left it there but they still felt the need to leave a mark. Not even entirely to communicate something but almost to prove that they had really been there.

11/21/19- The Caves

One of the things that stuck with me the most from the documentary about the cave art was how you could tell the lines were done in single, sweeping strokes. It added humanity to the images and created the picture of someone trailing their hand along the cave wall with a singular purpose and focus. It was especially interesting compared with the way a lot of art is created nowadays. In digital art especially there isn’t a sense that the resources being used are finite and permanent. Layers can be switched on and off and rough sketches can be undone. Even in traditional mediums, there is never the sense that pencils or paper will run out. At worst, a mistake only ends in a trip to the nearest Michael’s. Even old masters worked in oils that could be constantly reactivated and moved around on the canvas. The permanence of the cave paintings and the inescapable finitude of available wall space makes things like the handprints even more fascinating. I have to wonder if they practiced drawing the more complex forms in the dirt or with charcoal to wipe off before they drew the complete image or if it really was just one sweeping stroke from the gods.