Tobias Wolff has a lovely short essay in the new issue of The New Yorker, in which he discusses aesthetics as a doorway into the divine. Specifically, he recalls a time as an Oxford undergraduate that he and a drinking buddy went to a church to see a free screening of Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light." Wolff was moved by the film, but then the pastor showed a famous Pre-Raphaelite image of Christ as the Light of the World; it struck Wolff as unbearably mawkish (it would does me too), and sent him away. But that image, coming after the Bergman film, changed his friend's life utterly. Years later, Wolff would find himself opened to the possibility of faith through his reading of poetry. He writes:
We like to think of our beliefs, and disbeliefs, as founded on reason and close, thoughtful observation. Only in theory do we begin to suspect the power of aesthetics to shape our lives.
In my Dallas Morning News column today (which is about the end of cheap airfares, and how that's going to make foreign travel less possible for ordinary people), I touch on how the experience of art (in the form of architecture) completely changed my life:
Europe changed my life. One example, among many: On that first trip, as a teenager, I stood in the magnificent medieval cathedral in Chartres, utterly overcome by its beauty and complexity. What kind of religion builds such a temple to its God? I thought. I staggered out of that Gothic pile a different man, walking a new road.
Reading the Wolff piece, I tried to reflect on what exactly it was about the Chartres Cathedral that so profoundly changed me. Mind you, I was 17 then, and I had settled into that sort of sullen, brittle agnosticism that so many American teenagers cultivate. I thought I knew all there was to know about Christianity, and was confident in my rejection of it.
And then came Chartres. It helped that the tour group I was with was led around the cathedral by an elderly Englishman who had become kind of famous for his English-language tours of the cathedral. The beauty wasn't impenetrable: he helped me understand the order and meaning within it. But ultimately, it hit me with the force of revelation, that beauty. I had nothing in my experience of religion to compare it to. It made Christianity new to me again.
I would like you readers to read the Wolff account, and share your own experiences of beauty leading you in some way to a life-changing connection to the divine.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I second DJ White to some extent. I'm always unimpressed by cathedrals - they are so obviously about power. The mediaeval ones (eg. York Minster) are impressive, I guess, but I find all those baroque cathedrals, especially in Italy, to be actually ugly. I don't like aesthetic bombast.
I much prefer little village churches. To the extent that I have any religious beliefs, they belong somewhere in the realm of quietness - old churches that have settled into the landscape for 1,000 years, that sort of thing - the peace of God that passes all understanding. I like stone circles, as well, though.
I believe I've mentioned this before on this blog, but I don't tire of saying that the final movement of Mozart's symphony no. 41 struck me with such force when I first became familiar with it as a college sophomore that it made the agnosticism I'd slipped into quite untenable. Only within the last year or two did I learn that Woody Allen has said that this symphony proves the existence of God. Rejoice in the Author of beauty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcly8-RGhgw The sidebar from the guy who posted this is worth reading.
For me it was Notre Dame de Paris, the first European cathedral I ever saw, and still one of the two or three most beautiful buildings I know.
Was your Chartres tour guide Malcolm Miller? He was still giving tours there -- and good ones -- when I visited about five years ago.
Regarding Marie's comment above, and the comments about cathedrals in general, I believe that Frithjof Schuon wrote more or less that
"When you are in St. Peter's, you simply feels you are in Europe; but when you are in a Gothic cathedral, you feel you are in the center of the universe."
This idea of being very close to the center of things, or to use another metaphor, that you are near the beating heart, seems to be a common experience. I've had this experience at Pueblo Indian dances, where it's the combination of the arid, often high desert setting combined with the anonymously powerful masked dancers and the chthonic (ha! had to use that word) chanting and pounding of the feet; I've had it also at divine liturgy, particularly at the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts in the orthodox liturgy, with the candles, beeswax and smelling of honey, the icons, the vestments all combine in a wonderful blend.
I'd like to think (and suppose I sometimes do think) that aesthetic response these dynamic settings is a combination of like being known by like: iin f we put away our foolishness, and act in communion with fellow-believers, we are open to something that comes from above us, which touches us; we brush against it, however briefly.
By the way, there's numerous typos, when my computer did something weird and posted a comment I was in the process of editing. So apologies for the typos. For example, "feels" should be "feel"; and "aesthetic response these dynamic" should be "aesthetic response *in* these" and so on.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.