Often there is magic in the air, in the colours of the sea and sky.
People may come close to this greatness or beauty, especially when it is as quiet as it is right now: a fine evening breeze and the sunset.
We agreed to meet with a couple we know in Duino, a small town on the Gulf of Trieste that has an old castle perched on a mighty rock. Many people remember this place because of R.M. Rilke’s famous work known as the ‘Duino Elegies’. It was the end of September, and the two of them had come from Venice after visiting the Biennale, one of the most famous art exhibitions in the world. A conversation ensued about the world of art, culture, and the mystery interwoven around beauty.
E: How pleasant it is here in late summer, no more crowds of tourists like in Venice …
M: We were tourists too, in this strangely beautiful city. Can you still remember Carnival, a few years ago? You couldn’t make your way through the crowds of buses and tourists coming from all directions.
E: I don’t know why, but Venice attracts me magically somehow. At least once every two or three years I come and enjoy the atmosphere there, a city actually in the middle of the water.
M: I’m not interested in cities in general, but Venice is different, somehow strange and familiar in a mysterious way. It is certainly no coincidence that many of the great artists of the past centuries spent time in Venice or settled there.
K: When I was 19, 20, and 21, I was there at least once a year, but not at the peak of summer. I remember there was a portrait by a famous painter, maybe it was Tintoretto, called Il Filosofo, the Philosopher. I sat down on the floor and stared at it; it somehow penetrated me, as if the painting was calling to me. At the time, I was intensely searching for the whence and wherefore of my life. This totally normal, bourgeois life, this society focused on materialism, was passing me by completely. I can’t really see the famous paintings by these Old Masters as beautiful but as sometimes impressive.
There was a pause. It was early evening. The sun was low over the Adriatic Sea, reflecting in countless small, delicate waves. The sky was about to turn pink-red-violet, and I was getting tingles, something mysterious, about what ‘beautiful’ could actually mean.
- My favourite island used to be San Michele, the cemetery island … simply beautiful. In that silence, you can hear the sound of waves coming from vaporettos and other boats, so few people. Did Goethe say this sentence, or was it someone else, but it is really true: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s really something internal – beauty. Often something seems beautiful to me that is not an everyday thing, that it is strange, that we are not used to … yes, strange …
M (an architect): There’s something about the unfamiliar. When the familiar is broken up, our formal patterns are mixed up. I believe that the art of life is simply to experience beauty in everyday life, to perceive it in the little things like fresh bread, a beautiful loaf of bread that comes out of the oven, well baked…the smell of it, the taste of it… so good, just by looking at it. The whole thing has to fit. For me, beauty is something that is simple, coherent in the context of the whole, perhaps something that is not easy to explain.
E: We talk so much about living holistically. But when I look at these beautiful old houses, yes, they are beautiful; it has something to do with harmony, with harmonious relationships, and I think to myself … often there is magic in the air, in the colours of the sea and sky. Sometimes people don’t come close to this greatness or beauty, especially when it’s as quiet as it is right now, a fine evening breeze, the sunset …
Once again, we were enveloped in an almost unearthly silence that was not disturbed by surrounding voices or by an odd car; not even the loud Moped, a Vespa, or anything else. It really is like this: silence is a force that can swallow all noise when it is within us, the silence within …
K: But beauty is something very relative. We stare at things of the past, these magnificent buildings, for example, not just in Venice, but everywhere in European cities. – The moment I see these castles, cathedrals or palazzi, I can’t help but think of the misery of the workers and their families, the poverty, the meagre living conditions, the human lives that it all cost.
M: Also, the countless Bosnian oak trunks stuck in the mud of the Venice lagoon: Who felled the trees, who loaded them onto ships, who took them across the sea? Doesn’t everything beautiful have a shadow? Can there be anything in this world that is beautiful and only beautiful?
E: Well, listen to me. We see forms, results, and we say: beautiful, marvellous, incredible or something similar, but it all becomes relative very fast. I believe that true beauty only exists in people’s souls. Aren’t there people who have beautiful souls? And when I am at peace with myself, when there is joy in me, when I am flooded with goodwill and the feeling of being connected with people, then everything is beautiful, without question.
What is it like when you are in love? Then suddenly everything is beautiful, whether it’s raining or snowing, cold or hot. Then every job is easy; there’s joy in everything – so now we have it: the secret of beauty is joy.
K: I feel that beauty has to do with purity and harmony. Can there be beauty without wisdom or without order? Actually – no idea.
E: (laughs) No idea – but beauty is the supreme discipline. And I tell you, it’s a kind of feeling, a sensation that has something to do with unity, oneness with people, animals, nature. My heart just opens up when we sit there. We talk about essential things, really essential, and this fine atmosphere, the smell of pine trees and the sea.
M: At the Biennale, we read about Ibn Arabi, an Arab mystic and thinker from Morocco, and about his paintings.. A few sentences really appealed to me–
E: They are printed in the exhibition catalogue. There are also a few lines about his life: Ibn Arabi – an Islamic poet and philosopher who is honoured and known throughout the Arab world and who had and still has a great influence on the theology and culture of the Islamic world.
K: … well, to those who are interested..
E: Then we are dealing with wisdom. So, the second secret of beauty is wisdom. But joy is, of course, also a direct part of it. I’ll have to make a note of that. I’ll put it in my script for school (she’s an elementary school art teacher). Sartre says somewhere that paradise on earth can only exist in the human soul. I think the same can be said about beauty. Oh yes, there’s something else I wanted to say all along: I like beautiful people, no matter what they look like.
Ibn Arabi:
Beauty is the light of the heart.
All beauty is a mirror of the divine.
The world is a mirror of God’s beauty.
Man is the most beautiful creature,
because only he has the ability
to recognise the beauty in everything.
Therefore, go clean your windows. Instead of longing for another world, behold the marvellous beauties in this one. If you do not discover exuberant beauties everywhere here, you will certainly not find them anywhere else.
(R.W. Trine, In Tune with the Infinite, Ch. 5)
