From Parabola:
Exploring Beauty
Photograph: Tango7174, "Notre-Dame de Reims (South transept)," Champagne-Ardenne, France.
We have been exploring and celebrating beauty in many ways over the last few months, through myth, traditions, and the arts. But the question still remains: What is beauty? Is there a true, unchanging, eternal beauty? What purpose does it serve? It is certainly wonderful and strange, complicated and ambiguous. But isn't the best way to discover beauty in our lives through the expression of it, and by sharing it with others?
Our Beauty issue is still available on newsstands until the end of the month or you can always order it online or subscribe here.
--Luke Storms
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ARCS
Photograph: Man Ray "Masks," 1946.
"Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly."
—Plotinus (ca. AD 204/5–270)
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Painting: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, "The Birth of Venus," 1879
"Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade, But do not be disheartened, The source they come from is eternal, growing, Branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?
The source is within you
And this whole world is springing up from it."
— Jelaluddin Rumi
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Painting: Prince Eugen, Swedish, 1865-1947 "The Cloud," 1896. Oil on canvas, 119 x 109 cm.
The Poet with His Face in His Hands
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.
So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
–Mary Oliver
Thank you to Slow Muse
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Photograph: Public domain photograph of Emily Dickinson
I Died for Beauty
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
Emily Dickinson, from Collected Poems
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Exploring Beauty
Photograph: Tango7174, "Notre-Dame de Reims (South transept)," Champagne-Ardenne, France.
We have been exploring and celebrating beauty in many ways over the last few months, through myth, traditions, and the arts. But the question still remains: What is beauty? Is there a true, unchanging, eternal beauty? What purpose does it serve? It is certainly wonderful and strange, complicated and ambiguous. But isn't the best way to discover beauty in our lives through the expression of it, and by sharing it with others?
Our Beauty issue is still available on newsstands until the end of the month or you can always order it online or subscribe here.
--Luke Storms
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARCS
Photograph: Man Ray "Masks," 1946.
"Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly."
—Plotinus (ca. AD 204/5–270)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Painting: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, "The Birth of Venus," 1879
"Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade, But do not be disheartened, The source they come from is eternal, growing, Branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?
The source is within you
And this whole world is springing up from it."
— Jelaluddin Rumi
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Painting: Prince Eugen, Swedish, 1865-1947 "The Cloud," 1896. Oil on canvas, 119 x 109 cm.
The Poet with His Face in His Hands
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.
So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
–Mary Oliver
Thank you to Slow Muse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photograph: Public domain photograph of Emily Dickinson
I Died for Beauty
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
Emily Dickinson, from Collected Poems
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