Beauty

In Michael's latest comment he writes about my preference for Peter's aesthetic religion over a spiritual religion: "I have no problem with Handke's aesthetic which is not some kind of abhorrent aestheticism a la Ernst Juenger or X because I am aware only too keenly of what PAIN he suffers from the aesthetically ugly, to the point of nausea at one time" (see the entire interesting comment at the previous post).


That seems an important point to make, one I had approached more subconsciously earlier when I wrote that I bet we couldn't find a single place in any of Peter's work where someone says "that is beautiful." I wondered if we could even find the word "schön" (beautiful) in a text of his.


That was, it turned out, an exaggerated claim. The word turns up twice, for instance, in "Versuch über den geglückten Tag," although both times it is in quotation marks.


Meinst du "geglückt" oder bloß "schön"?


. . . bei Sonnenaufgang zu sich kommt und nicht als Staunen wird über das Dasein: "Wie schön."


Peter is not an aesthete of the kind Michael (and I) find abhorrent. Rather he is a constant searcher for forms that help him make sense of the world and his responses to it.

I, on the other hand, often find myself saying "how beautiful!" As I did last night in the presence of this sunset and as I did again this morning when a couple of wild turkeys and their little ones wandered into the meadow below our house (the photo is fuzzy because I was moving fast and muttering "how beautiful." Click for a larger image).