Beauty and Youth

Beauty is young - always!

One of my favourite writers, Franz Kafka, said that the young people are happy because they have the ability to see beauty. “Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old,” he added.

I was always an admirer of beauty. The only problem was that some self-appointed custodians of morality, during my youth, thought that my concept of beauty was too gynocentric and hence sinful. Like most members of their species, these custodians were very religious people. Moreover, in my case, they happened to be all Christians.

Woman is a perversion, according to Christian theology. She was the cause of mankind’s eviction from the biblical Paradise. Even centuries could not wash away her guilt and so Saint Paul would advise Timothy (2:12) never to let a woman teach or have authority over a man. “She must be silent.” Nothing less.

My admiration of feminine beauty was associated with my own perversions by the moralists in my life. I don’t deny that I had a fair share of perversions though I always thought that my aesthetics was a natural principle. If a young man is not drawn to the charms of a beautiful young woman, he should be checked for perversion.

Well, I outgrew that aesthetics as time passed. That’s also a natural principle, I think. When it comes to nature, however, you can never be too sure. The fearfully symmetrical tiger of William Blake brutally assaulting a graceful gazelle whose twin fawns find their biblical analogy in the breasts of the wise Solomon’s beloved is also obeying a natural principle. I was no tiger anyway and kept my aesthetics to myself. I didn’t even dare to write poems like Solomon about female organs more innocuous than breasts.

I was more fond of smiles, in fact. Today, as a man in the autumn of his life, having seen plenty of life’s seductions and addictions, I still remain a lover of smiles. If you have seen smiles that come genuinely from the heart, you’ll understand my aesthetics easily.

Of course, I admire all other forms of beauty too. I love flowers, for example, though they become metaphors for evanescence in the Bible. Prophet Isiah, for instance, compared the littleness of his people’s faith to “the flowers of the field.” I love rivers and mountains, literature and philosophy, the Taj Mahal in Agra and the St Paul’s Cathedral in London. I love all things beautiful.

Beauty has a heavenly grace. It refreshes our souls as nothing else can if only we learn to let it do its job. I would dare to paraphrase a verse from the Rig-Veda: “Let beauty come to us from every side.”  (1-89-i)

You will remain forever young if you let that happen to you!