by Mark Burrows<\/p>\n
Beauty? It seems a word that many among us don\u2019t know quite what to do with. We know what it is until someone asks us to explain it, and then things get difficult. And beautiful words<\/em>? Now, this magnifies the challenge. The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas explained beauty quite simply in this way: It is that which, when seen, pleases us (id quod visum placet<\/em>). But what pleases us, and how? He went on to speak of three aspects necessary for this: unity, proportion, and claritas<\/em>, the latter best rendered as \u201cradiance.\u201d And here we have a marvelously succinct approach to the question: When words have a certain radiance, they please us. Sometimes, this has to do with how they sound\u2014with their musicality, as it were. We delight in words that rhyme, particularly when the rhyming startles us. We find ourselves smiling when reading or hearing a particular metaphor that awakens a kind of deep knowing in us. We relish words that seem to dance on our tongues.<\/p>\n Radiance is the theme of many poems found in Adam Zagajewski\u2019s most recent collection, Unseen Hand<\/em> (2011). <\/em>Consider this one, a long poem entitled \u201cImprovisation.\u201d In it he speaks of \u201crapture,\u201d a word too easily abandoned to religious fanatics with their unimaginative reading of exquisitely poetic texts like The Book of Revelation<\/em>, and describes how it \u201clives only in the imagination and quickly vanishes,\u201d going on to describe improvisation as the heart of our lives in the ways it gives us room to create amid the predictable and often dull expectations of our lives. How do we do this? Here\u2019s Zagajewski\u2019s suggestion in lines that are breathtakingly beautiful\u2014both in their \u201csense\u201d and in the sound through which his translator has rendered his Polish into English. Upon suggesting how life finds its spark and sparkle through the needed work of improvisation, he closes the poem with these lines:<\/p>\n Grayness and monotony remain; mourning And, even if we can\u2019t remember this scene because, obviously, we were not there, we can imagine it, and smile in our re-membering. Yes, the poet is right: there are \u201chidden things\u201d before us that touch us with joy, even amid our sorrow, and lighten our heavy load with a laugh or a sigh or a knowing glance. When does this happen? \u201cAlways, daily.\u201d And here, the trick is not knowing what to look at, but knowing how to see. <\/em>Like when we notice the sun creasing the farthest edge of the horizon above the morning sea. Or hear the trill of birdsong just before the first light breaks the hold of the long silent dark. Joy happens in the hidden things. Radiance cannot be stopped. Remember?<\/p>\n Mark S. Burrows<\/strong>\u00a0Professor of Religion and Literature, the University of Applied Sciences, Bochum (Germany). Scholar, poet, and translator, most recently, of two volumes of German poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, <\/em>Prayers of a Young Poet (2015, revised edition) and SAID\u2019s <\/em>99 psalms (2013), both by Paraclete Press, and series editor of Paraclete Poetry and Mt. Tabor Books in the Arts.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Mark Burrows Beauty? It seems a word that many among us don\u2019t know quite what to do with. We know what it is until someone asks us to explain it, and then things get difficult. And beautiful words? Now, … Continue reading
\n<\/em>that the finest elegy can\u2019t heal.
\n<\/em>Perhaps, though, there are hidden things before us
\n<\/em>and in them sorrow blends with enthusiasm,
\n<\/em>always, daily, like the birth of dawn
\n<\/em>on the seashore, or no, hold on,
\n<\/em>like the happy laughter of the two little altar boys
\n<\/em>in white surplices, on the corner of Jan and Mark,
\n<\/em>remember?<\/em><\/p>\n