pessoa and boyd and theory and beauty

from Pessoa's The Keeper of Sheep

XXVI

Is there really beauty in a flower?
Is there really beauty in a fruit?
No, they've got color and form,
And existence – nothing else.
Beauty is the name for something that doesn't exist,
A name I give things for the pleasure they give me.
It means nothing.
Then why do I say of things, they’re beautiful?

Well, Fernando, probably because that mere pleasure they give you in really this huge phenomenon fraught with meaning and contention! Beauty is something that has been maligned in the last century, partially because it proved to be so slippery to define as the just be a grander form of opinion. But. It’s still something we talk about and feel. And how can any say it doesn't exist or that it’s just constructed when even the simplest tribesman can tell you it exists? Not that it can’t and hasn't been manipulated – I’m not so boneheaded that I think beauty is always just obvious.

In this autumn's issue of The American Scholar, there’s an article by Brian Boyd about science, theory and beauty, and how they can inform each other. There are universals, which I know kills people to hear, and it doesn't make me some conservative to think so. There are aesthetic, cultural and biological universals and they are tied together. Just because we don’t know how, doesn't mean we should try and claim that there aren't. Boyd’s essay really deals with the contention that knowledge is never certain. Well, surprise, scientists have been saying that for centuries (good ones anyway) and that is why every theory is always up for review. And if every fact is uncertain, that has to extend to the fact that every fact is uncertain. What Boyd advocates is bringing things back to ground level and determining what is useful, what is helpful, and what is so wrong with the contention that there is such a thing as beauty.

Still, I remember feeling uncomfortable the first time somebody called one of my poems beautiful. I have been puzzling over my reaction for years, but I think it had something to do with the fact that I had internalized the suspicion of beauty that is out there. Oh, and maybe modesty.