Comments on: The Definition of Beauty: Mystery

By: Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Recent Movie Report, vol. 5

Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Recent Movie Report, vol. 5 — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:48:59 +0000

[...] Well-done thriller. Creates a lot of mystery through its limitation to the viewpoint of a single hand-held camera. (And you know how I feel about mystery.) [...]

By: Micah Tillman

Micah Tillman — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:21:43 +0000

Thanks, Mr. Stallard!

I’m glad you shared those two quotations, especially since I hadn’t seen either before. I’m finding them both very worthy of pondering.

(Which means I can’t yet formulate a complete, summarizing thought about them. Which, in many ways, is one part of the experience of mystery/beauty . . . .).

By: Jeff Stallard

Jeff Stallard — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:02:54 +0000

This link between beauty and divine mystery, if you’ll permit me to combine Plutonius and Lewis, is very intriguing, and helps me understand why the following quotes are so haunting to me:

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”
-Ranier Maria Rilke

“It is a strange and wonderful and embarassing feeling to hold someone in your arms who is trying to detach you from the earth and you aren’t good enough to follow her.”
-Norman Maclean

By: Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Beauty Updated

Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Beauty Updated — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:02:48 +0000

[...] term through which people get to my site seems to be “definition of beauty.” They land on this post, over and [...]

By: Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Annals of Good/Bad Graphic Design

Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Annals of Good/Bad Graphic Design — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:44:51 +0000

[...] The way in which space is handled in this cover allows for mystery. (It allows things to be hidden.) [...]

By: Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Simply Christian, by N.T. Wright

Micah Tillman » Blog Archive » Simply Christian, by N.T. Wright — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:16:53 +0000

[...] Lewis the phenomenon is “joy” (or, as I would term it, “mystery”). For Wright the phenomena are justice, spirituality, relationships, and [...]

By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:28:14 +0000

Heidegger’s another example of your eclecticism. Never read much of him myself. Obviously, I disagree with him about the respective importance of philosophy and poetry. (Though poetry’s fine in its place.) As for Poe, of course he privileges poetry; he was a poet.

By: Micah Tillman

Micah Tillman — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:24:42 +0000

Heidegger eventually came to believe that poetry was higher than philosophy, I think. Interesting that Poe also privileges poetry (though not over philosophy necessarily).

I think I tend to privilege painting.

I haven’t read enough Poe. Thanks to you both for the mini-education.

By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:33:31 +0000

Of course, Poe’s best poems were always about the death of Beauty (cf. The Raven and Annabel Lee). I think it’s safe to say that nobody in all history has expressed the grief of the widower more eloquently.

” And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea. “

By: Micah Tillman: Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Etc. » Blog Archive » The Artist’s Job

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 03:44:46 +0000

[...] in the vein of last night’s post, I have one more thought about beauty. The job of the artist is to discover where beauty is [...]