What Is Beauty

 Beauty is easy to appreciate but difficult to define. As we look around, we discover beauty in pleasurable

objects and sights - in nature, in the laughter of children, in the kindness of strangers. But asked to define, we

run into difficulties. Does beauty have an independent objective identity? Is it universal, or is it dependent on

our sense of perceptions? Does it lie in the eye of the beholder? we ask ourselves. A further difficulty arises

when beauty manifests itself not only by its presence, but by its absence as well, as when we are repulsed by

ugliness and desire beauty. But then ugliness has as much a place in our lives as beauty, or may be more

when there is widespread hunger and injustice in a society. Philosophers have told us that beauty is an important

part of life, but isn't ugliness a part of life too? And if art has beauty as an important ingredient, can it confine

itself only to a projection of beauty? Can art ignore what is not beautiful?

What Is Beauty?

Poets and artists have provided answer to these questions by incorporating both into their work. In doing so,

they have often tied beauty to truth and justice, so that what is not beautiful assumes a tolerable proportion as

something that represents some truth about life. John Keats, the romantic poet, wrote in his celebrated "Ode on a

Grecian Urn', 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' by which he means that truth, even if it's not pleasant, becomes

beautiful at a higher level. Similarly, what is beautiful forever remains true. Another meaning, in the context

the Grecian Urn - an art object - is that truth is a condition of art.

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Here are two poems which deal directly with the theme of beauty. While Lord Byron (1788-1824) finds perfect

beauty in a woman whom he idealizes. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) asserts that beauty is inseparable from truth.

She describes two persons who died for them and are now buried in tombs near each other.