Mr or Ms. Youngblood (as you keep that unclear)
I think that Rilke is speaking of the beautiful in a more general sense of the term. There are beautiful moments as well as beautiful art works. To feel that a moment is beautiful is at once to fear for its end. This sometimes intervenes even in my experience of the most beautiful art shows or concerts...the terrible realization that this peak experience will soon end. This is true of the most beautiful things, like true erotic love or a truly functional family life.
Again, I don't tend to think of "the beautiful" as something abstracted from the world of our everyday concerns. Our desire for the beautiful (pace Plato) can never be taken away, but its objects will all eventually be taken from us (at the very least by the end of our consciousness in death).
Dan
"For beauty is the beginning of terror we are still able to bear, and why we love it so is because it so serenely disdains to destroy us" Rilke's First Duino Elegy
Daniel Shaw
Professor of Philosophy and Film
Lock Haven University
Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
website: www.lhup.edu/dshaw
*
*
Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon.
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to.
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon.
**
|