Beauty, Nostos, Becoming Nobody and Letting go of the Plank
On the Odyssey
William Blake, James Joyce and Mary Oliver all tell us that if we’re not regularly consumed by the great Beauty of the world, if we’re not constantly feeling pricks of the eternal, if we’re not regularly placed in aesthetic arrest - as Joyce calls it - then something must be changed.
You must change your life, wrote Rilke.
“What claims your heart?”, ask the poets.
“What moves you into aesthetic arrest?”, they command.
The moments that make us gasp with rapture wake up our sense of relatedness with all of life.
This is Blakeian consciousness and Joycian rapture.
They pivot us towards Beauty.
And what happens when we choose to follow Beauty?
I think Beauty leads to participation; a participatory experience with all of life in which we organically enter into right relationship with the living world by appreciating it.
This is Aphrodite’s call when she summons Psyche to participate. To roll up her sleeves and wrestle with life’s impossible tasks. She aligns herself with the Goddess of Beauty, of Love, by participating with the living world.
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