Sometimes we hear that beauty is the only force that can conquer space and time, inspiring musicians, artists and poets; that no one can resist her mysterious attraction. Following F. Dostoevsky, we pronounce: "Beauty will save the world." So shall we make beauty the universal true religion?
But if we think about it, we come to the conclusion that such a religion is impossible. Just the same for the simple reason that ideas about beauty have changed not only over epochs, but also over countries and continents. When we, amazed by what we see, exclaim: “Beauty!”, We most often mean: “Gorgeous!”. But how would an Australian aborigine, a Chinese, an African or an American Indian react to the same spectacle? How would our own ancestors have reacted? After all, when we turn on a tape cassette with modern youth songs, we hear something like the following from the lips of our grandparents: “Ugh! Some kind of devilry!”
And this is the reaction of people with whom we are separated by only one generation - our parents. What then to say about the ideas of beauty that existed in different eras?
For example, at the dawn of civilization, the meaning of beauty consisted in the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. Ancient man has not yet turned into a warlike conqueror. He lived a natural life in a natural habitat, and I think he saw beauty in that.
Was there an idea of female beauty in those days? If so, then the cult of female beauty consisted in the ability of a woman to correspond to the fertile earth. This is evidenced by the obese forms of ancient women on rock paintings, and figurines with their image.
Ideas about perfect beauty, which is close even to our time, arise in antiquity. Harmony, proportions, correct lines of male and female silhouettes. But all this is beauty perceived visually. But to me, the beauty embodied in the word seems much more perfect. It cannot leave you indifferent, cannot but amaze thought and imagination. I mean the singer Homer, who, in his immortal Iliad, gives, in my opinion, a brilliant description of the feminine beauty of Helen the Beautiful. He does not say how tall Elena was, what her hair, eyes, lips, smile or something else was. Homer, through the words of the wise elders, says that it was beauty worthy of an exhausting ten-year war.
The ideal of beauty, close to the antique, arises in the Renaissance. At this time, in a man and a woman, they again begin to appreciate the flowering power, which is perceived as the most important prerequisite for creative power. The perfect beauty of the Renaissance implied the categorical elimination of femininity from the male image, and masculinity from the female image. A man was considered beautiful if he developed signs that characterized his sexual activity: strength and energy.
Perfect beauty had those women who possessed the data necessary to fulfill the role of motherhood. In contrast to the Middle Ages, which preferred a woman with narrow hips and a slender waist, a woman began to appreciate wide hips, a strong waist, thick buttocks and magnificent breasts.
But then the age of Enlightenment came, and with it new ideas about beauty arose. Strength and power began to be perceived as aesthetically ugly, because physical labor became a disgrace. The ideal of beauty becomes a pampered, idle person. Admiration is caused by women with painful pallor, small legs, narrow brushes, and a slender, thin figure.
The next change of epochs made a change in the ideas of beauty. The bourgeois age has come, which proclaimed as the ideal of beauty a clear, energetic look, a direct, tense posture, gestures and expressions full of willpower, hands capable of not only grabbing but also holding what is captured, legs moving energetically and firmly standing on the conquered position. These qualities were equally valued in both men and women.
However, the bourgeois age brought spiritual beauty to the ideal of beauty.
Reflecting on the beauty of the human soul, the Russian poet N. Zabolotsky wrote:
What is beauty And why do people deify it? Is she a vessel in which there is emptiness, Or a fire flickering in a vessel?
Looking at ideas about beauty through the ages allows us to conclude that beauty is a relative concept. Every person spends his whole life in search of perfection. And in this search, he reaches for the beautiful, because only “beauty has the power and gift to bring peace into the hearts” (M. Cervantes).
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Essays on topics:
- So there is beauty. Winter morning. It is snowing, covering the ground with a white veil. Snowflakes look like white fluffy stars. On the streets...
Beauty ... What an elegant, marvelous word. Hearing it, everyone imagined something of their own, beautiful, incredible, unique ... So what is BEAUTY, and why do people deify it?
Beauty is a universal scale, it has a huge impact on all spheres of life. In my opinion, beauty inspires harmony in our hearts and inspires our souls. Touching our mind, it gives us a spark of inspiration, thanks to which true art is born. The musician, intoxicated with beauty, creates music that caresses the ear and excites the blood of the listener, forcing him to devote his heart in rapture to the magical melody. The artist, possessing the beauty of mental imagination, paints a picture, granting all that is beautiful an eternity. The poet, growing the flowers of eloquence, writes a verse, shaping the greatness of thought into the gentle chords of poetry.
Considering the features of beauty, one cannot speak only about art, because it reigns in everything that surrounds us. We find its reflection in nature, in everyday life and in ourselves.
Admiring nature, a person involuntarily perceives natural beauty in all its manifestations, drowning in a sense of admiration and peace. This idea has been repeatedly confirmed by great thinkers.
The poet Igor Severyanin says about nature like this:
I live and breathe nature
Inspirational and simple writing,
Dissolving the soul in simplicity,
I live on earth in beauty.
Writer Yakov Polonsky speaks about nature no less colorfully:
There is no truth without love for nature,
There is no love for nature without a sense of beauty.
From these examples, we see that nature and beauty are synonymous words. Only true splendor can evoke such picturesque words in the soul of a poet.
Speaking about human beauty, I want to consider the concepts of "external" and "internal" beauty. The human body is beautiful, it has always been the central embodiment of beauty in art. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed: "Beauty is an open letter of recommendation that wins the heart in advance." Human beauty is the mother of such a comprehensive and great feeling as love. When we fall in love with a person, we admire his appearance. We can say that love is an ode to beauty. Inner beauty is a deeper concept, it is our spiritual world. Unlike external beauty, we can create internal beauty ourselves. Only we decide whether to let the beautiful flowers open up in our soul. External attractiveness is just a shell that serves as an adornment of a rich spiritual culture. This idea is illustrated by the saying of William Shakespeare: “Outer beauty is even more precious when it covers the inner. The book, whose golden clasps close the golden content, acquires special respect.
Speaking about beauty in everyday life, I want to clarify that it is beauty that gives us the strength to live, it is beauty that helps us see all the diversity of human existence, it is beauty that sets us the goal of existence. We all strive for beauty, we are looking for a life partner of pleasant appearance; choose a job that would make us feel beautiful; we surround ourselves with beautiful things, creating comfort in our home; enjoy the beauty and luxury of communication.
I want to summarize all of the above with the lines of my own essay about beauty:
She is exquisite, omnipotent, perfect,
We are her obedient slaves.
And our life is priceless only because
That we are hellishly in love with beauty.
And now, dear readers, think about what BEAUTY means to you?
Creative project on rhetoric
2014
Reviews
Beauty - when you feel the charm of the world around you, focusing your attention on one element for an hour, or, next time, on another. and you don’t think, you don’t realize that you are contemplating it. It’s just that you feel good, comfortable, and thoughts appear that you need to do something kind, good, in order to preserve what you have seen and create something that others really want to keep.
Beauty is the desire to preserve and create all the best in this world. To lament when you fail, but still do not give up efforts until you achieve the victory of beauty, until beauty triumphs. This is beauty!
Anastasia, everything you said is interesting, wise and informative. And the lyrics are very good. I just added my reasoning, which can be disputed.
(According to the works of Russian literature)
Does humanity have a single true religion, which moves every particle of the universe? A force capable of rising above time and decay, inspiring a musician's bow, an artist's brush, a poet's lyre?
Yes, there is ... and will be forever. Nobody, nothing will stand; front mysteriously-magnificent attraction. She alone has been given power over the most beautiful feelings of human souls. This power is beauty.
Excites, excites the imagination the labyrinth of regular and torn lines, the range of sounds, the palette of colors ... Everything that the universe consists of is seen by everyone through the prism of his inner world, refracted uniquely, like a sunbeam in a complexly cut crystal; but it is human nature to strive for beauty, for what seems perfect to him, for beauty that can be seen, heard, felt. Let there be infinitely many people on earth, let each of them understand beauty in his own way, - all of them, without exception, are united by one thing: the infinite, unlimited power of the beautiful, the deity of generations.
In search of perfection, a person spends his whole life. How many great ones admired the wisdom of nature, the beauty of the surrounding space, the timeless harmony! Why did Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky paint their landscapes so carefully? Because they knew the connection between nature and the human inner world! In each of them, nature is involved, in action, in the plot, it is inseparable from the mood of the character. Boyishly, Arkady rejoices at the spring clear sky, driving with his father through the estate; with his arms outstretched, the mortally wounded Andrei Bolkonsky lies under the sky of Austerlitz overturned into eternity; Rodion Raskolnikov is suffocating under the oppressive, stuffy, yellow, dusty sky of St. Petersburg ... The human subconscious is drawn to the beautiful - to May, clean, clear, to the fact that the hero himself will be cleaner, drive away doubts, calm, envelop with warmth and spring bliss ... People in love into beauty, looking for salvation from their sorrows, dissolving with a glance in the infinity of the horizon, thinking about the enduring natural harmony - Nature is beautiful, because everything in it is eternal and natural. Tyutchev said this in his poem:
All your children in turn
Performing their feat useless,
She still greets her
An all-consuming and peaceful abyss.
It is precisely according to its own laws, according to special rules, that nature, beautiful and free, lives ... Its irregular lines, not geometrically verified, but calculated and predetermined from time immemorial, are true already because they are natural. The triumph of this naturalness over the mind and strength of man is the idea of Zamyatin's novel "We" ... The Green Wall, buildings made of glass and concrete, the ideal geometric correctness of structures, life calculated and painted by the minute, the same slender lines of "numbers" harmoniously marching along a linearly straight avenue - all this violence against nature is ugly! Ugly - subject to all the laws of geometry and with an impeccably correct form! It seems that everything is correct, verified, checked, calculated, people are happy - but something still breaks the harmony ... Beauty is not necessarily and not only perfection. Beauty is something that touches the soul. What is missing in the kingdom of the Benefactor, and if it appears suddenly, due to an oversight, is it immediately amputated, excised, like a cancerous tumor? Soul!
So, beauty, in no way spiritualized and soulless, repels? And the unspiritual correctness of perfect forms bows before an inexplicable, illogical, free life? Beauty must have a fantasy, it must have a soul, there must be a lot more so that millions of people prostrate themselves in front of all this beauty ... Probably, beauty is the most relative of all concepts.
The magnificent Helen Kuragina, the heroine of Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace", appears in high society - and all those present are breathtaking with admiration! Is her face pretty? Incomparably! She is a really beautiful woman, everyone admits it. But then why is Natasha Rostova more successful at the ball? Natasha Rostova, yesterday's "ugly duckling", with the wrong mouth and prune eyes? Tolstoy explains why Natasha is one of his favorite heroines: in Natasha there is no beauty of features, no perfection of forms, as in Helen, but she is endowed with an abundance of other beauty - spiritual. Her liveliness, intelligence, grace, charm, infectious laughter captivate Prince Andrei, Pierre ... Again, the triumph of spiritual beauty! Natasha, natural, direct, it is impossible not to fall in love ... and people are drawn to her, because she is the embodiment of that true beauty that captivates, attracts, awakens feelings. Her beauty is charm, charm, sincerity. Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov - ... You can’t call them handsome. But each of them is beautiful in its naturalness, inner freedom, simplicity, openness. Clumsy Pierre evokes sympathy, likes it; the short Prince Andrei seems to be an irresistible, brilliant officer ... they are such thanks to their spiritual beauty. For Tolstoy, the inside is more important than the outside! PI his favorite characters attract the reader with their qualities, virtues of the spirit, and not appearance.
Napoleon in "War and Peace" is shown as a short man, completely ordinary, nothing outstanding in appearance. Kutuzov - overweight, heavy, decrepit ... but he is beautiful in his patriotic impulse - and repels Napoleon, devoured by ambition, hungry for unlimited power and sole domination, ready to shed oceans of blood for this and destroy the world with war.
Beauty is determined by the soul. Inner entity. And how touchingly Natasha Rostova is described at the end of the novel, despite the fact that she has “became stout”, “became ugly”… The beauty of her soul is timeless, like any true beauty. And external beauty time kills ...
Of course, spiritual beauty is higher than external. But on the other hand, wasn't the creation of geniuses created for the glory of external beauty, for the sake of beautiful faces? People deify the beauty of their loved ones - those who, thanks to whom their soul came to life, who inspire them with just their glance, word, gesture, just by their presence, fill their life with meaning.
The brightest, inspiring, creative feeling on earth is love... but what is love? Admiration for beauty, admiration for the beauty of the body and soul. We love those whose spiritual and physical beauty we consider the standard. Intelligence? And this is beauty - the beauty of the mind. People who deify love cannot remain indifferent to beauty, because love is a hymn to it!
Alexander Blok. "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" ... Beautiful! - here it is, admiration ... Divinely inaccessible image, tremblingly kept, seeming infallible, sacred. For the sake of one smile of the Beautiful Lady, the knight will give his life without hesitation, drawing her initials on the shield with blood ... the poet will weave a wreath of words, immortal, shining like a halo, to put at the foot of her throne ... why? None of them are able to understand it intellectually.
Was in the shield Your face miraculous
Shine forever...
Mayakovsky, in contrast to Blok, sang not the classical beauty of the Beautiful Lady - gypsies and actresses, not the languid Stranger, not Izora - no, his ideal of female beauty was different ... The times of "geniuses of pure beauty" are gone! - Mayakovsky proclaimed, asserting a new ideal, idolized by him:
I sing you
made up,
The brightness of colors, sharpness, courage, liveliness of the image ... In a nutshell - so much! He also “crowned” and “burned out the blossoming soul with love,” but in a different way. He glorified the beauty that brings him bursts of despair, jealousy, rage, insomnia ...
A crown has been prepared for you for centuries, and in the crown my words are a rainbow of convulsions.
Ragged rhythms, uneven lines, the highest tension of the nerves. And pain, and bitterness, and a jump of nerves around the room, as in "A Cloud in Pants", - this is the fault of the beauty of his beloved ... She, who seemed to him a celestial, she, whom he loved, cursing, is dedicated to his best works, which enriched art, history , humanity! Beauty inspires even more beautiful and eternal - even when it hurts. Sergei Yesenin in "Persian Motifs" made the world admire: he was transported by imagination to an exotic, almost fabulous country, to Persia ... The mysterious, mystical beauty of the East intoxicates, the aromas of saffron, the rustle of soft carpets underfoot turn your head. Women in Persia are beautiful, flexible and tender... and a look from under the veil silently promises something...
Month yellow charms Pours over the chestnuts to lie down ... Lale leaning on the shalvars, I will hide under the veil ...
But "Ryazan expanses" Shirad Yesenina will not replace! And Shagane's love will not drown out the memories of the northern cold beauty of the girl left in Russia. Of the two beautiful worlds, Yesenin chooses "his dear land" - the beauty of the Motherland. The land of his ancestors is so dear to him, who knows how to see more beauty in it than in any other corner of the world ... Like Blok, Yesenin loves Russia, identifying it with a beauty in a patterned scarf ... But not even one native land - the whole world, everything beautiful in it praise Yesenin!
How beautiful
Earth and man on it!
Beauty for Yesenin is peace and harmony, nature and love for the Motherland, tenderness for the beloved. Beauty is everything that gives happiness ...
Beauty will always be. People will never be able to overcome the feeling of beauty in themselves. The world will change endlessly, but what pleases the eye and excites the soul will remain. People will, fading with delight, listen to eternal music born of inspiration, read poetry, admire the paintings of artists ... And love, idolize, get carried away, be attracted like iron to a magnet, dreaming of someone near and far, unique, unpredictable, mysterious and beautiful.
Tender than tender
your face,
Whiter than white
Your hand
From the whole world
You are far away
And all yours
From the inevitable.
From the inevitable
Your sadness
And fingers
never cooling down,
And a quiet sound
Resilient
And the distance of your eyes.
We live in a world woven from different feelings, states that help us perceive this very world in one way or another. Beauty is an extraterrestrial category. It's hard to say what beauty is. ? Because beauty is the achievement of the ideal state of the universe, the feeling that you are part of this divinely created world.
Nikolai Zabolotsky's poems about an ugly girl make you think about, huh? What is beauty? ? Beauty is a relative concept and, like all relative concepts, deserves consideration from different points of view.
Why do people deify beauty? Because beauty will save the world, beauty ennobles, even a simple contemplation of the beautiful gives a positive perception of the world, fills a person with harmony. Does this mean that beauty is harmony? Harmony is the highest point of being, maybe this is the answer to the question, why do people idolize beauty. External beauty attracts the eye and receives close attention, sometimes becoming a cause of envy. General beauty criteria can be distinguished when talking about the beauty that can be observed. They are depth, a good combination, symmetry ... To the question, why do people idolize beauty, you can answer by speculating on the topic of spiritual beauty, such a state of beauty, when inside it "shines". Like Zabolotsky: "fire flickering in a vessel." It is this kind of beauty that cannot be described in words, it can be expressed by works of art - poems, paintings, music... Beauty inspires and creates wings. Here why do people idolize beauty- it gives them the ability to fly, to be better, cleaner.
Are there criteria for beauty? It is difficult to attribute to signs that which cannot be seen, only felt. Why do people deify beauty- because the state of mere closeness to beauty gives sensations. Beauty can evoke the most varied feelings. And laughter, and sadness, and jealousy, and envy, and love, and worship. Beauty criteria exist- these are generally accepted stereotypes regarding the image, action and impact on a person. Something that appeals to his personality, inner qualities. But stereotypes are mundane concepts of beauty, the general criteria of beauty are precisely the accepted ideas about what is beautiful. The true essence of beauty cannot be described by criteria, because the divine comes from the soul and from the heart.
We have tried to answer the question why do people idolize beauty and Are there criteria for beauty? from different points of view and hope to be heard.
Municipal educational institution
Secondary school №10
with in-depth study of individual subjects
What is beauty and why do people deify it?
Performed by a music teacher and MHC
MOU secondary school №10
With in-depth study of individual subjects
Evdokimova M.V.
g.o. Zhukovsky 2015
“... What is beauty,
And why do people deify it?
She is a vessel in which there is emptiness,
Or fire flickering in a vessel?
(N. Zabolotsky)
What is beauty? We often, when we see something, exclaim: “Great!” What is beauty? Much has been written about her, she has been admired at all times. Maybe it's an attractive appearance, maybe the soul, maybe nature or love?
This is what we often think about with my students in the lessons of music and world art culture.
Behind the centuries-old "questioning" of mankind: "What is the Beautiful?", "How to know How to join the Beauty?"... - a deep spiritual need for the Reality of being.
I - TEACHER with many years of experience, in our lessons we sing beautiful songs, listen to beautiful music, look at beautiful pictures, and in general, we talk about beauty.
How to feel beauty? This is a volatile, fragile, but understandable state of mind for everyone. Or maybe it's not a state of mind, but a state of the surrounding world?
The guys and I go out to beauty through works of art.
I - TEACHER. And what is the work of a teacher? A feat in the name of the future, stretched out for decades. Complete dedication, self-sacrifice, immeasurable spiritual generosity, love ... Or rather LOVE and THE BEAUTY! That's right, with a capital letter, if you, of course, are a real teacher.
It is in the school that a special place should be given to education through art and beauty, understanding beauty in the most comprehensive sense of the word. Our school education pays too much attention to the development of the intellect and abstract thinking, but too little develops spiritual functions: imagination, observation, sensitivity and resourcefulness, and finally, spiritual understanding, philanthropy, etc., all that is given to a rich extent by art. and beauty.
Speaking of beauty, we fill our souls with love, happiness. I try to make the children leave my lessons happy, beautiful spiritually, with bright thoughts, in a good mood, always with the question: “Why have people deified beauty at all times?”
Beauty is not only in nature and in the human person. She is in a poetic word about them.
In the beautiful we see a certain spiritual reflection. Beauty is harmony, and this is the key to its universality. Harmony in everything: in appearance, in the soul, in nature.
Beautiful "people have always admired, idolized. Since ancient times, they have been considered a symbol of beauty, harmony and grace. Madonna, Mother of God. It embodies the image of a woman-mother. Throughout the history of mankind, the woman was sung by poets, portrayed by artists, composers dedicated music and songs to her.
One of my lesson topics "Women's Image in Art". The theme goes through the lessons of music and world art culture from grades 1 to 11. And here we talk about beauty, we listen to beauty, we see it, we sing about it.
Going to work, to a lesson, we will again talk about the beautiful, about beauty, sing beautiful songs, listen to wonderful music.
Let us also recall another purpose of music - purifying, that it should make the heart of a child tremble for good.
In music lessons, I pay special attention to internal conscious concentration and understanding of the meaning of harmony, to the development in the child of a sense of rhythm and wholeness.
We are talking about the fact that in addition to physical beauty in human culture, an idea of moral, spiritual beauty. This category is applicable to people, regardless of their age and gender, and determines the attitude to the wisdom, honesty, decency of a person.
In my opinion, beauty is harmony. Harmony in everything: in appearance, in the soul, in nature, in the word. Beauty is present everywhere, but not everyone sees it, not everyone pays attention to it. Let's take a closer look at ourselves and those around us, and then we will see something beautiful in our monotonous life, because "Beauty will save the world" we pronounce after F.M. Dostoevsky.
Sometimes we hear that beauty is the only force that can conquer space and time, inspiring musicians, artists and poets, that no one can resist its mysterious attraction.
Every person spends his whole life in search of perfection. And in this search, he reaches for the beautiful, because only “beauty has the power and gift to bring peace to the hearts” (M. Cervantes)
I teach my students to see beauty and find it in everything, even in small things.
Since 1995, on this day, everything beautiful, beautiful, which gives aesthetic and moral pleasure, is especially welcomed in the world.
Therefore, in many cities and countries, it is on September 9 that beauty contests are held everywhere.
Beauty, more precisely, the fashion for a certain type of beauty, like everything on earth, is subject to change. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why no one until now has been able to give a comprehensive concept of beauty.
For an ordinary person, beauty is something that you want to look at and look at, whether it is a sunset over the sea of unusual colors, a Milan Cathedral looking into the sky, a work of art, a flower or a woman's face.
Perhaps a few more hundred years will pass, and future generations will come to a single definition of beauty, but for now you need to learn to see the beauty around you.
The task and role of aesthetic education is to form a personality that, by its aesthetic abilities, would be organically inscribed in the unfading beauty of the world, which is an indispensable condition for the implementation of a person's moral choice in society.
True beauty grows out of love and suffering. True beauty is only that which increases love and thirst for eternal beauty. Before us is a simple formula of beauty in a person: "Love - and you will reveal the beauty in yourself and in others."
When does the soul sing?
When they don't choke her.
When each word is not torn by the ears,
When she flies from end to end
Free and free, fading from happiness.
Then she lives, creates, does not die ...
E. Pobedimskaya
