Let us now turn to the matter of the development
of man's heart. Under the category of the heart we understand the capability of
pleasant and unpleasant sensations. These sensations are of different sorts -
from the lowest organic sensations up to the highest aesthetic, moral and
religious feelings. The higher feelings are also called emotions. The education
of man's heart consists in the development of these emotions in it.
Let us pause on one such emotion - the aesthetic
feeling. Aesthetic feeling is the term which signifies the sense of the
beautiful - the ability of man to behold and understand, to enjoy and be
enthralled by any beauty, by all things beautiful no matter where or how they
appear to us. Such delight in beauty can either reach a turbulent, fiery
ecstasy or a quiet, calm, profound feeling. Thus, the aesthetic feeling is
indissolubley tied with the idea of the beautiful, with the concept of beauty.
"But," one asks, "what is beauty?"
This question may have different answers. The best
is this: beauty is the full harmony between the content and form of a given
idea. The purer, the more salient and more perfect the form in which this idea
is transferred, the more there will be beauty present, the more beautiful the
phenomenon will be. Of course, Orthodox Christianity sees the highest beauty in
God, in Whom there is the fullness of all beauty and
perfection.
Aesthetic feeling of one degree or another is
inherent in every person, but is far from being developed correctly, in full
measure, in every case. Its proper development and direction are brought about
by uncovering the person's ability to correctly evaluate one or another
phenomenon, or work of art. An aesthetically educated person is able to find
features of perfection and beauty in a good picture, composition or literary
work. He can himself understand and evaluate it and can explain to another,
what precisely, is beautiful in a given work of art, what its content is and in
what form it is transferred.
Orthodox Christianity knows how to evaluate and
love beauty, and we see beauty in Orthodoxy everywhere - in church
architecture, in the divine services, in the music of church singing and in
iconography. It is notable that beauty in nature was loved and valued by the
strictest of our ascetics, who had completely renounced the world. The leading
monasteries of Russia were founded in localities distinguished by their beauty.
In this, the bright spirit of Orthodoxy is
manifested in its relationship to everything truly beautiful. In the Gospel, we
see how Christ our Savior tenderly and lovingly regarded lilies of the field,
birds, fig trees and grape vines. Even in the Old Testament times the
prophet-king David, contemplating the beauty and majesty of God's creation,
exclaimed, "In wisdom hast Thou made them all ... glory to Thee O Lord
Who has created all things..." In another psalm, he addresses nature
as if it were conscious, saying, "Let everything that hath breath
praise the Lord ... Praise Him sun and moon, praise Him stars and
lights..."
Orthodox Christianity cannot limit its concept of
the truly beautiful only to what pleases our sense of beauty by the elegance of
its form, but must see as truly beautiful all that is morally valuable. True
beauty always elevates, ennobles, enlightens man's soul and sets before it the
ideals of truth and good. An Orthodox Christian never acknowledges as beautiful
that phenomenon or work of art, which even though it be of perfect execution,
does not purify and enlighten man's soul but rather debases and soils it.
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