“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” I first read these final words of John Keats’ poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in middle school. At the time I was keeping a journal of inspiring quotations, and I promptly added these lines to its pages. It’s the only quote from that journal I still remember today.
Looking back, I believe those words stayed with me because I discovered in them a religious truth, even though I was not religious at the time. The equation of truth and beauty struck me as profoundly true and therefore also profoundly beautiful. It meant there must be something beautiful about anything true, even a “harsh” truth. Likewise, there must be some truth expressed by anything beautiful. What attracts us to a sunset, a sonata, a sonnet or a lover’s sigh is more than a matter of mere aesthetics. Beauty means something.
Keats’ bold assertion is that the equation of beauty and truth is the sum and summit of knowledge; all we can know and all we need to know. Lest we think it impossible to express such sufficient wisdom in three simple words, consider that we hope to spend eternity contemplating the truth and beauty of the three words “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).
I’ve been thinking about beauty a lot lately, especially while driving along the winding mountain roads of western North Carolina. There is a lot of beauty in an Appalachian autumn, and therefore a lot of truth. As we pray for the souls of the departed during the month of November, the fall colors remind us that God can make even death into something beautiful.
Though I’ve lived in the mountains my entire adult life, I’m still struck every day by their beauty. That’s been especially true this past year as I’ve unexpectedly taken up painting. When my wife and I escaped to the Outer Banks last January for a few child-free days, she brought along a small set of watercolors to provide us with a relaxing afternoon distraction.
I had not dabbled in visual arts since I was a teenager, but I found myself having such a delightful time as we painted our beach scenes that I’ve tried to paint at least a little each day since then. It helps me to relax, but even more than that, it has helped me to rediscover just how much beauty there is in the world.
A painting is a representation, not a replication. The goal is not to capture every small detail of your subject, but to express certain aspects in order to reflect its beauty. When you paint, you make choices to draw out a certain line, bring out certain colors or focus on a particular shape. If you want your final work to be attractive, you naturally make these choices with an eye toward the beautiful. This trains your eye to notice the beauty in whatever you are looking at, be it a person’s face, a cloud formation, a river bank or a vase of dying flowers. When you look at the world in this way, you discover there is beauty in everything.
Beauty is a poignant reminder of the truth and goodness of God. Truth, goodness and beauty are the three transcendental aspects of the divine (and the three things all sane people value most in this world). They seem distinct to us, but in God they are the same thing. Keats is correct: Beauty is truth (and goodness). It’s like when a single beam of light is split into different colors by a prism. Truth, goodness and beauty are the colors of God’s light shining on the world, and each attracts us in a different way. Truth appeals to our mind and goodness appeals to our heart, but beauty appeals directly to our soul.
“Beauty is what we notice first,” writes Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft in his book “Wisdom of the Heart.” “It is the ambassador of truth and goodness.”
Kreeft says, “Beauty is to God what sunlight is to the sun. Beauty is God’s shining. It acts on us, not we on it.”
Art, regardless of medium, is an attempt to capture this shining of God upon creation. One reason artists often seem tragic is because this is an impossible task. You cannot capture beauty. It captures us. Beauty is bigger than this world and bigger than ourselves. This is why an encounter with beauty, whether in a sunset or a baby’s laugh, makes us forget ourselves for a while. It’s also why beauty breaks our heart even as it fills us with joy – because that joy is from another world that we haven’t arrived at yet. It’s an appetizer that leaves us hungry for more.
That God made everything good and true doesn’t surprise us. It logically follows from His nature. It would be impossible for God to create anything false or evil. But beauty surprises us every time. Beauty is less necessary even though it’s no less divine. God didn’t have to make everything beautiful – but He did, as His promise of a greater world to come.
That’s why, while God’s truth is the object of our faith and God’s goodness the object of our love, God’s beauty is the object of our hope – hope that God’s Providence, His divine plan for you, me and all creation is not only true and good, but also beautiful.
Deo gratias.
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.