A big call.
Solzhenitzyn says it took him many decades to come to see that Dostoyevsky had been right. Like Job in the night, Solzhenitzyn had tussled with this idea for half his life. The force of it, the transcendence of it, frightened him, he said.
Could these two stern Russian novelists, one from each of the last two centuries, be right. Are they prophets for our age?
I am a pushover for this idea. I instinctively think it is correct. The notion resonates deeply with me. But when I look at the world around me, and especially what passes for art, I wonder if there can be any modern meaning in the notion. Beauty has always ultimately been a religious idea. It is born of awe. Awe at God's creation, and man's capacity for love.
Turn to art today. You will sometimes find it reaching for beauty, but more often not. How can an art unmoored from its quest of grappling toward beauty really be art? Does art not have a sacred mission?
One of my favourite philosophers, Roger Scruton expresses it thus:
"The sacred task of art, is to take that which is most difficult in the human condition, and to redeem it by making it beautiful". Scruton does not say art has no lighter form and guise, just that if we are to speak of the truly sacred role of art, we explore its redemptive purpose. To Scruton, art's purpose is to "teach us how to feel" to give the growing mind a palette of feelings and responses, to help build moral imagination. It's a compelling vision.
