To Find Beauty and Truth

       The chapter “To Find Beauty and Truth,” Edmundson asks how we find beauty and truth in writing. He mentions Plato, who wrote about many truths, but he does not make his words sound as poetic. Plato tells you within the context that this is how things should be - no exception. Edmundson then shifts his argument by saying it is not mainly about the context, it is when the feeling matches the content. The truth to writers means to be personal - they seek a feeling that is a part of this truth. Other writers, like Virginia Wolfe and Tolstoy, differ in style but equally give a specific effect on the reader, meaning to show the literary beauty. The purpose of writing is for a writer to be able to put you in their shoes and show you how they see the meaning of the world. Not being told to feel a certain way, but give you a different perspective. So does he mean that if someone takes the writer’s text in a different way, that it’s not a truthful text anymore? Is there really no such thing as a “universal truth” concept?

To start, we might need to understand truth. One famous writer by the name of Edgar Allan Poe thought Truth and Beauty could not be in the same work, much like what Edmundson was saying about Plato and his work being truthful but not beautiful. In “The Poetic Principle,” Poe states, “It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral” (700). He says when one writes about truth, they must be “unimpassioned.” The aim of poetry should be Beauty that “excites by elevating the soul” (698). As much as I love Poe, I have to disagree with him on his statement.

A philosopher by the name of William James believes that, if thought in pragmatic terms, truth means anything that works for you. He says, “I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is ‘true’ so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives. That it is good, for as much as it profits, you will gladly admit. If what we do by its aid is good, you will allow the idea itself to be good in so far forth, for we are the better for possessing it” (James 1107). An example of his statement can be shown through religion. If someone asks another person if it is right to believe in God, the answer deals with the practicality of belief. The point if God exists for someone or not does not matter, if you believe it, it’s useful to you so you are better off with the knowledge of knowing it. In this way, truth is whatever makes you happy. Writing, in this sense, means to write about the things that make you happy.

Obviously, we all do not get excited about the same things, so our stories are all different. Edmundson uses the term solipsism to talk about this, which means to create your own reality. Writing is a means of telling a story from our points of view, but that does not mean we are all going to see the point of your view. We all have different stories, coming from different backgrounds that affect how we see a text. If a writer is writing with the purpose of everyone trying to understand it in one way, he or she more than likely will fail. Even a didactic text will elicit multiple responses when asked the “moral” for the story. Many writers, like Robert Frost, when asked what the meaning of their poem or text was, would say something along the lines of “however you understand it, is just fine with me.”

Transcendentalism is another example of this multifaceted term truth. Authors that fall under this category are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and in some ways Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson is her poem “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church” says that nature is her religion.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman-

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last-

I’m going, all along. (9-12)

Nature is a way of getting away from the reality in front of us. Emerson states in his essay, “In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”

            Whitman, like Dickinson, could be thought as a romantic and transcendentalist in some cases. Whitman’s main idea was of organicism. He believed that we are all a part of this one organic entity. In “Song of Myself” he says, “I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. / I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass that I love, / If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles” (124). In these lines, Whitman is comparing himself to nature because nature is a part of our souls.

Another concept of happiness is beauty, and just like truth it comes in many versions. If I think a certain flower is the prettiest flower in the entire universe, that does not mean my opinion is shared by others. Again mentioning Plato, Edmundson says there is no beauty in Plato’s schoolroom writing tactics. As a person who detests math, I could agree, but I know that statement would be wrong in the eyes of an engineer or any mathematician. Plato is their version of T. S. Eliot and geometry is their poetry that makes the art we see every day. Those beautifully crafted buildings in New York, aren’t made by sheer thought.

Nathaniel Hawthorne in “The Artist of the Beautiful” tells a similar tale by having a clock-maker make a beautifully crafted butterfly. “It seemed, in fact, a new development of the love of the Beautiful, such as might have made him a poet, a painter, or a sculptor, and which was completely refined from all utilitarian coarseness, as it could have been in either of the fine arts” (361). In this sense, Hawthorne says that not all beautiful work is written down.

Nature can again be related to this concept. If you’ve ever gone hiking around sunset and you reach a cliff overlooking the scenery below. There are no words to describe the raw, natural beauty that you see. Like in a movie, sometimes it’s better to see something rather than read about it.

Of course, if something is beautiful, it doesn’t always mean that it is “good.” “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Hawthorne is an example. Beatrice is very beautiful, but very dangerous. By the end of the story, the reader finds out that Beatrice is as poisonous as her father’s flowers. “‘Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself” (417). The attraction Giovanni possessed for Beatrice died once he found out what she was. Frankenstein is another example. He might not be beautiful, but he was a marvelous creation that turned out to be dangerous.

We all have our different perceptions of the world around us. If a student is sitting in the classroom and told to tell the two-dimensional shape that they see of the table in front of the classroom, the student will have a different answer than someone across the room. You know it is a rectangle, but you see something else. Religion is another example of this. Every religion has one purpose, but there are many ways that purpose is seen.

Sure when we write a story we typically have one purpose in mind. But give it to a classroom full of students, and they will find things that you didn’t initially intend to have in there. That’s the truth and beauty of writing. Our own realities are twisted and flipped into something entirely different for someone else. What makes our own selves happy, in turn has the ability to make everyone else feel the exact same way we do. In the end, maybe Edmundson was right. We are a “unified being” (202), just the process of getting there is a little more detailed.

Works Cited

• Dickinson, Emily. “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/52138. 
• Edmundson, Mark. “To Find Beauty and Truth.” Why Write?, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016.
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” Nature, Addresses and Lectures, https://ed.psu.edu/englishpds/10-11/newhouse/My_Unit_files/Emerson's%20Nature.pdf.
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Selected Tales and Sketches, Penguin Classics, 1987.
• ---. “The Artist of the Beautiful.” Selected Tales and Sketches, Penguin Books, 1987.
• James, William. “Pragmatism.” Classics of Philosophy, edited by Louis P. Pojman and Lewis Vaughn, Oxford UP, 2011.
• Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Poetic Principle.” The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Norton & Company, Inc., 2004.
• Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” The Complete Poems, Penguin Books, 2004.