Darling, you're golden

“Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which

blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one - the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

Sometimes I forget to breathe. I mean REALLY breathe. For example, the other day, I was practicing yoga and the instructor directed us to breathe in through our noses and out through our mouths. As I began to feel the air expand my lungs, I wondered when the last time I had taken a deep breath was. The funny thing is, I couldn’t think of the last time.

I think that is the essence of life- we get so preoccupied by the hustle and bustle that we forget to take the time to truly be in the moment; to take the deep breaths that are imperative to understanding who we are.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors. He states things in a way that makes one feel connected to their innermost self, his words make you feel magical. The quote that is above, from The Beautiful and Damned is one of the most foundational quotes I have come across in my lifetime. The book itself is a literary masterpiece; The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise pale in comparison. I fell in love from the minute my delicate hands touched its bound pages.

This quote in particular is one that has stuck with me. It is on my wall, and stays there. I hand wrote it during a season where I was struggling to feel worthy. I struggled, and still struggle, with comparison, loneliness, inadequateness, etc. Fitzgerald reminds me that it is less about physical appearances as opposed to the unity between flesh and spirit. Your spirit becomes the “essence of your body.” Placing less emphasis on what we look like and more emphasis on what we are feeding our souls is difficult, but pertinent.

There is no doubt that philosophers for many centuries have tried to reach this ‘ideal’ beauty, the peak standard. Philosophical aesthetics have been at the forefront of society for decades. Take any art course and they will teach you about the importance of subjective versus objective beauty. Objective beauty is when the object itself is viewed as beautiful, or has qualities of beauty. Subjective beauty is the belief that beauty does not lie in things, but rather, in the emotions or feelings associated with it.

If this is the case, then the type of beauty that Fitzgerald is talking about is simultaneously objective and subjective. The beauty is the soul; beauty is being objectified, but there are emotions that the narrator of the book is associating with such beauty. We see peace and contemplation in the last two lines.

Narrowing in on peace, the philosopher Plotinus gives us this,

“We hold that all the loveliness of this world comes by communion in Ideal-Form. All shapelessness whose kind admits of pattern and form, as long as it remains outside of Reason and Idea, is ugly from that very isolation from the Divine-Thought. And this is the Absolute Ugly: an ugly thing is something that has not been entirely mastered by pattern, that is by Reason, the Matter not yielding at all points and in all respects to Ideal-Form. But where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and coordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a unity: it has rallied confusion into co-operation: it has made the sum one harmonious coherence: for the Idea is a unity and what it moulds must come into unity as far as multiplicity may” (Plotinus, 22 [Ennead I, 6]).

In other words, Plotinus is saying that beauty is a form. The form, when combined with its ideals, becomes unstoppable, the ultimate ‘beauty.’ However, there cannot be reason and idea if there is beauty. They must remain separate from each other, because they confine the limits of beauty, although Plotinus already confines it by insisting on it taking a ‘form,’ but that is beside the point. This aligns with Fitzgeralds ideas on beauty in the quote.

His ideas of renewal, of there being a possibility for the perfection of beauty, parallels Plotinus’ beliefs about formedness. Yes, perfect beauty is achievable, but it is always in the emotions of the beauty, never in its objectiveness (in the object itself). Beauty is not linear.

Plotinus also states in his Enneads, “This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce: wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight” (Plotinus 23, [Ennead 1, 3]). Ah, yes, the splendor of beauty- discussed among the likes of Aristotle, Plato, Dante, Fitzgerald, and more. Re-read the last line of the Fitzgerald quote. Doesn’t it make you FEEL something inside of yourself? THIS- THIS is what the quote means to me. It is the feeling that I get when I read it. I am reminded that beauty is a search within ourselves. You are beautiful if you think you are beautiful; it is not only the emotions that others feel, but also the emotions that you feel, which I believe is what Fitzgerald is saying. The “outdoor waiting room” is society- what they tell you beauty should look like, but you- you are beauty itself. You are not moved by something as easy as gusts of wind or shiny stars (distractions). You remain steadfast in the contemplation of who? Yourself.

Xoxo

Authentically,

Ali