Beauty and Belief

Beauty and Belief: Aesthetics and Religion in Victorian Literature by Hilary Fraser, 233 pages

During the nineteenth century, and particularly in England during the reign of Queen Victoria, traditional religion came under pressure from many sides, especially developments in science, criticism, and philosophy.  Partially as a response, religious believers sought an "alignment of imagination and the transcendent" - finding a new appreciation of beauty as a pathway to God.  This emerged out of the Romantic movement, particularly Wordsworth and Coleridge, and proceeded to be reconceived in turn by the theologizing Romantics Newman and Keble, the moralising Romantics Ruskin and Arnold, and finally the decadent Romantics Pater and Wilde.  Hopkins occupies a unique place, chronologically last, recapitulating many of the views and preoccupations of the others while remaining distinctly himself.

For the Tractarians, poetry was necessary to express the mysteries of God - poetry spoke truth because reality itself is somehow poetic, and the means by which we recognize beauty is intimately related to the means by which we recognize truth.  As Fraser guides us through the Victorian period, art shifts from being a handmaid of religion to religion being a form of art to art being the highest form of religion.  Art likewise revealed truth for Ruskin and Arnold, but for them the relevant truth was primarily ethical and therefore political rather than theological, while Pater and Wilde were more interested in the truth of beauty than the beauty of truth.  Fraser explores this development, and other related matters, in detail, with considerable care and apparent sympathy for his subjects.  The reader is left not only wishing that the book reached back to properly cover Wordsworth and Coleridge, but also that it continued on to consider twentieth century figures such as Chesterton and the Inklings.

On Reading Ruskin

On Reading Ruskin by Marcel Proust, translated and edited by Jean Autret, William Burford, and Phillip J Wolfe, 165 pages

Early in his writing career Marcel Proust translated two of John Ruskin's works - The Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies - into French, also supplying introductions and notes.  The translation itself was handicapped by Proust's rudimentary English, but the supplementary material reveals the depth of his attachment to, and engagement with, Ruskin's thought.  On Reading Ruskin collects this commentary in a single volume.

Six years separate the two works, and the years were not wasted by the French writer - the introduction to The Bible of Amiens was written by an ardent, though not uncritical, disciple of the master, while the introduction to Sesame and Lilies was written by the author of In Search of Lost Time.  What is truly remarkable is Proust's attitude towards Ruskin - at no time does he appear descend into agon.  Proust's primary criticism of Ruskin is that he is occasionally insincere - willing to endorse ideas because they are beautiful whether or not he actually believes them.  Against this is balanced an extensive meditation in which Proust extols reading as the highest (because most disinterested) kind of friendship.

Time and Tide

Time and Tide, By Weare and Tyne: Twenty-Five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work by John Ruskin, 195 pages

In this collection of his correspondence with a working class admirer, Ruskin summarizes and continues the social teaching he previously expounded in Munera Pulveris and Sesame and Lilies, while pulling in ideas he developed in works such as The Stones of Venice.  A large part of Ruskin's appeal lies in precisely this comprehensive consistency, uniting ethics, economics, and aesthetics.  Time and Tide calls for a comprehensive reform of society, beginning at the bottom.  As always, Ruskin's central concern is to guard against the emergence of a mass society, and he is equally opposed to mass production and mass democracy.

There is much in Time and Tide that is rationally prescriptive and therefore entirely inorganic and ultimately impractical - Ruskin himself concedes it is "too large to receive at present any deliberate execution" and denies that he maintains "any idea of its appearing, to our present public mind, practicable even at a remote period."  Taken at a slight distance, however, in the same light as Plato's Republic, there is a great deal of value in Ruskin's criticisms.  The epistolary nature of the book allows the author to range freely over a wide variety of topics but also results in him changing subjects haphazardly.  The end product is sometimes frustrating, often charming, and frequently insightful.

Sesame and Lilies

Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin, 204 pages

This book collects three lectures by the master.  The first, "Of Kings' Treasuries" is on the subject of how to read and treasure books.  The second, "Of Queens' Gardens", contains the author's reflections on the proper education of girls.  The third, "The Mystery of Life and Its Arts", is a manifesto of aestheticism and the Social Gospel.

Ruskin is, as always, more of a passionate rhetor than a consistent systematic thinker.  His ideas are sometimes bizarre - he supported a set of sartorial laws restricting certain kinds of clothing to certain classes.  Other ideas are now out of fashion - his plans for suburban garden cities.  His central themes, however - the importance of beauty, the necessity of charity, and the moral benefits of work - are what make his work immortal.

Munera Pulveris

Munera Pulveris: Six Essays on the Elements of Political Economy by John Ruskin, 218 pages

John Ruskin was many things - artist, philosopher, antiquarian - but he was not an academic economist.  Indeed, Ruskin held that greatest of economic heresies - that there is a difference between value and price, or, in PJ O'Rourke's words, "that a thing is worth something other than what someone is willing to pay for it."  His purpose in this short book is to establish economics as a moral rather than a practical science.  This economics is less concerned with media of exchange and more interested in things with intrinsic value - goods that sustain and enrich life.

Since Ruskin was writing in the late nineteenth century, there is a great deal of disconnect between the specific issues and debates of his day and ours - Keynes was only eight years old when the book was first published.  The greater issue, on the other hand, to what extent the world should be ruled by markets and to what extent by governments, endures.  Few of Ruskin's positive proposals can be taken seriously - it is unimaginable that we could realign the electoral system to give greater weight to votes based on age - and some passages might provoke outrage - particularly his discussion of slavery - but his contribution to the quest for a more human economy is significant nonetheless.