“Beauty will save the world,” the great Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky once wrote. Dostoyevsky was no starry-eyed dreamer. But we must confess that, given the world we live in, Dostoyevsky’s proclamation has the ring of naïvete to it. But is it possible that Dostoyevsky might be right? What if, in these troubled times, beauty can save the world?
Fellow Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who lived through the great purge (and likewise would have never been accused of being naïve), wrestled with Dostoyevsky’s proclamation in his 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes – but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what is distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition – and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.
In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force – they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world”, was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.
And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?
It is the small insight which, over the years, I have succeeded in gaining into this matter that I shall attempt to lay before you here today."[i]
Solzhenitsyn is on to something, although he doesn’t take us to the finish line. The modern world quickly decapitates the tops of the trees of truth and goodness, unwilling to let the claims of ethics or cosmology reach their full height. Perhaps beauty can sneak through the eager chainsaws of our materialistic age. We resonate with the beauty of a story because we were made in the image of the most beautiful being in all creation.
Solzhenitsyn is right that literature holds particular power for us. Everyone has a book that has gripped them and changed them. I still remember the first time I finished To Kill a Mockingbird, tears running down my cheeks. Literature can help the world, but only one story is beautiful enough to save the world. God created us for beauty and placed us in a narrative that leads us from beauty to beauty. Pastor Gavin Ortlund says, “The Christian story has a deep and abiding beauty to it…if we look at it long enough—if we really let it touch us.”[ii]
Just as the skilled artist uses contrast and the writer creates tension in the plot, the story God has authored is beautifully juxtaposed. Ortlund explains, “The Christian is able to affirm both the chilling darkness and the aching beauty of the world. The Christian must struggle with evil, but the nihilist must struggle with good. Evil may be mysterious for the Christian, but good for the nihilist can only be incomprehensible.”[iii]
Philosopher Peter Kreeft calls beauty “goodness’s prophet.”[iv] Beauty points us to righteousness. Author J.R.R. Tolkien coined the term eucatastrophe to explain the holy redemptive combination of goodness and tragedy most powerfully demonstrated with Jesus on the cross. The son of God became man that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21) and dwell with him eternally (Rev. 21:3).
Are you stuck in your search for truth? Look to Beauty. Beauty will save the world.
[ii] Gavin Ortlund, Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn’t (Baker Academic, 2021), 210.
[iii] Gavin Ortlund, “Reflections on the Grey,” Soloquium, June 18, 2012. Gavinortlund.com/2012/06/18/the-grey.
[iv] Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien (Ignatius, 2005), 152.
You May Also Appreciate: