“It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live.”
“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”
“We all have a weakness for beauty.”
– Albert Camus
It is not blood nor pain that shakes the ground;
oh no, it’s beauty that disturbs our days.
That mere life might evoke a beggar’s praise,
ay, that is where the tragedy is found.
For earth’s dear hopes spin meaningless around
oh no, it’s beauty that disturbs our days.
That mere life might evoke a beggar’s praise,
ay, that is where the tragedy is found.
For earth’s dear hopes spin meaningless around
and manage but to conjure dull malaise?
Our joy is weak; she has but numbered days;
she sickens when the petals all are browned.
Can there exist a charm that will not break?
Some great thing whose promise is not as cruel
as those dreams that wither when we wake.
Some great hand that might work the broken tool
of beauty, end all ends, and quench our ache:
to love one’s life and yet not play the fool.
Our joy is weak; she has but numbered days;
she sickens when the petals all are browned.
Can there exist a charm that will not break?
Some great thing whose promise is not as cruel
as those dreams that wither when we wake.
Some great hand that might work the broken tool
of beauty, end all ends, and quench our ache:
to love one’s life and yet not play the fool.