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HeyJ LIV (2013), pp. 932941

WOUNDED BY THE ARROW OF BEAUTY:

THE SILENT CALL OF ART
DAVID TOREVELL
Liverpool Hope University

One of the urgent tasks facing Christian educators at the present time is how they might encourage
the spiritual growth of their students. This paper invites reflection on this central question by
discussing the role aesthetics might play with particular focus on its relationship to the spiritual
senses, a theme which has been strikingly absent from recent publications on religion and Christian
education. Paying particular attention to the work of the contemporary French phenomenologist,
Jean-Louis Chrtien, I shall argue that art invites us to listen to as well as to see the power of beauty.
Educators should not ignore this capacity of art to engage the spiritual senses within a contemplative
ethos of silence. But I go further than simply pointing to these seminal ideas about Christian
formation, by discussing the wound that beauty inevitably inflicts. I illustrate this suggestion by
referring to Pope Benedict XVIs essay Wounded by the Arrow of the Beautiful and to two
visualizations of religion: Delacroixs painting Fight between Jacob and the Angel and Beauvois
film Of Gods and Men.

INTRODUCTION

One of the urgent tasks facing Christian educators at the present time is how they might
encourage what has traditionally been called within philosophy and theology, the nurturing of
the soul (Griffiths, 2011). I argue in this article that an encounter with the power of beauty
might go some way to promoting this nurturing and that its significance and potential needs to
be reclaimed and exhorted. I do this by discussing the unique association aesthetics has with the
spiritual senses, a theme which has been disappointingly absent from recent writings in
education and religion more generally. I pay particular attention to the insights of the contem-
porary French phenomenologist, Jean-Louis Chrtien and his retrieval of Paul Claudels phrase,
the eye listens (loeil coute), as I suggest that art invites us to listen to and contemplate the
call of beauty. This latter point becomes more problematic, however, as I discuss the notion of
the wound that beauty often inflicts. I make this claim with reference to Chrtiens account of
Delacroixs painting Fight between Jacob and the Angel, Pope Benedict XVIs essay Wounded
by the Arrow of the Beautiful and the film Of Gods and Men (Beauvois, 2010). But I begin,
briefly, with the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer (17881860) to contextualize my
later suggestions.
In contrast to science which runs after every end it attains and again and again is directed
further, and which can never find an ultimate goal anymore than running we can reach the
point where the clouds touch the horizon (quoted in Cahn and Meskin, 2008, 197), Schopen-
hauer suggests that art offers a respite from the ceaseless cravings and preoccupations of our

2013 The Author. The Heythrop Journal 2013 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600
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 WOUNDED BY THE ARROW OF BEAUTY: THE SILENT CALL OF ART 933

existence. It invites a moment outside time and holds before the world a glimpse of what is true;
in so doing, it extends an invitation to contemplation. Although not holding to a religious view
of truth, he regards art as offering a timeless and transcendent experience, For it plucks the
object of its contemplation from the stream of the worlds course, and holds it isolated before
it (quoted in Cahn and Meskin, 2008, 197). It stops the wheel of time (quoted in Cahn and
Meskin, 2008, 197) becoming a vertical line of incision, intersecting the frenetic and horizontal
flow of space and time. In a strongly Kantian vein about the nature of the artist he writes: . . .
genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and
consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain a pure
knowing subject, the clear eye of the world; (quoted in Cahn and Meskin, 2008, 197). Winston
suggests Schopenhauers view is about escaping from the realm of earthly desires, which cause
us pain as they unleash passions that can never be truly fulfilled. In the contemplation of beauty
we can, if just for a short while, attain the bliss and peace of mind of true knowledge, free from
all willing and thus from all individuality and the pain that results therefrom (2010, 21). I am
reminded here of Iris Murdochs poetic claim that in her attentive observation of the kestrel she
came to lose herself and all anxious desires seemed to fade away: I am looking out of my
window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding
perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In
a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is
nothing but the kestrel. And when I return to thinking on the other matter it seems less
important (1970, 84; 1992).1
What Schopenhauer offers then, is the privileging of art as a facilitator for a more contem-
plative and truthful experience of the world than we normally feel. It encourages a form of
disinterested pleasure freed from the Will. In fact, The work of art is merely a means of
facilitating that knowledge in which this pleasure consists. That the Idea comes to us more
easily from the work of art than directly from nature and from reality, arises solely from the fact
that the artist, who knows only the Idea and not reality, clearly repeated in his work only the
Idea, separated it out from reality, and omitted all disturbing contingencies (quoted in Cahn and
Meskin, 2008, 201). Aesthetic pleasure, therefore, consists in enjoying a respite from the
illusory conditioning and disturbances of the world; it is also an experience of ecstasis, of losing
ourselves one which is capable of spilling over into our experience of life itself. If this claim
is true, then educators have a wonderful opportunity, for art facilitates the pleasurable contem-
plation of nature, life and truth (quoted in Cahn and Meskin, 2008, 201; Saward 1997; Scruton,
2011) and frees us from the disquieting impulses of the will.

THE CALL OF BEAUTY

But I do not wish to spend too much time on Schopenhauer, but rather on the work of the
contemporary French phenomenologist, Jean-Louis Chrtien. Before I do so, some brief com-
ments on the theological turn within French phenomenology is necessary. Informed by the work
of Edmund Husserl (18591938) and Martin Heidegger (18891976), phenomenology is con-
cerned with what appears to us within concrete existence on a daily basis. In part, what the
movement sought to do, was to bracket off traditional metaphysical claims about the nature of
existence and return to an investigation of actual experience separate from and uninfluenced by
theological understandings; all pre-suppositions had to be put to one side. In re-assessing the
nature of being, what became important was the actual experience of life; any attempt to see
behind the phenomena as they appear and to postulate some kind of metaphysical reality
934 DAVID TOREVELL

underpinning their appearance was to be discarded. Naturally, this had a huge impact on
traditional theological positions, since phenomenological thinking was highly critical of those
schools of thought which relied on religious or philosophical foundations handed down over
time. It is unsurprising that atheism became associated with this philosophical trajectory.
However, some later phenomenological thinkers sought to challenge what they considered to
be this distorted view about the world, by suggesting that our experience of life often extends
beyond and betrays the limits of the phenomena themselves. When such experiences occur, it
is sensible to postulate a metaphysical understanding or trace of the divine. Thus, the theo-
logical turn within French phenomenology was about trying to identify some experience of the
Other or some inkling of transcendence in relation to everyday phenomena (Janicaud, 2000;
Benson & Wirzba, 2010). The key thinkers to emerge in this debate were Jacque Derrida,
Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Michel Henri, Jean-Louis Chrtien, Jean-Luc Marion
and Paul Ricoeur. All these sought to challenge reductionist conceptions of phenomenology and
to offer new perspectives for contemporary fundamental theology and philosophy of religion.
Their work both challenges atheistic conceptions of phenomenology and traditional understand-
ings of theology.
Let me begin then with Jean-Louis Chrtien and, in particular, his seminal texts LAppel et
la Rponse (The Call and the Response, 2004) and Corps corps : lcoute de loeuvre dart
(Hand to Hand. Listening to a Work of Art, 2003) which draw attention to the call and power
of beauty to evoke a spiritual response unlike any other. For Chrtien, beauty embeds within
itself a call and thus signals a vocational dimension to its nature. Beauty and call are
inseparable: By giving its name to beauty, the call designates that which is essential to beauty,
the very nature of its manifestation (2004, 9). Supported by pseudo-Dionysius theological
claims, Chrtien shows how the disclosure, call and emanation of beauty entices our return to
its source. Remember how in his Divine Names pseudo-Dionysius points to the inseparability
of the two ideas, of call and beauty: He calls (kaloun) all things to himself, and this is why
he is called kallos, beauty (2004, 15). Chrtien extends this idea: What is beautiful is what
calls out by manifesting itself by calling out. To draw us to itself, to put us in motion toward it,
to move us, to come and find us where we are, so that we will seek it such is beautys call and
such is our vocation (2004, 9). Our calling, our vocation, then, is understood in terms of our
response to the call of beauty. By responding to beauty we are saved, since it returns us in
unity to its source and assists us to recall what we have felt as lack, by our ceaseless yearning.
The same idea is present in Platos Phaedrus, commented upon by Hermeias: Beauty is a light
sent from the source of the intelligibles all the way to this world, calling to itself and uniting
lovers to what they love, so that beauty is that through which the ascent takes place (2004, 9).
Chrtien defends the power of beauty through its capacity to invite a remarkable doubling up
of what has been theologically referred to as the spiritual senses, those modes of perception
which make contact with the divine possible (Coakley & Gavrilyuk 2011) and in so doing,
signal a contemplative mode of awareness which art encourages.2 Using the poet Paul Claudels
notion of the eye listens (loeil coute), he suggests that we listen with our eyes to the call that
beauty makes upon us: We listen to pictures just as we listen to anything, by making ourselves
silent, by entering into the active silence of attention (2003, 19). There is a silent beauty to art
as the passage of light over shapes raises objects to a kind of incandescence; they are, therefore,
destined not to ordinary contemplation, but rather to an act of listening. We are thus called to
listen to as well as see the light which makes its impact upon our spiritual senses; the experience
inevitably changes us.
Again, echoing Platos Pheadrus, Chrtien notices how the call is in fact a recall, an
awakening of a memory of a distant beauty which has been lost in terrestrial life (2004, 10). To
 WOUNDED BY THE ARROW OF BEAUTY: THE SILENT CALL OF ART 935

see beauty is to see it again, to go towards it is to go back to it (2004, 10). But, paradoxically,
its second time is really its first. The call speaks to us in our exile, in our oblivion, our distance
. . . (2004, 10) and it throws us off-balance, since by it we experience a paradox at its heart
the proximity of the far-off (2004, 10). The call of beauty is both distant and intimate. This is
why the call also wounds us deeply, since it recalls us to our own selves, to what we lack and
make do with as a poor substitute; it speaks of that which we have known and yet failed to keep
alive; it is partly known by its absence. But the wound is never destructive since it brings what
beauty has to say to life: To wound us in the heart brings its utterance to life. It draws us out of
our poise and makes us lose our immobility. It calls only to disquiet us (2004, 10).
Chrtien believes that prayer itself is related to this notion of the call and its associated wound;
it is agonic: It always has its origin in the wound of joy or distress, it is always a tearing that
brings it about that the lips open. . . . Wounded by this hearing and this call that have always
already preceded it, and that unveil it to itself, in a truth always in suffering, always agonic,
struggling like Jacob all night in the dust to wrest Gods blessing from him (Chrtien, 2000,
17475). Wounded by the beauty and alterity of the One to whom prayer is addressed, the
person who prays learns from the encounter never to seek a healing of the wound, for one is
made stronger by receiving and enduring its pain (2010, 175). There is no redemption apart
from the wound and never any blessing. I shall discuss Chrtiens appraisal of Delacroixs
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel shortly.

JACOBS WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL

There is also a call and a wounding outside the time of prayer, which comes upon us when we
have not sought it, signifying another calling, allowing us to form an intimacy with our highest
task (2003, 2); again, as in prayer, we should never seek its healing or ignore its presence. It
leaves us with a changed body and identity and invariably arrives when we are lone, in the night,
with no-one besides us; it is a call associated with the darkness of struggle and wrestling. Who
among us, asks Chrtien, has not known such a night Or who has not fled from one, regardless
of the cost, which still entails having had to recognize the peril that comes out to meet us in such
a night? (2003, 3). Delacroix knew that Biblical subjects aroused the imagination, whereby each
person finds in the subject matter what she needs, an expression of her particular feeling. This
is why Chrtien takes Delacroixs painting of Jacob Wrestling with the Angel as his most
evocative image and narrative to express his view that in our wounds are our satisfaction and
blessing. And these are intensely bodily experiences. In his address at the beginning of Corps
corps, he is concerned with Bodies that embrace in order to wrestle, or wrestle in order to
embrace; . . . bodies that strip themselves (2003, xxv) such are the phenomena that stir him
to write.
Jacobs struggle is nothing if it is not bodily, sweaty, fleshy, and it moves him to a new level
of intimacy; it . . . left nothing of his existence intact, neither body nor identity, insofar then as
the event of the intimate confrontation is also the advent of an unforeseen and new intimacy
(2003, 23). It is, of course, our own and our students experiences of struggle, of trying to find
a way through the existential maze of things: Let me go for day is breaking speaks the angel,
but Jacob answered, I will not let you go unless you bless me (2003, 3). And, then, in the
hand to hand encounter, comes the wounding and the blessing: their inseparability no longer
possible: And there was one that wrestled with him . . . who seeing that he could not master
him, struck him in the socket of his hip, and Jacobs hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him
(2003, 3; Young, 2007).
936 DAVID TOREVELL

Chrtien offers how Christian authors see in this struggle a pre-figuration of the incarnation
and how many seventeenth century French spiritual writers have reflected on this paradoxical
theme. For example, St. Francis de Sales indicates how we are all assaulted by the divine
throughout our lives: Our Lord may sweep us round to the left or to the right; he may, as if with
other Jacobs, clasp us tightly, and wrench us in a hundred ways . . . he may do us a thousand
hurts; nevertheless we will not leave him until he has given us his eternal blessing. . . . (2003,
5). Chrtien also records the words of the Dominican mystic Louis Chardon on such struggle,
union and transcendence:
Nevertheless, Jacob, instead of drawing despair from a combat begun with so much
heat between unequal parties, is roused to confidence. . . . His grasps and grips swell his
courage. . . . This war begins to please Jacob, solely because the combatants seek union rather
than separation from one another. This is why they embrace one another, grip and clasp one
another, and why the most valiant is the one whose accolades are ever tighter, so that hold for
hold, he fastens himself to his adversary with such perseverance that no effort the adversary
might exert upon him could cause him to give up the fight. The blow that he gives to him on
the thigh, causing him a fresh pain, is favorable, because in losing the strength in his leg to hold
himself up, he is forced to redouble the efforts of his grasping in order better to steady himself.
It is nevertheless true that, if he were not held up by the One who, in clasping him, commu-
nicates to him his omnipotence, he would not have held out long enough to overcome the
Omnipotent (2003, 6).
How could a non-believing painter, like Delacriox, represent this struggle? Was it possible
for Delacroix to paint such a scene without he himself becoming Jacob once more? Indeed, it
was a long, contemplative endeavour and from the age of 51 to 63, he battled with the depiction,
frequently living the life of solitude, a cenobite, a Carthusians life, close to the chapel of
Saint-Sulpice (2003, 7). Delacroix, like all those students we might invite into the fight, are
called to listen to and see an echo of their own uplifting struggles in Delacroixs mural to see
themselves in the figure of Jacob. As Chrtien claims, What does Jacob matter if we cannot
become him? Why does his angel matter, if he has no longer the force to assault us? What does
this combat matter, if it cannot take place this very night? (2003, 8). Of his attempts to complete
the work, he writes, To tell the truth the painting badgers and torments me in a thousand
ways . . . what from a distance had seemed easy to surmount presents me with horrible and
incessant difficulties. But how is it that this eternal combat, instead of killing me, lifts me up,
and instead of discouraging me, consoles me and fills my hours when I have left it? (2003, 9).
A sacred space forms around the task of depicting the scene and his desire to be engrossed in
the task is couched in erotic imagery for he is like a young man eagerly courting his mistress
(2003, 10). But in the struggling encounter, a light descends and the meditative light of the
dawn falls upon these conflicting bodies, upon the vigorous back of Jacob, and on their
interlocked hands, raised above them, as if they were arm wrestling (2003, 15).
But notice how Chrtien calls our attention to the sound of the painting, in particular the
sound of its silence. He writes, And yet, within what we do not manage truly to see at first,
havent we heard something, something fragile and soft amongst so much agitation, like a
murmur, or an invitation, or a song? It is the burble of the water, that from far away, rushes
toward us, until, in the left foreground, it is appeased and calm (2003, 10). And later he
comments, On the right . . . there is another murmuring flow, but this one moves away from
us . . . How strange it is that we have not taken greater notice of this deafening racket, of this
caravan of noises and smells (2003, 11). And in the background, at the other end of the
painting, some galloping horses can be seen, indicating the immensity of this caravan, which
stretches out without end. By attracting us magnetically, a silence, stronger than any clamour,
 WOUNDED BY THE ARROW OF BEAUTY: THE SILENT CALL OF ART 937

in which there arose only the breathing of the wrestlers, had prevented us from hearing this
racket (2003, 11). Thus, Chrtien identifies art as a phenomenon which entails as much
listening as it does seeing: Ever since there has been painting, man has translated his listening
to the silence of the world into forms. For every act of listening responds, and it is with his hands
that the painter responds, in turn giving something to listen to (2003, 57).
An earlier painting of Delacroix in 1827, Le Lit Dfait, gives a further clue to Delacroixs
spiritual struggle again in the night, being alone, with dark and light. There is clearly a
disorder, turmoil, torment and sweat about the swirling bedclothes. And yet, at the same time,
there is a blessing to the scene, as the light picks out their folds and patterns and the agonic
portrayal of restlessness is transformed; it is an image of tortuous beauty. Like the clothes in Le
Lit Dfait, Delacroix invites us to see the clothes in Jacob Wrestling with the Angel as part of
the naked struggle. Jacob is stripped to the waist for combat and leaves his sword on the ground.
As Chrtien notes, To give up all defenses and weapons to enter into the fight, to confront the
irresistible assailant, . . . to come at him openly: such are the conditions of combats that are in
truth life-and-death matters, combats in which something of ours must die, and a new life enter
to dwell within us. Only the disarmed can grow in strength. To take arms, to surround oneself
with defenses, is already to place oneself in a position of weakness, and at the same time to
refuse the salutary intimacy of close combat (2003, 14).
Robert Lowells twentieth century poem Night Sweat echoes a similar theme and tone: For
ten nights now, Ive felt the creeping damp/float over my pyjamas wilted white (1965, 58). The
Behind me! You! of the second verse echoes the Biblical reference about Satan spoken by
Christ to Peter after he expresses denial about the suffering Christ must undergo (Matt, 16:23).
Is the experience of night sweat a blessing or a curse? And this is followed by his Hopkins-like
verse: Again I feel the light/lighten my leaden eyelids, while the gray skulled horses whinny for
the soot of night/I dapple in the dapple of the day/a heap of wet clothes, seamy, shivering/ I see
my flesh and bedding washed with light(1965, 59). Later comes the final image of vicarious
suffering: Poor turtle, tortoise, if I cannot clear/the surface of these troubled waters here/
absolve me, help me, Dear heart, as you bear/this worlds dead weight and cycle on your back
(1965, 59).

WOUND AND BLESSING: OF GODS AND MEN

This theme of wound and blessing is seen again in Xavier Beauvoirs film, Of Gods and Men.
It tells the true story in 1995 of the French Trappist monks never to resist by force, never to put
up defenses, to remain stripped of power and to stay in their monastery at Tibhirine when
confronted by an imminent terrorist attack; it is the struggle of Jacob. The action takes place on
Christmas Eve and a theology of the powerless Christ-child becomes central to discussions
about why they stay rather than leave. In the prayerful silence of the monastery, they hear the
call of beauty to remain with the Muslim community they have grown to love and serve and
their response is to remain, not flee. Brother Christian comments: We welcome that Child who
was born for us, absolutely helpless and already so threatened/And day by day each of us
discovered I think that to which Jesus Christ beckons us. Its to be born. Our identities as men
go from one birth to another. . . . The Incarnation, for us, is to allow the filial reality of Jesus to
embody itself in our humanity. The mystery of incarnation remains what we are going to live.
Chrtien recalls how many paintings of the vulnerable Christ-child became paintings for
contemplation in which we see and listen to the wounds and blessings that silence conveys
(2003, 4448).
938 DAVID TOREVELL

The monks and the cinematic audience are invited to ponder the readings spoken aloud
during the monks silent meal: Accepting our extreme poverty and powerlessness is an
invitation, an urgent appeal to create with others relationships not based on power. Recognizing
our own weaknesses, I accept those of others. I can bear them, make them mine, in imitation of
Christ. Weakness itself is not a virtue but the expression of a fundamental reality which must
constantly be refashioned by faith, hope and love. . . . It is rooted in the mystery of Christ. The
apostles weakness is like Christs. It is neither resignation nor passivity. It requires beaucoup
de courage and incites one to defend justice and truth. This is followed by the agonizing
question of Carlo Caretto Why is faith so bitter?
The filial reality of Jesus becomes embodied in all the monks struggles to find a way
through, but is particularly poignant in the Gethsemane-like experience of one young monk,
alone in his cell, as he sweats and ponders in turmoil the reality of the likelihood his brothers
and his own brutal deaths. He had earlier declared that he did not join the monastery to commit
collective suicide. But eventually he comes to realize that the wound of Gethsemane is the
blessing of love.3 The last supper scene which follows is made up of close-up shots of each
individual monks face, revealing their shared emotional response; in unity, they all move
through moments of laughter, joy, resignation, sorrow, pain, peace and fear. As one of my
undergraduate students commented about the scene, There is an unspoken recognition that they
must stay and this is confirmed by the readings they have listened to.
The call of the film, like all calls of beauty, grips us and invites a response from those who
encounter it, an antiphonal reply of praise for that which calls, but at the same time, one which
never satisfies that call: Our gazes, our thoughts, our words, and our songs, granted that they
all contribute to this response, fail to fulfil the task, which is measureless (2004, 13), writes
Chrtien. The most poignant aspect of beauty is that it calls forth a response of beauty itself,
which is never a mirror-image since this is not possible, and yet still an attempt to echo
something of the call itself: Beauty that is seen requires that we speak in order to respond to
it and requires that we answer for it with beauty. It bestows speech and recovers speech by
inspiring it to be beautiful in turn (2004, 11). Beauty lacks nothing, but calls to our own lack.
Chrtien notes it is the call of the sensible which Merleau-Ponty elucidates in Le Visible et
linvisible which in his words is the logos that pronounces itself silently in every sensible
thing (2004, 15).

POPE BENEDICT VXI: THE ARROW OF THE BEAUTIFUL

Let me finally now move on to Pope Benedict VIs reflections on this same theme of art, beauty
and wounding in an essay he sent to a meeting of the ecclesial movement Communion and
Liberation in 2002 entitled Wounded by the Arrow of the Beautiful. He takes the two antiphons
which introduce Psalm 44 (45) for the season of Lent and for Holy Week, pointing to strikingly
different interpretations. The psalm itself is about the wedding of the King, his beauty, his
virtues, his mission followed by a description of his bride. Pope Benedict shows that the Church
invites us to read this as a representation of Christs spousal relationship with his Church. The
third verse of the psalm states the King is the fairest of the children of men and grace is poured
upon your lips. But significantly, on the Monday of Holy Week, the Church changes the
antiphon to introduce the psalm in light of Isaiah 53:2 He had neither beauty, nor majesty,
nothing to attract our eyes, no grace to make us delight in him.
The address claims that one of the central questions which affected the Church Fathers was
whether Christ was beautiful and embedded in this question was a further query: can beauty
 WOUNDED BY THE ARROW OF BEAUTY: THE SILENT CALL OF ART 939

lead us to truth or is it in fact ugliness which leads us to truth? Not surprisingly, Ratzinger shows
that it is the former, but this is manifest in the beauty of truth which Christ displays by his
willingness to suffer, to be treated ignominiously and to die. The beautiful is thus inextricably
interconnected with pain and suffering, a stance which the Greeks were not unfamiliar with. In
the Phaedrus, for example, Plato, contemplates the encounter with beauty as the salutary
emotional shock that makes man leave his shell and sparks his enthusiasm by attracting him
to what is other than himself (Ratzinger, 2002). He has lost his original perfection and is now
perennially searching for the healing primitive form. Nostalgia and longing impel him to pursue
the quest; beauty prevents him from being content with just daily life. It causes him to suffer
(Ratzinger, 2002) The shock of beauty which creates a painful longing, as it is in Chrtien,
entails a yearning movement of ascent through nostalgic desire, but here the Christological
context takes on a new dimension as the believer feels the wound of re-discovering a longing for
what he has lost, but which is on the horizon; it is a movement of transcendent longing and the
call of beauty summons it. Ratzinger wishes to show how, in a Platonic sense, the arrow of
beauty pierces and wounds, but at the same time, gives wings and lifts towards transcendence.
Ratzinger continues by quoting from the 14th century Byzantine theologian, Nicholas
Cabasilas. Christ, the bridegroom smittens humankind with an irresistible longing; He is the one
who has placed a ray of his beauty in their eyes. The magnitude of the wound shows the arrow
which has struck and the ceaseless yearning towards the one who has inflicted the wound. This
is the central claim: the arrow of the beautiful is none other than Christ Himself who calls us
to a new way of seeing the world and longing for the truth. It is Christ who both initiates the
yearning of humanitys heart towards beauty and is Beauty Himself. Interestingly, this arrow is
often revealed through the aesthetic encounter with beauty, for the Pope refers to his experience
of listening to Bernsteins conducting of one of Bachs Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas and saying to
his companion, the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann, that anyone who has heard this, knows that
the faith is true.
Here Ratzingers claims have parallels with Schopenhauers about the source and impact of
creative genius. The artists inner perception must free itself from the sensible realm and
through ascetic practice, develop a new way of seeing reality; only then can she present it to us.
Schopenhauers notion of the artists losing of the self and assisting others to do the same,
becomes Ratzingers way of overcoming ourselves; thus in this purification of vision that is a
purification of the heart, it reveals the beautiful to us, or at least a ray of it. In this way we are
brought into the power of the truth (2002). This is not a stance against reason itself, but a
freeing of reason from its own tendency to dull and false conditioning.
One of the central objections to this position is that beauty itself might be deceptive and
illusory. In other words, the arrow of beauty leads us to discover not the truth, but the impression
of truth. Reality is ugly and falsehood is what constitutes the way of things there is no higher
truth than this. Ratzinger replies by arguing it is a new trick to suggest that over and above
ourselves there is basically nothing, so stop seeking or even loving the truth for this is the wrong
track. The only way forward out of this quandary is to reclaim the intrinsic connection between
beauty and suffering. It is in this coalescence of beauty and suffering in the Christ form that we
have some hope of knowing that it really is a new trick and nothing more substantial. For
Nietzche this was not possible. Again, in a manner surprisingly suggestive of Schopenhauer,
Ratzinger outlines how a false, dazzling and empty beauty does not bring people out of
themselves, but rather sinks them further into the grip of the Will. It stirs up desire, the will to
power, possession, craving and pleasure. But by allowing the wound of love to pierce us,
external beauty is set aside and the truth of the beautiful through suffering is experienced. The
only beauty which saves is that which aligns itself with suffering; anything else is a sham.
940 DAVID TOREVELL

CONCLUSION

There is much to offer Christian educators in Schopenhauers, Chrtiens and Pope Benedicts
insights. The brutalized and claustrophobic trappings of the modern world make it an urgent
task to offer a space which encourages a contemplative appreciation of what listening to silence
offers; students need to learn how to listen to and see the power of beauty. This space which art
creates should not be underestimated. Besides inviting a disinterested denial of the will, it also
beckons the onlooker to see in the folds of beauty an opportunity to resist the dull and flat
conditioning of the terrestrial world. As Balthasar claims, without this opportunity, the sure
light of being might well disappear, as the language of beauty becomes no longer readable by
modern minds (1989, 19; Nichols, 2007). However, Chrtiens and Pope Benedict XIs obser-
vations on the call of beauty are not easy ones for students to accept, for they entail a bodily,
fierce fight. The re-orientation of desire is tough; the lifelong yearning to seek that which has
been forgotten, painful. But, as the arrow of the beautiful pierces the hearts of those who
encounter its disquieting and uplifting presence, it also fills the lack which many students feel,
as a new kind of living becomes possible. The response which students will surely give to the
call will be a partial reflection of the goal to which they move and inevitably carry with it songs
of praise and adoration; it will, in part, be a liturgical response (Ratzinger, 2000; Torevell,
2007).
The theological turn in French phenomenology also gives students a fresh approach within
the philosophy of religion and encourages them, particularly with its emphasis on human
experience, to see beyond traditional formulations of the divine. Clearly, more research needs
to be done on how Christian educators might respond to this important French philosophical
trajectory At a time when Christian educators are looking for creative methods to attract the
attentiveness of their students, art and phenomenology present, in my view, an irresistible
call.

Notes

1 Murdoch has written extensively on the relationship between art, beauty and goodness. She draws
attention to the power of art to encourage a relinquishing of self-consciousness and self-regard and to offer a
contemplative space in which it is possible to see more clearly the artists clarification of truth: . . . the instinct
of the artist can (we hope) return again to reflectiveness and to the work of the individual imagination in its
search for truth. The endlessly various formal separateness of art makes spaces for reflection. To resume: art
cannot help, whatever its subject, beautifying and consoling (1992, 122). See, in particular, her The Sovereignty
of Good (1970) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). Murdochs emphasis on attention reflects the
concerns of this article. She contends that to attend and to look closely entails far more than just looking at.
It signals a contemplative and patient waiting on things to disclose their beauty and truth, requiring humility and
the abandonment of the ego (1970, 10304). See also Martin Soskices essay (1992) on love and attention for
further reflections on this theme.
2 At present, there is a revival of interest in the notion of the spiritual senses and Chrtien provides us with
helpful theological insights about the phenomenology of listening to works of art; note, in particular, the
excellent collection of essays on this topic in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity
(Coakley and Gavrilyuk, 2011). Art also encourages the kind of attention that Murdoch has signaled in her work
on virtue.
3 I am grateful to Gavin Flood for pointing out in his discussion of Simone Weils spirituality, how during
her stay at the Benedictine monastery of Solesmes, she began to reflect that at the moments of most intense
suffering she was able to attend to God and feel His presence most strongly, just as Christ did during his
experience at Gethsemane (2004, 51). Weil had a deep influence on Murdochs notion of attention and its
relationship to love.
 WOUNDED BY THE ARROW OF BEAUTY: THE SILENT CALL OF ART 941

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