Forty one years ago, a deranged Hungarian stood in front of one of the most beautiful works of the spirit which art has created. Without warning, he leapt at the marble statue and dealt it repeated blows with a hammer, smashing off the left arm, and leaving the face severely damaged. Shattered fragments of Michelangelo’s Pieta lay strewn across the floor of the Vatican before staff and shocked onlookers could react. It took more than five months just to collect and identify the various fragments – one tiny chipping being identified as the eyelid of Mary, who in the statue holds the body of the crucified Christ, her son.
Why did this man commit such a terrible act of destruction? Even given his apparent mental instability, why destroy such beauty? The principal damage to the marble was directed, not at the crucified body which she supports, but at the figure of Mary. But Michelangelo does not show us Mary’s features contorted with grief, as was customary with a portrayal of the Pieta. Instead, her features seem to embody a transcendence which lifts both her and us beyond the greatest pain of the soul which a mother – and specifically this mother – has to endure: a manifestation of beauty which for one man apparently proved unbearable.
It seems that it is not just the acceptance by Beauty of the Beast which should concern us, but also the reverse. We are at times the Beast who needs to accept a transcendent and confronting Beauty. In Afghanistan the Taliban, driven by religious fanaticism, reduced with dynamite the centuries-old serene statues of the Buddhas of Bamiyan to dust and broken rubble. Many other examples of such destruction of created beauty are provided by history. What is beautiful must, it seems, be destroyed for one reason or another. And such destruction is not limited to the created works of artists both known and unknown. An idyllic valley is flooded to make way for a giant dam. Whole forests are cut down and reduced to waste land, or for housing development. The natural world around us, the most beautiful treasure which we have in our care, is ransacked, either for its resources or in the name of a dubious progress.
It is as if the human soul is torn between that soul’s need for the experience of beauty and an equal need to destroy it. In the story of Beauty and the Beast we all recognise the inner work to which Beauty has to commit herself before she is able to accept the appearance of the Beast. But what tends to be overlooked is the equal commitment which the Beast needs to make in order to accept – and to allow to exist – the soul-healing appearance of Beauty.
The drawing is a portrait by Kahlil Gibran of his mother Camille, who stands in front of a frieze from the palace of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal depicting a wounded lioness.
The deranged Hungarian had some issue with Michelangelo's statue of Mary. Who knows what he was thinking or what he was feeling while he damaged this great artwork. He was deranged and it is difficult indeed to say he was responsible for his actions for he may not have been in his "right mind," in other words insane or at least delusional. Every second of everyday, even now, there are even greater works that are being destroyed and damage. These works of "art" are living human beings. As humans we seem to exhibit an outstanding capacity for cruelty to our own kind. This is our insanity and it has been going on for thousands of years. Is it a reflection of some type of evil within us? Not only are we destructive of our own kind but we have been quite destructive of our Mother Earth, and our animal brothers and sisters! Emma points out and is worth repeating!
ReplyDelete"What is beautiful must, it seems, be destroyed for one reason or another. And such destruction is not limited to the created works of artists both known and unknown. An idyllic valley is flooded to make way for a giant dam. Whole forests are cut down and reduced to waste land, or for housing development. The natural world around us, the most beautiful treasure which we have in our care, is ransacked, either for its resources or in the name of a dubious progress."
In spite of what many may deem to think the insanity itself is not our true nature, nor any part of it. The insanity is what eclipses our true nature. Our belief in our insane thoughts creates our unconsciousness. We do not believe in the beauty that is within us and within others. We believe in many other things, dividing the universe into good and bad, into labels and categories, friends and enemies. Our insanity lifts, and true sanity returns once we return to the wholeness that is within the core of each one of us.
Emma's mention of the attack on Michelangelo's Pieta, and Joseph's further intriguing comments about this, made me wonder: the attack was very directed, and focused not upon the figure of Christ (which was undamaged), but upon that of Mary. The man might have been judged not to to have been in his right mind, but he was evidently cognizant enough to have consciously selected his 'target'. We conclude (apparently for our own reassurance) that the man was not in possession of his faculties, and that we would never do such a thing. But we do, constantly. We turn the flimsiest of reasons into concrete justifications - 'it's in scripture', or 'it's part of our tradition', or somesuch - to attack women, to make sure they know who's running things, and Mary, who already suffers so much, is the one who lies in pieces on the floor. Our own 'beast' still needs a lot of inner work!
ReplyDeleteThank you Joseph and David. You both supplemented what I have written here.
ReplyDeleteI like to remember what Etty Hillesum wrote in her diary during the second World War about the destructiveness of human nature: "I know that those who hate do have their profound reasons for this hatred. But why would we keep on choosing the easiest and cheapest option? When my experience here (in Westerbork) is how every atom of hate, added to the world, makes this world more barren than it already is."
I can only concur with Etty, but like both Beauty and the Beast we all have to commit ourselves to the inner work. I don't believe that there is anyone on earth who does not need soul-healing in some way.