What Is Aestheticism?
As a movement, aestheticism stood against utilitarian views of art. Art should not be useful (think the Preface of Dorian Gray), but rather live in the realm of beauty alone. Productivity? That was part of industrialism and should have no place in art.
In a philosophy that’s furthered and foiled in The Picture of Dorian Gray, life itself becomes a work of art. Better to find yourself the way Walter Pater framed it: “to burn always with this hard, gemlike flame” than to devolve like Dorian, who appeared to be beautiful but in fact was using beauty as a front and a tool to live a destructive, ugly life.
One aesthetic poet you might recognize is W.B. Yeats. His Lake Isle of Innisfree is beautiful from beginning to end. Well, except those “pavements grey”—a reference to the unloveliness of industrialism. Beauty is the antidote, bringing peace to the “deep heart’s core.”
At Tweetspeak, while we won’t say productivity has no place in a life, we lean towards beauty both in art and life. Along with Yeats, we love a world where “midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow.”
Poetry Prompt: Color Palette
Stir a little beauty into a poem by calling on color. Whether your poem deals with a hard or comforting theme, paint it beautiful with one or more colors.
Sample Color Poem
Vermilion
The words in my house
were flat,
one syllable,
hard beginnings
or endings,
easy to line up–
like wooden dominoes–
easy to use, remember.
I spent years
trying to replace them
with a fluency of crimson
indigo emerald lapis
vermilion (how I loved
vermilion when I found it).
And still I haunt
Neruda Akhmatova
Darwish’s girl, her spirit
transparent as apricots in March,
looking for—what?
Something rounder
than what I was given,
something beyond black and white,
something like blown red glass.
—L.L. Barkat
Photo by Markus Spiske, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.
See A Is for Azure, the alphabet colors book!
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- Poetry Prompt: My Poem is an Oasis - August 26, 2024
Joshua C. Frank says
This reminds me of two poems I’ve written likening music to color:
Ode to the Cello
Fingered strings upon the cello
Vibrate by the moving bow.
Autumn tones in red and yellow
Echo from the to and fro
Through the eight-shaped box’s hollow,
Out the narrow, curving holes.
Oaken humming sounds must follow
Movements of the bow that rolls.
Violins sing high with tension,
Flutes all tweet like chirping birds,
Horn sounds bubble in suspension,
Clarinets speak notes like words,
Yet my ears prefer the cello
Over winds and higher strings.
None can sound as rich and mellow
As the notes the cello sings!
Synesthesia
The violin plays shades of blues
The viola moans its tones of oak
The cello hums rich autumn hues
The colors rise in curves like smoke
The piano plucks its bubble notes
Myriad colors float and pop
Each horn, an orange circle floats
The flutes shoot out their dark blue dots
The circles vibrate till they stop
Harmonious colors fill my thoughts