What is beauty?
Beauty delights the mind, body, heart, and soul. Beauty can be measured by the intensity of the delight. Extreme beauty takes your breath away and stops you in your tracks.
Put differently the true measure of beauty is love. And love can be measured in units of time. The power of love can be measured in terms of time spent thinking about its object.
A practical measure of the beauty of a poem then is the number of people who have memorized it and cherished it throughout their lives. Similarly, the relative beauty of a song could be the number of artists who have covered it.
By this metric, perhaps the most beautiful poem of all time is “Night Thoughts” by Li Bai. Written in 720 Ad during the Tang Dynasty, it is known by heart by every child born in China – whether north, south, east or west, Taiwan of mainland.
In the words of one Chinese woman “Even Mao couldn’t kill it.”
Another measure of beauty is the universality of its appeal across cultures and across time. By this metric, certainly, the music of Beethoven and the Beatles would rank very highly.
Yet another measure of beauty is economy. In the case of poetry this would mean saying more in fewer syllables. “Night Thoughts” by Li Bai scores highly here too – it is only twenty syllables. Mozart’s “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and, further afield,
Einstein’s E = mc2” are also noteworthy highlights of human culture.
The reading lists in elementary school, high school and college should consist of the most beautiful texts ever written because they are keys to hearts, minds, and souls of all those who have loved them. And they are models of economy.
This is far from the case.
Another item on the agenda for educational reformers.