Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 3. Beauty and Its Appreciation
Appreciation of Beauty

Beauty in Women

In regard to beauty in women, is there something inherent in the body that we call beautiful, a well-formed shape, physiognomy, harmony of movements, etc. It seems to most men it is colour + skin + physiognomy. But there are some women who do not have these in the body and yet are attractive. Is it something in their vital that gives them this beauty?

It is something vital in some cases, something psychic in others that gives a beauty which appears in the body but is not beauty of shape, colour or texture.

Often the vital and mental character of persons who have physical beauty is not good, sometimes it is even repulsive. Many would refuse to recognise it as beautiful.

If it is vital in its origin, it need not come from beauty of mind or character; it is something in the life-force which may go with a good character but also with a bad one.

Indians hardly appreciate the beauty of the Chinese or Japanese; like Europeans, they cannot appreciate beauty in Negroes. Many Asiatics could not appreciate the beauty of European models or actresses, who are so lacking in modesty according to their conceptions.

Modesty is not part of physical beauty, that is a mental-vital element. As for physical beauty, different races have different conceptions. Indians and Europeans like curves, Chinese detest them in a woman.

An intellectual would find beauty only in an intellectual woman; an emotional person would call a woman beautiful only if she has refined tender feelings; for a Gandhian a woman would be beautiful only if she spins eight hours a day or works for Harijans.

That has nothing to do with beauty in the ordinary sense as it is beauty of intellect or beauty of character or beauty of spinning and Harijanising.

Perhaps at a certain stage of psychic development one could look at human beauty as one looks at beauty in cats or dogs — recognising the beauty without any attraction.

One can recognise and feel without any desire of possession or sexual feeling etc. That is how the artists look at beauty — they delight in it for its own sake.

Supposing people developed the faculty of seeing the layers below the skin, would not their whole conception of beauty crumble down?

Yes, probably, unless the mind reconstructed a new idea of it.

Does not the conception of beauty differ according to race, temperament and level of consciousness?

Yes.

Are not attractiveness and beauty different?

Yes.

Is there nothing constant called “beauty”?

There are two kinds of beauty. There is that universal beauty which is seen by the inner eye, heard by the inner ear etc. — but the individual consciousness responds to some forms, not to others, according to its own mental, vital and physical reactions. There is also the aesthetic beauty which depends on a particular standard of harmony, but different race or individual consciousnesses form different standards of aesthetic harmony.

18 October 1935