Have you noticed that most colleges don't require or perhaps offer Humanities anymore like Ancient and Modern History, Foreign Languages, Religion? Rollo May points out that ancient Greece was where colleges began with the sole purpose of pondering the mysteries of life to enrich our humanity, but look at what has happened to college education. He didn't see the purpose of them, either, until, suffering a period of mental apathy at age 21, he encounters a field of poppies while walking. Staring at them, the curtain on his mind lifts and he realizes he has been missing the beauty of life to give him purpose and peace.

It is harder and harder to be an artist these days. We train our children for jobs, but not to know themselves and their souls. Can we hope our religious institutions will do this when many parents are confused spiritually themselves? May doesn't even mention them, though. Perhaps because most have their own emphasis and not a wide choice of Humanities. As a poet I understand the need for beauty and the freedom to express it. This book's unqualified endorsement for the enjoyment of beauty in our lives confirms my passion for writing and inspires me to new depths of understanding.

Contents of Book

With four sections and thirteen chapters in this 243-page autobiographical work, May also shares sixteen of his own sketches throughout that help us to understand his experiences. They are of surprisingly good quality in detail of poppies, busts, Greek scenes, mythological figures and a gypsy girl that only an artist could observe. Some of the titles of chapters are “Beauty Has Kept Me Alive,” “Beauty and Death (observations of patriotism),” “The Creative Mind,” “Ecstasy and Violence,” and “Will Beauty Save the World? (Dostoyevsky once commented that it would).”

Favorite Passage?

Give me a break! I don’t think there’s any part of this fascinating journey through the Great Artist’s making of a philosopher that is boring or too scholarly. May is impressive that he can relate to this reader so well, has astute insights for me to ponder and also from other great thinkers like Friedrich von Schiller who prior to the nineteenth century penned the eloquent “Letters of the Aesthetic Education of Man”:

We actually create beauty out of the endeavor to come to terms with the paradox on one hand of freedom and on the other of destiny. Our limits come from being both nature and spirit, finite and infinite, objective and subjective. No one knows this struggle better than the artists…” pp 31

I also must mention his gratitude to Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics, who based his “Uncertainty Principle” on the discovery that truth is recognized by the splendor of its beauty. Beauty, May observes, is not passive, although our busy culture doesn’t understand that for it has no time to listen or appreciate the beingness of beauty. Beauty is not seen in emotions, that’s why Greek art has survived. They showed the inner beauty or soul of a person in two ways: one is the harmony of parts fitting together, which Aristotle liked, and two that it is the eternal splendor of God or the One shining through the many forms of beauty, which Plato liked. Actually it’s pornographic when emotions are the basis of beauty!

Guess that leaves a lot of actors stripped in more than one way, huh? He did, however, mention Ingrid Bergman of Casablanca and Greta Garbo of Camille (Ninochka and Anna Karenina, too) as film beauties. Interesting how both of them were in black and whites so you wouldn’t know if they wore make-up. Most people today think they need to wear lots of goo on their faces to appear beautiful, a belief perpetuated by the cosmetics industry and Hollywood. As May points out, beauty is not attained by progress. Personally I’d rather not look like a clown. (I just don’t need more coloring, but I realize some women wouldn’t look clownish.)

Last Words

One haunting image in this book was of the author gazing at a mountain for a half hour. At first he just sees a beautiful mountain, but after a while it looks more abstract and out of focus. Then it at last becomes three-dimensional and real, part of the universe like he is. He is not separate from it, not simply an observer, but one with it and nature. I would like to try this. When do we ever take the time to really see something? Usually our eyes are everywhere at once or on a computer screen. I suggest you try it, too. You might first check out this intimate autobiography of May's to really motivate you, though.

I’ll leave you with this lovely poem, one of many shared and commented on in the book, which was created by Robert Nathan. Enjoy!

So beauty passes ever out of reach,
Save to the heart where happiness is home;
There beauty walks, wherever it may be,
And paints the sunset on a quiet sea.


I reviewed this book my first week as a member of Epinions and had two ratings, but now in rewritten splendiferous beauty, may the truth of its usefulness be known. A full list of the participants and their rewritten reviews can be found at http://www.epinions.com/user-eplovejoy. My thanks go to eplovejoy for this magnanimous service and scmrak, the instigator of the bevy of beauty you find there.

Recommended: Yes