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Sparkle (1)
Dante first saw Beatrice when he was 9 and she was 8 (or so). He arrived at a party at her home with his parents and she was there. They didn't even speak. In the Vita Nuova Dante says that at that moment he knew: "Behold, a deity stronger than I; who coming, shall rule over me." He saw her two more times in the streets of Florence, never really speaking. She married someone else and so did he. When Beatrice's husband died, Dante mourned for her. She died when she was only 24. Dante devoted the rest of his life to writing something worthy of her. The Divine Comedy is a pretty good memorial.
Plato and Aristotle both say that of all our senses, sight is singularly prized. The sight of a beautiful thing is analogous to understanding some perfect truth. Sight, they believed, was akin to knowledge.
But, further, the sight of beautiful things incites motion. Beauty invokes desire.
We may want the beautiful thing to be for us. I see a chocolate eclair and I desire that it be mine. And then I reach out and take it. But the object of my love then no longer exists, except in my belly. Sometimes we do this with people. We possess the other and, in so doing, what we loved no longer exists. We've consumed them.
Or maybe we want the beautiful thing just to be. We desire its continued existence even if that means I can never really have it or experience it. This is how Dante had to love Beatrice. He wills her happiness even though it means he can never actively enjoy it with her.
Or maybe we get to have both. We desire that the thing be for us and we understand that for this to be so, we must also desire that it just continue to be. The best of loves are like this. We will the happiness of our beloved in and of themselves, and they, loving us in return, allow us to participate in their joy.
Dante spent his life trying to make himself worthy for a woman he wouldn't truly meet until after death (if we we're to believe anything the man wrote). Her beauty at the age of 8 moved him to become a better person, a better writer, a better lover. And this is ultimately why "eyesight" (or however you might approach beauty) is to be prized. It brings us, perhaps unknowingly, to the highest of truths. It brings us to love.
