{"id":320,"date":"2014-06-01T22:15:01","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T04:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/?p=320"},"modified":"2025-01-11T01:22:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T07:22:14","slug":"angelou-and-ugliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/?p=320","title":{"rendered":"Angelou and Ugliness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philosophers always struggle with the concept of beauty.\u00a0 Defined as pleasing to behold<\/em>, the next question is pleasing to whom?<\/em>\u00a0 An old Latin proverb says that there is no accounting for taste, and I certainly understand why the black coffee that pleases me is repugnant to others.\u00a0 But if we say that beauty is simply subjective, like ones taste in food, we lose the right to pronounce something ugly.<\/p>\n

If someone were to tell me that a sunset were ugly, I would not say that he has a right to his opinion; I would say that he is wrong.\u00a0 Despite the near impossibility of articulating a complete definition of beauty, we find within ourselves a conviction that beauty is not ultimately a matter of opinion.<\/p>\n

As an example, consider this stanza from Byron\u2019s well-known \u201cShe Walks in Beauty\u201d:<\/p>\n

One shade the more, one ray the less,
\nHad half impaired the nameless grace
\nWhich waves in every raven tress,
\nOr softly lightens o\u2019er her face
\nWhere thoughts serenely sweet express,
\nHow pure, how dear their dwelling-place.<\/p>\n

One who can read English well sees immediately that Byron wrote unusually well and created a poem of great beauty describing a girl of great beauty. This is not a matter of opinion.<\/p>\n

Now consider this from Maya Angelou\u2019s \u201cMomma Welfare Roll\u201d:<\/p>\n

Too fat to whore,
\nToo mad to work,
\nSearches her dreams for the
\nLucky sign and walks bare-handed
\nInto a den of bureaucrats for
\nHer portion.
\nThey don\u2019t give me welfare.
\nI take it.<\/p>\n

Ugliness. Ugly writing about an ugly woman. If a high-school junior turned that in as homework, I would not consider her to have any unusual writing talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philosophers always struggle with the concept of beauty.\u00a0 Defined as pleasing to behold, the next question is pleasing to whom?\u00a0 An old Latin proverb says that there is no accounting for taste, and I certainly understand why the black coffee that pleases me is repugnant to others.\u00a0 But if we say that beauty is simply … Continue reading “Angelou and Ugliness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45dxY-5a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}