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Can't you tell? I cynically look at beauty. I appreciate it, but know everything beautiful usually ends up dying or disappearing. So, I always take that into account.

I think that cynicism is a very knowledgeable position, but it can be a somewhat self-protective position. I guess you might counter me and say, "Well, optimism can also be very self-protective because you don't want to see how quickly things can be deflated." But in a way, I guess I believe that wishing for good things to be the case is always the prelude to good things being the case. It's not likely to be the case that good political situations can come about if there aren't people wishing that good situations come about. And if what cynicism does is sabotage -- there's a Latin statement that Beckett loved that says: "Where you are worth nothing, there you desire nothing."

On Beauty and Being Just By Elaine Scarry Princeton University Press, 134 pages Nonfiction Buy On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry

Not to go into my psychology, but I became a cynic after I was run down by a truck 10 years ago. I now know that a truck can always come at any time. Even worse, just 'cause you get struck once doesn't mean a truck can't run you down again. Cynicism is self-protection.

That's certainly true. It's funny because what's a little startling is that our starting places are kind of the same. I've had the good fortune not to be hit by a truck --

You're not missing anything!

I know -- believe me, I can immediately feel that. I did work on physical pain for a long time ["The Body in Pain"]. And in part I worked on it because I certainly wanted to attend to it before the world sent a truck and harmed me directly. One of the things the book starts out by simply saying is that beauty is not guilty of the political injustices it's been accused of.

And it's not just that beauty is neutral with respect to justice. Beauty is, actually, very much leading us to justice. So by this account, it would be my vision of things that we are able to create a world in which caring about beauty also leads to a diminution of injury.

And the word injury and the word injustice are the same word. And I try to put forth a number of arguments to show that Plato was right, and many other classical philosophers were right when they said that beauty is a call on us to create something better. And surely what that better thing would be is a world where people don't get injured by trucks.

But don't you think that justice is a human conceit?

Well, I certainly think that justice is a human construct. (That's probably what you mean.) It isn't going to take place unless we willfully make a set of arrangements that bring it about.

So as a cynic I would say that more often than not the unjust rules.

That's certainly true. A tremendous labor seems to be involved in having the just rule. But, couldn't you be said to be guilty of laziness?

In what way?

The fact that the odds are against you doesn't really relieve you of the responsibility of trying to make the world better. The fact that you perceive that the unjust often rules only makes you a cynic if you give up. Whereas if you're a cultural critic, it means you haven't given up, doesn't it?

I think I believe in karma more than I believe in justice and injustice. And it never dawns on me that I should make the world a better place. Maybe it's just because I live in Manhattan.

[Bowman laughs. Scarry doesn't.]

I just don't know if you're being completely straight. It seems to me that someone in your position can't hold a view that things will happen of their own will.

[Embarrassed] Well, I didn't mean to reveal too much. Beauty does that to you.

It's true. It's absolutely true.

So you teach this -- beauty?

I teach a graduate seminar.

What is the general age of your students?

Well, because they're graduate students many of them are very young. Maybe 22 to 27. What's the import of that question?

I'm 41. I was more optimistic when I was in my 20s. I probably would have looked at beauty differently then.

OK, here's a plan. I think if you take more time to look at beauty, you'll recover all your strength.

OK.

Beauty restores your trust in the world. During this past 13 years I've been working on a big project about nuclear weapons and the fact that the current military arrangements we have are not compatible with democracy. The more I work on that, the more it happens that I need to read poems. And work my garden. Beauty restores your trust in the world.

That strikes a chord. I review a lot of records and there's a tendency to get caught up in just being a cog in the publicity machine. Then suddenly you hear a record that comes out of nowhere, and it's beautiful. [Pause.] I can imagine there's some guy who scouts out beautiful women for a modeling agency who's jaded about beauty. Then suddenly, a beautiful woman comes out of nowhere and walks down the street and he falls to his knees.

I like your description. What you say is true. You are sort of front-and-center working with beautiful objects. And so it does have that liability that it can desensitize you. But you don't sound that way. I bet we'll go away from this interview thinking opposite thoughts of each other. You'll think that I'm a cynic and I'll think you're actually quite touched with the beautiful.

Yes! No! I mean, you're not really a cynic, right?

Oh no. Not in a million years.
salon.com | Nov. 9, 1999

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