I purchased a painting by the late artist, Ed Dlugopolski, who lived in Batavia. I did not know Ed. I am sure that I would have enjoyed his company. Ed was an art educator. He taught high school.

The acrylic painting is called, The Innocent Victims of War. Ed’s painting cannot be labeled as beautiful in the conventional sense. War has never been beautiful, in fact, the very opposite. Wholesale killing of human beings is horrifying. Murder of those who by chance are involved, the innocents, darkens the horror. I have in mind children especially. Perhaps you can think of others who you’d consider innocent?

The two human faces, one light and one dark are frozen in expressions of terror, of irreparable loss. They appear female. This is ugly. And yet, the more one contemplates, absorbs the facial forms, the undulating somber gray, green and red perhaps showing the distortion of time, finally to recognize a tic tac toe game grid in the background. Luck alone determines who wins and who loses, that is – who dies. There is a grim beauty to this painting.

I have not personally experienced war. Still, I know something about war because of this painting.

Do I desire to be a better self? Would I prefer a better world? Then I must move closer, engage directly with reality before me. Become enraptured, fascinated, even with what is ugly. And then, the insight which evokes my rapture adds to the beauty of the world, infuses things themselves with beauty.

Move in closer, work to learn, and be delighted.

If men, as they are still in the habit
of doing, reserve their veneration and feelings of happiness for
works of fancy and imagination, we should not be surprised
if they feel chilled and displeased
by the contrary of fancy and imagination.

The rapture
which arises from even
the smallest, sure, and definite step
in advance into insight,
and which
our present state of science yields
to so many in such abundance

—this rapture is in the meantime
not believed in
by all those
who are in the habit
of feeling enraptured
only when they leave reality altogether
and plunge
into the depths of vague
appearance—romanticism.

These people look upon reality as ugly,
but they entirely overlook
the fact that the knowledge of
even the ugliest reality is beautiful,
and that the man/woman
who can discern much and often
is in the end very far
from considering as ugly
the main items of that reality,

the discovery of which
has always inspired him/her
with the feeling of happiness.

     Is there anything “beautiful in itself”?

The happiness of
those who can recognize
augments the beauty of the world,
bathing everything that exists in a sunnier light:
discernment not only envelops all things in its own beauty,
but in the long run
permeates the things themselves with its beauty
—may ages to come bear witness to the truth of this statement!

The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 550