Secondary Kinds Of Beauty Analysis

The process of gazing at "secondary kinds of beauty" like physical beauty of a boy such as Tadzio, and it is a process, means reaching a place where one can see pure Beauty. Weil notes that "he will finally arrive at the center of the labyrinth. And there God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God" (Weil, 164). Obviously one is not literally eaten and digested by God, rather one climbs the ladder of love through beginning by gazing at secondary kinds of beauty with a lower case b, like Tadzio and eventually he becomes beautiful himself, he sees Beauty, he protects thing all around him that before he saw as ordinary. He has in fact changed by simple beauty in the world. Although gazing begins with looking at physical beauty, Weil says it ends in and means much more. She says "The longing to love the beauty of the world in a human being is essentially the longing for the Incarnation" (Weil, 171). While it may not be the literal longing for the Incarnation, as Plato says, it is a longing for something more, for Beauty in its pure form. She also says "it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn" (Weil, 171). Aschenbach yearns for more than Tadzio, he knows it will never be reciprocated from Tadzio, yet …show more content…
One can be inspired to create beauty, one can become more beautiful themselves or one can begin to notice more ordinary things surrounding them, such as a less well loved poem and thus seek to preserve it and protect it. When one gazes upon a beautiful person, one seeks to preserve and protect it, to be near it and one becomes inspired by it to create beauty themselves and to perpetuate the flow of beauty out into the world. The gaze is only the beginning when it comes to beauty, but it is a beginning the holds a magnificent amount of power and