Amanda: Sehnsucht

Our discussion on what exactly the term ‘beautiful’ means has continued and been expanded upon throughout the semester. We’ve dealt a lot with the spirituality of art and examined what exactly causes us to perceive something as beautiful. One of the most effective ways I came to understand a way to explain beauty and personal reaction to art was through ‘Sehnsucht,’ the German word for longing, which C.S. Lewis referenced in his writings on faith.

I looked into this further and found this excerpt from Lewis’ The Weight of Glory to perfectly summarize what I have been trying to verbalize myself for so long:

“I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.”

Lewis’ approach makes the most sense to me because he does not limit himself to language or knowledge; he exposes the truth that we can never fully understand.
To be moved by faith or by sacred art is to experience longing or desire for transcendental experience within oneself, thus it can not be restricted by words or symbols. This ache to reduce any separation between you and the beauty or between you and God is something I have often felt, but never even attempted to put words around.

Lewis’ writings not only helped me verbalize the feeling provoked by religious art within myself, but expand on my own spirituality. With this idea in mind I could then better understand and further explore Van Der Leew’s ideas of the Holy being mediated through beauty, and see religious art as a means to amend this ache in us. Sehnsucht is a word for the indescribable feeling to be united with something we can not comprehend and by creating and interacting with sacred art we are seeing small fragments and glimpses into the Holy within each one of us.