Iris Murdoch on how nature and art allow us to "unself," Ursula K. Le Guin's playful and poignant letter-poem about why we read, and a life-straw

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [Brain Pickings]( [Welcome] Dear {NAME}, welcome to this week's edition of the [brainpickings.org]( newsletter by Maria Popova. If you missed Wednesday's very special edition — 13 life-learnings from 13 years of Brain Pickings — you can catch up [right here](. And if you are enjoying this labor of love, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( – for thirteen years, I have been spending innumerable hours and tremendous resources on it each week, and every little bit of support helps enormously. If you already donate: THANK YOU. [An Occasion for Unselfing: Iris Murdoch on Imperfection as Integral to Goodness and How the Beauty of Nature and Art Leavens Our Most Unselfish Impulses]( [murdoch_sovereigntyofgood.jpg?fit=320%2C488]( To recognize that [there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives]( is to step outside the self, beyond its particular conceptions of beauty — which includes, of course, moral beauty — and walking beside it with humble, nonjudgmental curiosity about the myriad other selves afoot on their own paths, propelled by their own ideals of the Good. Such recognition requires what the great moral philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919–February 8, 1999) termed unselfing — a difficult, triumphant act for which, Murdoch argues in her 1970 masterpiece [The Sovereignty of Good]( ([public library]( nature and art uniquely train us. [IrisMurdoch_IdaKar_NationalPortraitGallery.jpg?resize=680%2C687] Dame Iris Murdoch by Ida Kar (National Portrait Gallery) A century and a half after Emerson observed that [“the question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to thinking of the foundations of things,”]( Murdoch defines what we commonly call beauty as “an occasion for ‘unselfing’” — an occasion most readily experienced in our communion with nature and our contemplation of art. She writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Beauty is the convenient and traditional name of something which art and nature share, and which gives a fairly clear sense to the idea of quality of experience and change of consciousness. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care. [artyoung_treesatnight16.jpg] Art from [Trees at Night]( 1926. (Available [as a print]( Oliver Sacks would come to echo the sentiment decades later in his observation that meeting nature on its own terms and timescales broadens our perspective by effecting [“a detachment from the timescale, the urgencies, of daily life.”]( But this unselfing, Murdoch cautions, cannot come by through a straining of the will, for the will is a clenching of the very self which true beauty decondition; rather, it comes as a gladsome relaxing of the spirit, of our essential nature, into the shared pulse of existence: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]A self-directed enjoyment of nature seems to me to be something forced. More naturally, as well as more properly, we take a self-forgetful pleasure in the sheer alien pointless independent existence of animals, birds, stones and trees. [rackham_tempest20.jpg?resize=680%2C970] Art by Arthur Rackham for [a rare 1926 edition]( of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. (Available [as a print]( This “self-forgetful pleasure” calls to mind Jeanette Winterson’s wonderfully paradoxical notion of [active surrender]( as the crucible of our joy in art and the fulcrum for art’s transforms power over the self. But while there is a distinct difference between how nature and art each effect unselfing, Murdoch argues that what separates great art from the bad and the mediocre is precisely this capacity for stripping down the self rather than inflating the ego — a notion evocative of Tolstoy’s insistence that [“a real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.”]( Murdoch writes of this dissolution of the self in the presence of great art: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The experience of art is more easily degraded than the experience of nature. A great deal of art, perhaps most art, actually is self-consoling fantasy, and even great art cannot guarantee the quality of its consumer’s consciousness. However, great art exists and is sometimes properly experienced and even a shallow experience of what is great can have its effect. Art, and by “art” from now on I mean good art, not fantasy art, affords us a pure delight in the independent existence of what is excellent. Both in its genesis and its enjoyment it is a thing totally opposed to selfish obsession. It invigorates our best faculties and, to use Platonic language, inspires love in the highest part of the soul. It is able to do this partly by virtue of something which it shares with nature: a perfection of form which invites unpossessive contemplation and resists absorption into the selfish dream life of the consciousness. [Lia_1200.jpg?resize=680%2C680] Art by Lia Halloran for [The Universe in Verse: The Astronomy of Walt Whitman](. (Available [as a print]( And yet, Murdoch argues, any real understanding of goodness is necessarily an embrace of imperfection — something philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in many ways Murdoch’s only worthy intellectual heir, would argue brilliantly a generation later in her incisive case for [the intelligence of emotions](. Murdoch writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The concept of Good… is a concept which is not easy to understand partly because it has so many false doubles, jumped-up intermediaries invented by human selfishness to make the difficult task of virtue look easier and more attractive: History, God, Lucifer, Ideas of power, freedom, purpose, reward, even judgment are irrelevant. Mystics of all kinds have usually known this and have attempted by extremities of language to portray the nakedness and aloneness of Good, its absolute for-nothingness. One might say that true morality is a sort of unesoteric mysticism, having its source in an austere and unconsoled love of the Good. When Plato wants to explain Good he uses the image of the sun. The moral pilgrim emerges from the cave and begins to see the real world in the light of the sun, and last of all is able to look at the sun itself. […] We may also speak seriously of ordinary things, people, works of art, as being good, although we are also well aware of their imperfections. Good lives as it were on both sides of the barrier and we can combine the aspiration to complete goodness with a realistic sense of achievement within our limitations. [margaretcook_leavesofgrass13.jpg?resize=680%2C854] Art by Margaret C. Cook from a [rare 1913 edition]( of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. (Available [as a print]( With an eye to the legacy of the Romantics, who married nature and art in [their model of happiness and transcendence]( Murdoch returns to the notion of unselfing and the beautiful tessellation of possibility and limitation that defines our nature: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness. “Good is a transcendent reality” means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful. [The Sovereignty of Good]( is an immensely insightful read in its entirety. Complement this particular fragment with Robinson Jeffers on [nature and moral beauty]( and Oliver Sacks on [the healing power of gardens]( then revisit Murdoch on [art as a force of resistance to tyranny]( [the key to great storytelling]( and her uncommonly beautiful [love letters](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving I pour tremendous time, thought, heart, and resources into Brain Pickings, which for thirteen years has remained free and ad-free, and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy, stimulation, and consolation in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [Ursula K. Le Guin’s Playful and Profound Letter-Poem to Children About the Power of Books and Why We Read]( [avelocityofbeing_cover-1.jpg?fit=320%2C427] When asked in [the Proust Questionnaire]( about his idea of perfect happiness, David Bowie answered simply: “Reading.” But the question of why we read unlatches as many responses as there are flavors of human happiness. Some memorable and poetic answers have come from [Hermann Hesse]( [Rebecca Solnit]( [Neil Gaiman]( [C.S. Lewis]( and [Proust himself](. A thoroughly original and most delightful one comes from the irreplaceable Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) in her contribution to [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader]( ([public library]( — which, as far as I am aware, was her last published piece of original writing at the time the book alighted on the world. Written in verse, in the voice of an aged dragon — “second cousin once removed” of Smaug, Tolkien’s iconic antagonist from The Hobbit — and illustrated by her longtime friend and collaborator Charles Vess, the letter-poem emanates Le Guin’s signature warm wisdom, syncopating the playful and the profound. [CharlesVess_UrsulaKLeGuin.jpg?resize=680%2C993] Original art by Charles Vess for Ursula K. Le Guin’s contribution to [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader]( edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Zoe Bedrick. [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Dear Reader, Most dragons don’t know how to read. They hiss and fume and guard their hoard. A tasty knight is what they need For dinner (they spit out the sword), Then go to sleep on heaps of treasure. They’ve no use for the written word. But I learned early to take pleasure In reading tales and poetry, And soon I knew that I preferred Reading a book to fighting knights. I lived on apple pie and tea, Which a kind lady made for me, And all my days and half my nights Were spent in reading story-books, A life more thrilling than it looks. Now that I’m old and cannot see To read, the lady’s youngest child Comes every day to read to me, A cheerful child named Valentine. We’re both as happy as can be Among the treasures I have piled In heaps around my apple tree. No other dragon watches curled Around such riches as are mine, My Word-hoard, my dear Library: For every book contains a world!        Yours truly,        Bedraug (Smaug’s Second Cousin Once Removed) For more tastes of [A Velocity of Being]( — a labor of love eight years in the making, with all proceeds benefiting our local public library system (lest we forget, Le Guin herself passionately championed [the sacredness of public libraries]( — savor select letters by [Alain de Botton]( [Jacqueline Woodson]( and [Jane Goodall]( then revisit Le Guin on [literature as the operating instructions for life]( [writing as falling in love]( [the power of storytelling to transform and redeem]( and her [timeless hymn to time](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( [The Weighing]( [janehirshfield_beauty.jpg?fit=320%2C483]( “All you have is what you are, and what you give,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in a philosophical novel contemplating [suffering and getting to the other side of pain](. “If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me,” W.H. Auden wrote in a [philosophical poem]( contemplating the courage to love more, to give more, in the face of even the most heartbreaking and elemental disparity of passions. Perhaps the deepest measure of our character, of our very humanity, is how much we go on giving when what we most value is taken from us — when a loved one withholds their love, when the world withdraws its mercy. That is what Jane Hirshfield — herself a rare poet with a philosopher’s eye to existence, and an ordained Buddhist — explores in her stunning poem “The Weighing,” originally published in 1994, later included in her soul-salving poetry collection [The Beauty]( ([public library]( and read here by astrophysicist and [poetic thinker]( Janna Levin: [c6bd9f16-96a7-4139-a8b7-3a927f281d72.png]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]THE WEIGHING by Jane Hirshfield The heart’s reasons seen clearly, even the hardest will carry its whip-marks and sadness and must be forgiven. As the drought-starved eland forgives the drought-starved lion who finally takes her, enters willingly then the life she cannot refuse, and is lion, is fed, and does not remember the other. So few grains of happiness measured against all the dark and still the scales balance. The world asks of us only the strength we have and we give it. Then it asks more, and we give it. For more of Hirshfield’s resuscitory poetics, savor her [wisdom on creativity]( and her poems [“Optimism”]( and [“On the Fifth Day,”]( then revisit Janna Levin reading [“A Brave and Startling Truth”]( by Maya Angelou, [“Hymn to Time”]( by Ursula K. Le Guin, and [“The More Loving One”]( by W.H. Auden. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving I pour tremendous time, thought, heart, and resources into Brain Pickings, which for thirteen years has remained free and ad-free, and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy, stimulation, and consolation in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. 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