Long ago all beauty lay in the hands of women – the Muses ten­ded the Beau­ti­ful, and beside them men could at best be clev­er. The Muses were ori­gin­ally regarded as nymphs of the springs, and inspir­a­tion was the bless­ing of their welling waters. The Muses are the inspir­ing spir­its of poetry, music and dance, and their cult flour­ished on Mount Parnas­sus, around the Castali­an Spring, and on Mount Hel­ic­on, beside the springs of Aganippe and Hip­po­cre­ne. Their sanc­tu­ary is the Museion, which lives on in the mod­ern museum. Since Hesi­od we have spoken of nine Muses: Clio (Glor­i­fi­er), Muse of the epic and of his­tory, with a scroll in her hand; Euterpe (Giver of Delight), of lyric poetry, with a flute; Thalia (Good Cheer), of com­edy, with a comic mask; Mel­po­mene (Sing­er), inspirer of tragedy, with a tra­gic mask; the lyre-bear­ing Terp­si­chore (Lover of Dance), of dance; Erato (Enam­oured), pluck­ing a small lyre, of love songs; the veiled Poly­hym­nia (Rich in Hymns), of reli­gious poetry; the globe-hold­ing Urania (Heav­enly), of astro­nom­ic­al and, in gen­er­al, of didact­ic poetry; and Cal­li­ope (Fair-Voiced), with her writ­ing tab­let, of hero­ic poetry. They whis­per the right thoughts to mor­tals, they give inspir­a­tion, they aid the work of cre­ation.

Could it be that by now the moun­tain springs have run dry? For the genres them­selves seem out­dated, and if there is no one to cul­tiv­ate them, the Muses surely with­draw and grow invis­ible. Whom would they bless with inspired moments?

Has the seat of the Muses of heav­enly inspir­a­tion been taken by the scaly-headed, bronze-handed and golden-winged, fear­some Gor­gons? They are cer­tainly not the inspirers of the fine arts. Art seems to be cast­ing off its clas­sic­al roles, and today the ugly often tri­umphs. And the abuse of the beau­ti­ful is cer­tain death to the Muses. Beauty seems to be dying, and man seems to be drown­ing. It is hard to speak of aes­thet­ics in the twenty-first cen­tury, for beauty, ambi­val­ently, at once seems to be van­ish­ing and yet seeps into our every­day lives – only now as tabloid beauty.

‘If poetry was the philo­sophy of the ancient age, then per­haps philo­sophy is the poetry of our own age – said Alex­an­dre Vinet (1797–1847) – and this is a new meth­od of regain­ing free­dom.’ Let us put beauty and hap­pi­ness into this for­mula – if the hap­pi­ness of the past was beauty, will the beauty of the present per­haps be hap­pi­ness? It would be an all but ideal situ­ation…

Where do we stand today? Although man’s desire for beauty seems to be a need graf­ted into his heart at the very begin­ning, he still sins against the god of beauty in so many base ways. The ancients held the good and the true to be the neces­sary com­pan­ions of the beau­ti­ful – this was the holy trin­ity of the clas­sic­al age. Act, cre­ate, increase! – so speaks the down-to-earth spir­it of the Reform Era, and what is left today? Buy, eat and be? Grow stu­pid, enjoy and obey? No won­der the Muses have no wish to be the inspirers of this spir­it of the age.

Back to the beau­ti­ful! Back to the simple, back to the pure! ‘Everything that is in any way beau­ti­ful is beau­ti­ful in itself and per­fect in itself, and praise is no part of it. Praise makes it neither poorer nor bet­ter. … Does what is truly beau­ti­ful have any need of praise? … Does an emer­ald lose any of its worth if it is not extolled? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a song, a stone, a flower, a sap­ling?’ – asks Mar­cus Aure­li­us in his Con­fes­sions (IV.20, trans. László Vajda).

The mod­ern age has dethroned nat­ur­al, artist­ic and moral beauty. Now that the ugly has usurped power, the time has come for the res­tor­a­tion of the meta­phys­ic­al Beau­ti­ful! We are mov­ing not back­wards along the hori­zont­al, but upwards, towards heav­en! For the ulti­mate, divine Beauty is human­ity’s uni­ver­sal interest, which can enfold everything in the magic­al light of har­mony… This will be meta­phys­ic­al aes­thet­ics, the tri­umph of Beauty.