Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Beauty & Utility

Lets say we were to listen to a discourse on grammar versus a recitation of poetry, which one would be a preferable? The choice is subjective because different folks have different fascinations. Poetry, not unlike Grammar, has its own set of rules,conventions,etc but it also has an essential ingredient of 'taste'. (Care for a digression: Visit "A Taste for Makers")

Basically within the established rules, a poem transitions according to a poet's desire. It is governed by curiousity and wonder,whereas that of the language's grammar is governed by use and convenience. ( Vikram Seth's 'Golden Gate' is an excellent example of this)

So the choice is either Beauty or Utility and rarely both(Let me think of something thats beautiful yet useful)..

5 comments:

Primalsoup said...

Beauty appeals to one sensorially, Utility is more of a physical benefit... so never the twain shall meet?
Though, I can think of a whole lot of utility things that are beautiful, I mean they do say that beauty lies in the eyes of...
:)

Paddy said...

[Bonnie] Agreed. But in certain fields like Math, Computer Science, Religion, etc, you can interleave a fabric in such a way that there is no beauty without utility and more beauty as it is utilized...Make Sense?

G Shrivastava said...

Oh you've read Golden Gate - a friend of mine just finished reading it and I'm gonna borrow it from him. Looking fwd to reading it:-)
And hey so many things that give us aesthetic pleasure can be useful - look at home decor for examples. These rivers do meet sometimes...

Unknown said...

to me Beauty and Utility go absolutely hand in hand... maybe that's a Utopian attitude that springs from my favoritism towards "Modernism"

Paddy said...

[Gee] You'll really like it.Now I wanna read it lazing around a summer afteroon at the Golden Gate Park in San Fran..

[Anya] An Architect has to I assume. Otherwise Frank Lloys Wright would not have been what he was..