What Art Can Do
Aspen, Colorado. 2021 Photo by Ellen Blum Barish
I was in Louisiana the first time it happened.
My newspaper team had just earned an editorial award at a publishing convention in New Orleans. The staff was celebrating by ordering a round of Hurricane cocktails at a local hotspot. It was my first business trip away from my children - who I left in the capable hands of my husband - and I was giddy with renewed freedom. The drinks hadn’t yet arrived but the combination of my mood and our news mixed with city’s architectural charms and the warm air whisked me into an elevated, dizzying state of overwhelming joy.
A decade later, it happened again in Colorado.
When I entered the kitchen of a family member’s new home, through the windows, the mountains were framed in a spectacular light. I was overcome by the three-dimensional beauty of the view. Tears spilled from my eyes. My legs went wobbly. I felt like I could faint. It took a few minutes to gather myself back together, but I never forgot that moment.
Turns out there is a name for these body-mind-spirit responses to beauty - Stendhal Syndrome. Stendahl was a French author who was awe-inspired after visiting the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence in the early 1800s.
He wrote, “I was in a sort of ecstasy….absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty… I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations … everything spoke vividly to my soul… I had palpitations of the heart… life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”
Turns out there’s scientific evidence that the cerebral areas involved in emotional response can become stimulated during exposure to great beauty in nature or art. I’ve heard people express this in response to paintings, film, poetry, stories, music, food and even color.
While these peak experiences revolve around the five senses, writers are in the unique position to reconjure them with words. We can be magicians, bringing these back to experience again and again.
As Proust did for French madeleines.
As abstract expressionist Jackson Pollack’s paintings do for my husband.
As the films “The Snowman” and “Totoro” did for my daughters when they were young.
I urge you to recall your own Stendahl moment. Reclaim it in words so you can turn to it when you need it most.
Photo by Ellen Blum Barish
Stendhal Syndrome
Swooning is so 1817. But I can say truthfully, it happened,
this century, in the Uffizi. It happened.
Tears, even. I know. I thought
I was past that. I thought we all were.
Everyone cringes at words like transport,
ecstasy. I was drunk, your honour, drunk on paint -
no, drunk on charcoal and paper,
those only. Or the echo of prayer. Struck
dumb and ringing like a cuffed head, a bell,
a gong, trembling, concussed, a pulsing
tuning fork, thrumming the same note
as all the others, overcome by the marks of the master's
hand, this last sketch too much, the straw, just
grey and black on yellowed paper, just perfect
love, caught, still breathing, one radiant face
among thousands, full-on felling me still.
Melinda Smith
Coming Up
Spaces still left for:
“The Jewish Spirit of Hope,” a single session online workshop. Ritualwell. Wednesday, October 23. 11 am (CT)
“The Dig: Memoir as Personal Archeology,” CG Jung Center, single session (online). November 2, 2024. 10 am to noon.