“How beautiful is your love” (Sg 4:10) On Beauty in the Song of Songs
Krzysztof NAPORA SCJ
Katedra Ksiąg Historycznych, Prorockich i Sapiencjalnych, Instytut Nauk Biblijnych, Wydział Teologii, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , PolandAbstract
In this article the author addresses the issue of beauty in the Song of Songs. Throughout the book, this beauty can be discovered in its multidimensional character. On the one hand, it is the formal beauty of the Song—the masterful beauty of the Hebrew poetry. On the other hand, the category of beauty emerges as one of the most important elements in the description of the poem’s protagonists: the bridegroom and the bride. They seem to invite the reader of the Song to contemplate the beauty of the beloved person and thus allow to discover yet another dimension of beauty: the beauty of their mutual love. The Song of Songs affirms the beauty resisting one-sided allegory or vulgar eroticization; the beauty that cannot be comprehended in purely aesthetic categories, but exposes its ethical dimension; the beauty appearing to be stronger than separation, the suffering of transience, even the drama of death.
Keywords:
Song of Songs, beauty, love, bridegroom, brideKatedra Ksiąg Historycznych, Prorockich i Sapiencjalnych, Instytut Nauk Biblijnych, Wydział Teologii, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland
