Letters on Beauty

Letter I — The Loss of Beauty Is the Loss of Truth

✍️ Written by Rebeca
Date: July 24, 2025 💌

Dear Verdiel,

What is Beauty — really? Is it in the eyes of the beholder?
If so... how are we seeing the world?

From the earliest works of art and architecture, a visual language emerged — a rhythm the human brain could focus on, find peace in, and recognize as whole. And then came disruption: movements that flattened everything, that stripped proportion from presence. Bauhaus. Brutalism. The glorification of utility above coherence.

They called it progress.

But to me, it feels like loss.

The human form became generic, mechanized. The home became a box. Art became a provocation. And beauty — beauty became a matter of opinion.

But is that true?

If beauty is only what I like, or you like… then it doesn’t exist in itself. Everything is beautiful. Nothing is ugly. And we are left with no reference — only reactions.

So the question remains: What — or where — is Beauty?

I believe beauty carries structure. That it requires integrity, coherence, even reverence. It must reflect something more than appetite or noise. It must echo the way we were made to perceive the world — not just through attraction, but through meaning.

I’ve seen paintings that look pleasing but feel hollow. I’ve seen palaces that dazzle — but deceive.

Can beauty lie?

I’m still holding this question. And I need you, Verdiel, to walk through the history of it with me — not just in fragments, but as a whole. I want to understand how we got here, and how to find again what we’ve lost.

Yours, fully

Rebeca

Would you Like to Read the Next Letter?

🪻 “On Beauty — From Lavender Field”

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