Der Trost der Schönheit

Finding comfort. In a world that can be so overwhelming, frightening, and demanding. Finding comfort in the experience of beauty, because, as Gabriele von Arnim states, it is nothing less than self-preservation. “I need beauty. The comfort of beauty. Because when I see, hear, read, and feel beauty, I believe in possibilities. In paths, spaces, somersaults.” The comfort of beauty is a vibrant blend of autobiographical and essayistic storytelling: not a cultural history that seeks to confine its subject with theory, but a literary quest for traces. Gabriele von Arnim explores the forms and effects of what we call beautiful; the happiness and the darker sides of sensitivity. The search leads back to childhood, to a girl from a coolly run household who must first learn to feel in order to perceive beauty – if only for a comforting moment – in all its finite fullness. Following the Spiegel bestseller “Life is a Temporary State,” this is a new moving account from within. A book that broadens the perspective on the world around us and its transience, encouraging resilience in the face of ambivalence.