"On Beauty"

Monday in class we discussed the poem within Zadie Smith's novel. I admit that it is very confusing and cannot present all of its meaning, but I can describe what I got from it. There were two lines that really stuck out to me, and for my interpretation of the poem--these lines are the basis of the Poet's goal in the poem and its overall meaning: "They are the damned / and so their saddness is perfect / delicate as an egg placed in your palm / Hard, it is decorated with their face." The subject of the poem is "they"--the beautiful--and by having the subject italicized we (the readers, observers, the unbeautiful) are distanced from them. We interpret them from afar, their meaning based on our observations, and their face an object of wanton desire. This desire is created by the desirous, leaving the beautiful cursed because of their appearance, form, and structure. "The beautiful know this": here we see where the "saddness" described is coming from. They are concious of their beauty and of their objectivity. Yet looking upon these lines I understand that this passage is meant almost to defend the beautiful, and since it is written by Claire, we can imagin her objectifying her own beauty by expressing that she, and those other beautiful ones, cannot help but be beautiful. The poem is asking why then must the unbeautiful be unforgiving of their "sins"? That with perfection, with the start of every snow fall, there comes unperfection, a chill. That they possess wounds--the very wounds we give them by objectifying them, damning them, and subjecting them. Just as an egg in our palm sits, they are dependant upon us. In any moment we can tip our hand vertically, letting the egg slide gently from it and shatter on the floor. Throughout this poem I could not help but think about the story of Laocoon, a man who defied the Horse created by the Greeks and then later killed by snakes. His statue came to mind for it encompassed pain, beauty, and should be looked upon at a distance, for we do not know his pain, but can only see him in this structured statue.