Immortal Beauty

   One of the main themes throughout the story of Susanna was the idea of beauty and how it could could provoke acts of cruelty by the very people who are supposed to be the best of us all. The beauty that is the focus point in Susanna's story is physical beauty with her underlying moral beauty. When reading this story side by side with Wallace Steven's Peter Quince at the Clavier, I found that Wallace focused on a different type of beauty, the beauty of sound and its underlying moral beauty. He compares music to Susanna and her feelings; making one believe that music can indeed invoke emotions that are demonstrative of moral superiority. During a rereading of the story of Susanna, I found that there are many elements of the beauty of sound as well as physical beauty. To prove Susanna's innocence, God did not, as he had done previously, show her innocence with an act of power but through the act of speech. This was a very clever way to prove that Susanna did not deserve to die. This provides an interesting twist to the story and the idea of sound as a form of immortal beauty. During the story Susanna was often weeping for her fate but what should help save her: the matic tree, which is considered to be a weeping tree. It weeps for its injured branches as Susanna was weeping for her injured innocence. The other tree that helped prove her innocence  was a holm tree, a very hard wood. I see this tree as representative of the priest as they were hard men.
   The ideas of the trees brings me back to the idea of immortal beauty. There are very few living things that are more immortal than a tree. Through both pieces of literature, we now have trees, physical beauty, musical beauty, and the actual literature itself as all being immortal, either physically or within our minds. Beauty is immortal, no matter what form it takes. I think that is the main point that both authors were trying to prove with their work.