Book contents
- Guru Nanak’s Transcendent Aesthetics
- Reviews
- Guru Nanak’s Transcendent Aesthetics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Note
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Aesthetic Stairway
- Chapter 2 Aesthetic Repertoire and Literary Appetizers
- Chapter 3 Aesthetic Designs in the Language of Love
- Chapter 4 Aesthetic Agents
- Chapter 5 Aesthetic Revealer
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - Aesthetic Revealer
Poet-Songster-Jeweller
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2024
- Guru Nanak’s Transcendent Aesthetics
- Reviews
- Guru Nanak’s Transcendent Aesthetics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Note
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Aesthetic Stairway
- Chapter 2 Aesthetic Repertoire and Literary Appetizers
- Chapter 3 Aesthetic Designs in the Language of Love
- Chapter 4 Aesthetic Agents
- Chapter 5 Aesthetic Revealer
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 5 returns to the primal Sikh moment, the divine revelation of Guru Nanak. Autobiographically recounted in Majh Ballad, his sensuous experience of the infinite One is corroborated in early Sikh sources like the Janamsākhīs. This chapter is a three-mirrored kaleidoscope: (1) how the songster/bard (ḍhāḍī) Nanak relays his revelatory event in sonic aesthetics; (2) how poet (shāir) Nanak shares his numinous encounter in poetic ingenuity; and (3) how jeweller/goldsmith (suniāru) Nanak artistically stages his revelations for his audiences to reexperience his transcendent aesthetics. Art as idealized by Martin Heidegger, Amrita Sher-Gil, Leo Tolstoy, and Rabindranath Tagore is fulfilled by Guru Nanak’s gesamtkunstwerk. His multiple art forms function as art to show how the transcendent One is aesthetically lived in this world. Raising spiritual and social consciousness, Nanakian art is not for art’s sake alone; it redresses issues of social and environmental injustice and suffering. With his voice recorded in the GGS as a rich resource, Guru Nanak’s own perception of his aesthetic vocation comes to light.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Guru Nanak's Transcendent Aesthetics , pp. 205 - 236Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024