Beauty and Ideas

	Stephen is as we remember him from Language Conversation.
	So is Hugh. But he's warier. He's done this before.


Stephen		So, in a sense, in a sense, in a sense, Duncan, we
		are left with those two. Two. None other. Nary
		another, not one other more. We have, on the
		one side of the divide, the gulf, the chasm, the
		DIVIDING LINE, if you please, we have the
		beauty of ideas, and on the other, the other side,
		oh, I don't know, the other term of the equation 
		if that's nicer, we have the idea of beauty. Am I
		sensing through? Am I connecting?

	Hugh glances at the camera in friendly fashion.

Hugh		We're discussing the beauty of ideas and the
		idea of beauty.

Stephen		Hold a thought for me, Geoffrey, I'll give you the
		thought, hold it for me. Would you please?

Hugh		I'm going to hold a thought, now.

Stephen		If beauty is only an idea, a form, a paradigm, a
		pattern, a template, an ideal, an idea, if you like,
		with an "l", then what is "the beautiful"? Beauty
		is unattainable, but "the beautiful" surrounds us.
		We return to language. Philip, we're back with
		language again. That's the thought you'd be ever
		so to splendid for me.

Hugh		We've made a return to language. That's the
		thought I'm holding.

Stephen		Listen to me lovelet, language circumscribes
		beauty, confines it, limns, delineates, colours and
		contains. Yet what is language but a tool, a tool we
		use to dig up the beauty that we take as our only
		and absolute real?

Hugh		Language is a tool.

Stephen		So I'm finding myself with some surprise and
		no little alarm hurling a paradox at you. Beauty
		is our only reality and yet it is an ideal. It is the
		surface-tension of the membrane that stretches
		between us and the vision of beauty that language
		seeks to disperse, as a detergent might dissipate or
		dissolve a droplet of oil.

Hugh		I'm in trouble now.

Stephen		Hush, tish, vibble, I'm streaking ahead. Let me
		explain, expand, expound and exposit.

Hugh		Would you?

Stephen		I find you beautiful. But you are not beauty.

Hugh		Whoops.

Stephen		Therefore you contain a property of beauty.
		Therefore the substance of which you exhibit a
		property must exist. Where is it?

	Hugh looks about helpfully, in case it is on the table or 
	has been left on the floor.

		That is language's task. Who was it who said
		"Language is the universal whore that I must make
		into a virgin?" Who was it?

Hugh		Kate Adie?

Stephen		I think it was Karl Kraus. But it needn't have
		been. Now. Tommy, time to ask you to give back
		the thought I bade you hold for me.

Hugh		I was holding the thought "We've made a return to
		language."

Stephen		Correct correctington. Language pursues
		beauty, harries it, hounds it, courses it across the
		roughlands of truth and enquiry AND IN SO
		DOING CAN BE BEAUTIFUL ITSELF. Ripple
		on ripple, image with image, a wheel within a
		wheel like the circles that you find in the windmills
		of your mind.

Hugh		Noel Harrison.

Stephen		Noel, as you so rightly, Harrison. Language can be
		beautiful. And Madeline asleep in lap of legends
		old. Plenitude. Dishes. Martita. Breasts. Tumble.
		Emolument. Forage. Smitten. Plenum. Vulva.
		Words that have their own sonority and beauty
		that is extrinsic, extrinsic to their connotational OR
		DENOTATIONAL referends.

Hugh		I think he said vulva.

Stephen		So Timothy I'll leave you with a thought, a
		breath, a fruit that drops from the boughs of my
		imaginings. Think beauty but be beautiful. Say
		beauty, but say it beautifully. Beauty is duty and
		duty beauty. So there. Goodnight. I don't feel
		quite so well now.

Hugh		(To camera) I'll talk to you later. B-bye.

Hugh		The exciting thing about Chris
		Patten is that he's bold and
		imaginative.