O

BATHE IN BEAUTY

In the face of the Sublime, we feel a shiver...

something too large for our minds to encompass. And

for a moment, it shakes us out of our smugness and

releases us from the deathlike grip of habit and

banality.

—ROBERT GREENE

n Wednesday morning, February 23, 1944, Anne Frank climbed
up to the attic above the annex where her family had been
hiding for two long years to visit Peter, the young Jewish boy who
lived with them. After Peter finished his chores, the two of them sat
down at Anne’s favorite spot on the floor and looked out the small
window to the world they had been forced to leave behind.
Staring at the blue sky, the leafless chestnut tree below, birds
swooping and diving in the air, the two were entranced to the point
of speechlessness. It was so quiet, so serene, so open compared to
their cramped quarters.
It was almost as if the world wasn’t at war, as if Hitler had not
already killed so many millions of people and their families didn’t
spend each day at risk of joining the dead. Despite it all, beauty
seemed to reign. “As long as this exists,” Anne thought to herself,
“this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it,
how can I be sad?”
She would later write in her diary that nature was a kind of cure-
all, a comfort available to any and all who suffer. Indeed, whether it