On Truth, Beauty & Simplicity: Literary Greats

 

In yesterday's Blog post, I explored the relationship between beauty and simplicity in scientific laws – and how, while simplicity offers clarity, beauty often reveals deeper truths by connecting seemingly disparate concepts. We also saw that beauty doesn’t always mean simplicity, as demonstrated by complex systems like general relativity – and that, ultimately, beauty can uncover profound insights that simplicity alone may overlook, further enriching our understanding of reality.

Now I want to examine this theme from the perspective of writers I highly value. Obviously, everything can be as simple or as complex as we choose, but some of the best expressions of literary greatness, in my view, are writers who explored complex subjects with elegant simplicity, and those who, at the other extreme, explored simple subjects with profound but creative and accessible complexity. Both appeal to me for different reasons.

Perhaps my favourite example of the former would be C.S. Lewis, who tackled complex theological and philosophical themes - Christianity, faith, and morality - with the kind of stylish and accessible prose to which all Christian apologists should aspire. His ability to convey intricate spiritual truths in intelligent, modest and relatable works, coupled with wonderful analogies and profound allegorical narratives is, in my view, unmatched. Lewis was invaluable to me when I was an agnostic exploring the Christian faith in the late 1990s.

At the other end of the scale, I love Kierkegaard for the almost opposite reason; he takes ideas - like faith, love, and suffering - and delves into them with beautifully complex, layered prose, and profound multi-dimensional philosophical explorations. Yet at the same time, Kierkegaard’s personal, intimate, existential style makes his works consistently accessible and relatable, which is a delicate balance to achieve.

Similarly, writers like Orwell, Dickens and Austen excel in their accessible handling of complex subjects - like power, poverty, justice, love and social status. By contrast, writers like Proust, Woolf, Camus and Kafka delight in their unpacking surface-level themes with deep insights, multitudinous layers of meaning and profound existential allegories.

And if, in my personal opinion, C.S. Lewis was the best I’ve read at exploring complex subjects with elegant simplicity – I think Dostoevsky is perhaps the best I’ve read at exploring simple subjects with profound but creative and accessible complexity. The way he takes matters like crime, guilt, justice, faith, humility and redemption, and infuses them with the rich layers of philosophical and psychological complexity, are remarkable feats in literary history. Dostoevsky’s use of profound dimensions through his exploration of faith, struggle and, ultimately, human nature offer literary experiences I’d encourage everyone to have at some point in their life.

I don’t necessarily mean these two are the ‘best’ by any objective measure (they have tremendous competition) – but they have touched me in the profoundest ways at pivotal different stages on my journey (especially C.S. Lewis).

It would be lovely to wax lyrical about writers I admire all day long. But ultimately, in summation, the interplay between beauty and simplicity in literature reflects the full range of profundities of human experience itself, just as the scientific laws we explored in the previous post reveal profound truths about nature through their elegant formulations. The literary journey and the scientific methods are invitations to embrace the depth and richness of existence itself. With this dance of words in literature, and this web of investigation in science, we find a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world, reminding us that both beauty and simplicity have their places in the structure and order of truth, enriching our lives in ways that resonate long after we turn the final page of the book.