From "Joseph and His Brothers" by Thomas Mann Pages 317-319 from translation by John E. Woods::
Joseph was seventeen years old and in the yes of all who beheld him the most beautiful among the children of men. To be frank, we do not like speaking of beauty. Does not the concept, the word, exude boredom? It’s said that it is based in laws; but laws speak to reason, not to emotion, which has no use for reason’s strictures. That is why perfect beauty, which needs no apology, is so dreary. For emotion actually wants to find something it can forgive, otherwise it turned away with a yawn. Enthusiastic admiration for what is merely perfect demands a devotion to pre-conceived, prototypical norms -- a pedant’s devotion. The law’s bonds are external and didactic; magic alone creates an inner bond. Beauty is magic worked upon the emotions -- always half-illusionary, extremely precarious, and fragile in its very efficacy. Place a loathsome head atop a beautiful body, and the body itself will no longer be beautiful in terms of any emotional effect -- or, at best, only in the dark, which is mere deception. Deceit, trickery, fraud -- how great a role they play in the realm of beauty! And why? Because at the same time it is suddenly the realm of love and desire; because sexuality becomes involved and defines the concept of beauty. The world of anecdotes is full of tales of how lads dressed as women have turned men’s heads, of how girls in trousers have ignited the passions of their own sex. But discovery sufficed to dampen such feelings, for with it beauty had become impractical. Perhaps human beauty in its effect upon the emotions is nothing more than the magic of sex, the illustration of the idea of sexuality, so that one would do better to speak of a consummate man, of a supremely womanly woman, than of a beautiful one and to say that it understandably demands a great deal of a women to speak of another woman’s beauty, or a man or another man’s. Cases in which beauty triumphs over the attribute of manifest impracticality and retain its unconditional effect upon the emotions are in the minority, but do demonstrably occur. The impulse of youth comes into play here, and with it a magic that emotion is very apt to confuse with beauty, so that youth, if some all too disconcerting flaw does not cripple its attraction, is usually simply perceived as beauty -- even by youth itself, as its own smile unmistakably reveals. Charm is inherent in youth, a manifestation of beauty by its very nature is suspended between masculinity and femininity. A lad of seventeen is not beautiful in the sense of consummate masculinity. Neither is he beautiful in the sense of purely impractical femininity -- that would attract only a few. But let us grant this much: Beauty as youthful charm always tends in both psychology and expression somewhat toward the feminine; that is part of nature, which has its basis in its tender relationship with the world and of the world with it -- it is painted in a youth’s smile. At seventeen, it is true, someone can be more beautiful than woman or man, beautiful both as woman and man, beautiful from both sides and in every way, handsome and beautiful enough to set any woman, any man gawking, tumbling head over heels in love.
And so it was with Rachel’s son, and that is why it is said that he was the most beautiful among the children of men. That was exaggerated praise, for there have been and are a great many like him; and ever since humankind ceased to play the role of amphibian or reptile and has, for the most part, followed a path toward a more divine physicality, it has hardly been unusual for a lad of seventeen with such trim legs and small hips, such a well-formed torso, such golden brown skin to be greeted with approving looks -- nothing unusual about being neither too tall nor too squat, but of just the right stature, about walking and standing in demigod-like fashion, about a form charmingly suspended between gentleness and power. It is also hardly extraordinary that no dog’s head sits atop such a body, but rather something very appealing, with a smiling human mouth that approaches the divine -- it happens every day. But in Joseph’s world and immediate circle it was precisely his person and presence that exercised beauty’s emotional effect, and people generally felt that the Eternal had poured out grace upon his lips -- which would certainly have been too full if not for the movement that came with speaking and smiling. This grace was challenged; there was resistance to it here and there, but that resistance denied none of all this, nor can one claim that it actually excluded itself from the reigning emotion. There is much to be said at any rate for the notion that his brothers’ hatred was essentially nothing other than that same universal infatuation, but with a negative prefix.
Pages 317-319 from translation by John E. Woods::
Joseph was seventeen years old and in the yes of all who beheld him the most beautiful among the children of men. To be frank, we do not like speaking of beauty. Does not the concept, the word, exude boredom? It’s said that it is based in laws; but laws speak to reason, not to emotion, which has no use for reason’s strictures. That is why perfect beauty, which needs no apology, is so dreary. For emotion actually wants to find something it can forgive, otherwise it turned away with a yawn. Enthusiastic admiration for what is merely perfect demands a devotion to pre-conceived, prototypical norms -- a pedant’s devotion. The law’s bonds are external and didactic; magic alone creates an inner bond. Beauty is magic worked upon the emotions -- always half-illusionary, extremely precarious, and fragile in its very efficacy. Place a loathsome head atop a beautiful body, and the body itself will no longer be beautiful in terms of any emotional effect -- or, at best, only in the dark, which is mere deception. Deceit, trickery, fraud -- how great a role they play in the realm of beauty! And why? Because at the same time it is suddenly the realm of love and desire; because sexuality becomes involved and defines the concept of beauty. The world of anecdotes is full of tales of how lads dressed as women have turned men’s heads, of how girls in trousers have ignited the passions of their own sex. But discovery sufficed to dampen such feelings, for with it beauty had become impractical. Perhaps human beauty in its effect upon the emotions is nothing more than the magic of sex, the illustration of the idea of sexuality, so that one would do better to speak of a consummate man, of a supremely womanly woman, than of a beautiful one and to say that it understandably demands a great deal of a women to speak of another woman’s beauty, or a man or another man’s. Cases in which beauty triumphs over the attribute of manifest impracticality and retain its unconditional effect upon the emotions are in the minority, but do demonstrably occur. The impulse of youth comes into play here, and with it a magic that emotion is very apt to confuse with beauty, so that youth, if some all too disconcerting flaw does not cripple its attraction, is usually simply perceived as beauty -- even by youth itself, as its own smile unmistakably reveals. Charm is inherent in youth, a manifestation of beauty by its very nature is suspended between masculinity and femininity. A lad of seventeen is not beautiful in the sense of consummate masculinity. Neither is he beautiful in the sense of purely impractical femininity -- that would attract only a few. But let us grant this much: Beauty as youthful charm always tends in both psychology and expression somewhat toward the feminine; that is part of nature, which has its basis in its tender relationship with the world and of the world with it -- it is painted in a youth’s smile. At seventeen, it is true, someone can be more beautiful than woman or man, beautiful both as woman and man, beautiful from both sides and in every way, handsome and beautiful enough to set any woman, any man gawking, tumbling head over heels in love.
And so it was with Rachel’s son, and that is why it is said that he was the most beautiful among the children of men. That was exaggerated praise, for there have been and are a great many like him; and ever since humankind ceased to play the role of amphibian or reptile and has, for the most part, followed a path toward a more divine physicality, it has hardly been unusual for a lad of seventeen with such trim legs and small hips, such a well-formed torso, such golden brown skin to be greeted with approving looks -- nothing unusual about being neither too tall nor too squat, but of just the right stature, about walking and standing in demigod-like fashion, about a form charmingly suspended between gentleness and power. It is also hardly extraordinary that no dog’s head sits atop such a body, but rather something very appealing, with a smiling human mouth that approaches the divine -- it happens every day. But in Joseph’s world and immediate circle it was precisely his person and presence that exercised beauty’s emotional effect, and people generally felt that the Eternal had poured out grace upon his lips -- which would certainly have been too full if not for the movement that came with speaking and smiling. This grace was challenged; there was resistance to it here and there, but that resistance denied none of all this, nor can one claim that it actually excluded itself from the reigning emotion. There is much to be said at any rate for the notion that his brothers’ hatred was essentially nothing other than that same universal infatuation, but with a negative prefix.