Dorothy Day's Life through Her Granddaughter's Eyes

A dialogue

With Kate HENNESSY, Author of Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother

Presented by Crossroads Cultural Center

A few of the lines which Dorothy quoted frequently from Dostoevsky are sometimes attributed to her instead of to the great Russian author. One of these is “The World will be Saved by Beauty.” Her January 1973 “On Pilgrimage” column explains the deeper meaning of the phrase and why she quoted it so frequently:

“Beauty will save the world,” Dostoevsky wrote. I just looked up this quotation in Konstantin Mochulsky’s Dostoevsky, His Life and Work…In a paragraph on page 224, in speaking of art, Dostoevsky is quoted as saying, “It has its own integral organic life and it answers man’s innate need of beauty without which, perhaps he might not want to live upon earth.”

When a man is in discord with reality, conflict…the thirst for beauty and harmony appears in him with its greatest force. Art is useful here because it pours in energy, sustains the forces, strengthens our feeling of life… Man accepts beauty without any conditions and so, simply because it is beauty, with veneration he bows down before it, not asking why it is useful and what one can buy with it… Beauty is more useful than the simply useful, for it is the ultimate goal of being. On this height, the way of art meets with the way of religion…

Dorothy Day’s youngest granddaughter, Kate Hennessy, who titled her intimate portrait of her grandmother The World Will Be Saved by Beauty will present her understanding of this phrase through her reflections on her grandmother’s life.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

The event is free and open to the public.

About this Event

Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Time: 7pm
Location: Crossroads Auditorium
125 Maiden Lane, 15th Floor, NY, NY
(ID required to enter the building)
map

About the Speaker

Kate Hennessy
Author

Invitation

Download here.

Video

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Photos - click on image below