"The Lost Beautifulness" is the story of a woman, Hanneh
Hayyeh, who decides to paint her kitchen, in the poor rundown tenement where she and her
husband live, to prepare for the homecoming of her son from the armed services during
the war.
Everything that Hanneh does is with the idea of
making her home beautiful for her son, who is her joy. To accomplish such a feat of
fixing up her kitchen, she takes in extra laundry to buy the paint, and then does the
work herself. It is a long time in coming as she can only save pennies at a time.
However, when she is done, all but her husband agree that something beautiful has come
out of her heart and transformed her kitchen into a wonderful, welcoming place; and
everyone wishes her well for the good fortune of a beautiful room in her
home.
When her landlord sees what she has done, he demands
more money. The beauty of the room simply (in his eyes) makes the flat (apartment) worth
more money in rent to him: if she cannot pay it, someone else will.
(He raises the rent twice.)
Sadly, Hanneh tries to fight
the landlord, to make more money: to fight the injustice where there should be fairness
in this "land of democracy." She is, however, beaten, and she destroys the beauty of the
kitchen, believing that if she cannot live there, she will not give the landlord the
benefit of having the beautiful kitchen to rent out.
As she
does this, the destruction hurts her more than anyone, and she is
broken inside. She cannot, afterwards, understand what rage made her do such a thing.
The beauty of the room had come from her heart, and it was almost like a living thing
for the life she put into it. Destroying it robs her heart of the joy she had in
creating it.
In terms of theme, I would say there are
several. First, life is not fair.
Second, beauty should be
free, to be appreciated and be a reward in itself, but some people cannot see beauty for
its own sake—they must try to own it, robbing others of the ability to enjoy it. (In
some ways, this is what happened when the Europeans arrived in the New World and "took"
the land from the Native Americans. It was beautiful and rich, but they wanted it and
took it for their own good.)
Third, beauty comes from the
soul, but some people cannot see beauty in the world. Their eyes remain blind to what
sits before them. For some of these people, things only have value if there is a reward
involved; beauty should be its own reward, but some people miss the point
completely.
Perhaps, too, the story is an allegory for how
we try to create a world of beauty around us, but become so caught up in the wrong
things (running around and doing so much), that we fail to slow down long enough to
enjoy the beauty around us.
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