andersen’s nightingale
A story about a nightingale who sings so beautifully that the Chinese emperor invited her to sing for the court and kept her in captivity. Despite her popularity, she was quickly replaced by a luxurious and mechanical nightingale gifted to the emperor. The robot garnered so much love that she was excused from court and forgotten. The mechanical bird was very popular for years, being played almost every day, and it finally fell apart. The emperor grew ill after a few years. She heard about the emperor’s condition and came to sing as a present to the sick emperor.
It is a debate of the difference between raw talent and superficial beauty, the passionate and the disciplined, the simple and the glamorous, and whether one is more beautiful than the other. How do we even define beauty? Is there an universal beauty?
