On Beauty

Is it really possible to get burnt out on beauty? I've been trying to decide that these last couple of days. I've seen so much that is beautiful, from the grandeur of St. Peter's Basilica to the simple hermitage of St. Francis and the Italian countryside. In the first couple of days, I instantly reacted to the beauty that I saw, whether with an internal gasp of awe or sometimes, with tears. Yet today, when I saw the Duomo of Siena, it was as if I already expected beauty, and in expecting, I lost the joy of the immediate experience.
I think the problem lies in the fact that in the first days, the visual reaction led immediately to an appreciation of the creators and the Creator of that beauty. Now, sensory overload is getting in the way of true appreciation. Beauty is never only physical. Women know that a man's "appreciation" of her body on a purely physical plane is neither real nor good, for it ignores who she is in herself and reduces her to matter. The word implies a recognition of the preciousness of a thing, which as we know is not based solely on earthly value. The things of this world are precious insofar as they belong to the spiritual world, as our souls, or direct towards the spiritual world, as does beauty.
In these next few days, and in the coming months, I have to regain a sense of joy, of looking beyond. The eyes and the brain can easily be surfeited with much beauty, but the soul cannot, when it sees in the earthly a reflection, a foreshadowing, of Beauty itself.