But do beautiful and fine weather have to be synonymous? For example, fine weather is always good for something, mostly for someone’s activity outdoors, be it agriculture, transport, road repair, or sport. Not even our own yearning for "bad" weather in times of a prolonged drought does not dispel the stereotype of the ideal weather as sunny. The fact that this representation may be confined to regions with a temperate, continental climate is usually overlooked, and the dwellers’ of the desert longing for thick cloudscapes that promise rain or their exuberant reaction to snow rather cause disconcertment and amusement than challenge the cliché about how fine weather should be. Besides, it is commonly assumed that this topic can be handled quite "objectively:" we are convinced that we all know how fine weather has to look: sunny, mostly cloudless, with moderate temperature, and average humidity, possibly with a light breeze. If we do not dispute weather, do we really discuss it? A writer describes the weather only when she has nothing else to write about, just like when one speaks about weather if one has nothing to say, remarked Tolstoy. De gustibus disputandum, sed de tempestate non disputandum est because who would be disposed to argue about the weather? Weather does not split communities, but it does not build them either. Like politics or sports, weather is a matter of general interest, however it doesn't cause disagreements. The beauty of the weather: between clichés and relativism "Despite Shakespeare, clouds are never ugly." 1. Key WordsĬlimate change, environmental aesthetics, literature, weather This implies the necessity of a reflective aesthetic attitude on weather, as influenced by art, literature, and science, which discovers the poetics of bad weather and the wonder that underlies average weather conditions. Finally, whereas fine weather is related in modern realistic literature to cosmic harmony and a universal natural order, contemporary literary examples show that in the age of the climate change, fine weather may be deceitful and its passive contemplation, irresponsible. The unreflective equation of beautiful weather with moderately sunny weather and a cloudless sky also collides with the psychological need for variation: even living in a "paradisal" climate would be condemned to end in monotony. Also, an aesthetics of fine weather seems, strictly speaking, to be impossible given that such weather conditions usually allow humans to focus on aspects other than weather, which contradicts the autotelic character of beauty. Any attempt to outline a meteorological aesthetics centered on so-called beautiful weather has to overcome several difficulties: In everyday life, the appreciation of the weather is mostly related to practical interests or reduced to the ideal of stereotypical fine weather that is conceived according to blue-sky thinking irrespective of climate diversity.
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