‘Could it be because it reminds us that we were alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls — which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender yet makes us feel more miserable than any thing? But isn’t it also pain that often makes us most aware of self?’
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
some things are too terrible to grasp at once. other things— naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror— are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself— quite to one’s surprise— in an entirely different world.
“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? […]
If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.
“And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?” — Donna Tartt, The Secret History
It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?
