Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)
Context: There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret. No sooner had I crawled beneath the overhanging foliage of the palm, than there dropped from its branches a young child of such beauty as I never beheld before. Though ragged and dusty, this being bore the features of a faun or demigod, and seemed almost to diffuse a radiance in the dense shadow of the tree. It smiled and extended its hand, but before I could arise and speak I heard in the upper air the exquisite melody of singing; notes high and low blent with a sublime and ethereal harmoniousness. The sun had by this time sunk below the horizon, and in the twilight I saw an aureole of lambent light encircled the child's head. Then in a tone of silver it addressed me: "It is the end. They have come down through the gloaming from the stars. Now all is over, and beyond the Arinurian streams we shall dwell blissfully in Teloe." As the child spoke, I beheld a soft radiance through the leaves of the palm tree, and rising, greeted a pair whom I knew to be the chief singers among those I had heard. A god and goddess they must have been, for such beauty is not mortal; and they took my hands, saying, "Come, child, you have heard the voices, and all is well...."
“Extreme seductiveness is at the boundary of horror”
Source: Story of the Eye
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Georges Bataille 68
French intellectual and literary figure 1897–1962Related quotes
with Betty Roszak, "Deep Form in Art and Nature" Alexandria 4, Vol.4 The Order of Beauty and Nature (1997) ed. David Fideler
“But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat.”
Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 106
“The first horror is there's horror. The second is you accommodate it.”
Source: The Last Werewolf
pg 27.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])