I'd say it's some form of beauty, yes. And the whole quivering before beauty idea is certainly true, though not always literally.

Though, as stated, "One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways". Even in a single burst, this can cause you to revel in something darker than beauty.

have you ever talked to a super model when they're hungry?

if yes, then it is absolutely true... that beauty is in fact terror.

The phrase that comes to mind is "A Great and Terrible Beauty". Beauty can awe, mesmorise and inspire but it can also cause the downfall of nations (a face that sailed a tousand ships, anyone?) and the distractio of relationships.

I also agree with looking4realtruth with the natural aspect of it.

I agree that what people think beautiful alot of the times turns out to be something to fear, something of higher capability. But just because something is beautiful doesnt mean that it's always going to turn into terror. There is risks, and there is serinity. When something is beautiful and it is beyond your imagination that you can actually not fear it, even if it takes getting over fear of it first. Well that is just beautiful altogether.

Tweedle Dum

It really depends on the person. Somepeople fear beauty, often with good reason. On the other hand, some people are quick to embrace it and make it pert of their lives. The beautiful does give us many reasons to fear it, but if people can stand up to it and see all sides of it, they may see that there isn't really anything to fear.

Just look at a bolt of lightning. I mean like a serious storm.

What you described seems to be purely chaos. And every one is attracted to chaos. Chaos is beautiful and deadly. And everyone has to have little doses of chaos to simply survive. Whether it is the teenager down the street racing his car for the adremaline, or the old woman down the street that watches her soap operah's everyday. No one is without the urge for chaos. Give me any example of any God fearing, honest, peace loving person and I will show you the person behind the facade. The person that lusts for power, excitment, drama, or another kind of chaos.

In the days of Byron and Burke and Turner, the idea ran around in Europe that the aesthetic experience had a new wing to be explored, though as the passage indicates the experience isn't new. That which was beautiful was a harmony between elements known to consciousness. That which was sublime was a disharmonious, monstrous amount of magnitude of a different and starkly separate consciousness. The beautiful is the known, and the sublime is the unknown.

This passage walks along the sublime with no recognition of the beautiful as I understand it.

This applies just as well to argument outside of 19th century terminology. Here, what is beautiful is not the terrifying, or the fear, or the danger, the externalized phenomenon that creates the feeling conveyed. Rather, what exists is a complete egotism awoken by the terrible and the terrifying. The emphasis is on the quivering, the freedom and the newly discovered individual sense of being only brought on by such events.

The Sublime wakes up this and that in different people, but here the experience lies in the introversion of this awakening. The horror isn't beautiful, and this passage isn't about the beautiful - it is about being and what Sartre referred to as "the Vertigo of Choice."

it is true but is terror jeliousy if so then mostlyeveryone is scared of beautiful things mostly people.

I also love that idea.

To truly understand the statement and discuss it philosophically, however, one must define "beauty". This is a very abstract concept, and reminds me of Housman's test for good poetry - if it's makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, then it's truly good poetry.

I believe true beauty is, in fact, terrible (in the old sense of course - as in it inspires terror). Aesthetic beauty is only one form of beauty - there is also the beauty of change, or the beauty of nature. For an example of beauty of nature, think of the life cycle. Birth is a beautiful but terrfying experience for mother, offspring, and observers; for that matter, so is death.

This definition does certainly fit into the above Romantic idea of "the Sublime," but while it is certainly terrifying, the Sublime isn't always beautiful... The very idea of the Romantic Sublime was that it was SUPERnatural (above/outside nature) while beauty was thought of as being in harmony with nature. The passage from Tartt's book mentions this... to have the courage to be completely one with one's natural environment -- to lose the spiritual self in the animal/bestial world -- this is the beauty that Julian speaks of in _The Secret History_. The passage DOES recognize beauty in the Romantic sense: being in harmony with the bestial animal self IS representative of harmony between elements known to consciousness.

The struggle of man between his spiritual or divine self and his earthly, animal self is the core of man's existence: nothing about human life is unaffected by it. The submersion of the self completely in the natural, animal world is certainly beautiful: to harmonize the self into everything our conscious mind percives as being part of this physical world. The terror lies in losing the self completely, perhaps never to return, and regain that seed of spirit that connects us to the Sublime....

The fear of beauty is the fear of inferiority, the fear that you will be compared and people will dissmiss for for this beauty, you'd feel rejected and worthless In short... beauty is terrifying because you know in comparision you are displaying ugliness.