Marina’s Reviews > The Secret History > Status Update

Julian, at the head of the long table, rises to his feet and lifts his wineglass, ‘Live forever’, he says.

None of them were the least bit interested in anything that went on in the world, and their ignorance of current events and even recent history was rather astounding.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

‘One is capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of the night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal!

(Last scene of Hannibal and Will killing the Dragon)

‘And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?’

‘The Roman genius, and perhaps the Roman flaw,’ he said, ‘was an obsession with order.

‘We don’t like to admit it ,’ said Julian, ‘but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything.

(Will Graham)

‘Death is the mother of beauty,’ said Henry.
‘And what is beauty?’
‘Terror.’

‘Aristotles says in the Poetics,’ said Henry, ‘that objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art’

(when i read this i thought about hannibal’s art with the people he kills)