Algernon Blackwood,
The Garden of Survival — Chapter IV
(1918)
“ The Thrill stole forth and touched me, passing like a meteor through my heart, but in that lightning passage, cleaving it open to some wisdom that seemed most near to love. For power flowed in along the path that Beauty cleft for it, and with the beauty came that intuitive guidance I had waited for. ”
Algernon Blackwood,
The Garden of Survival — Chapter IV
(1918)
“ Yet beauty lies somewhat coyly hid--as though suffocated by over-abundance of crowding wonder. I detect, indeed, almost a touch of the monstrous in it all, a super-expression, as it were, that bewilders, and occasionally even may alarm. Delicacy, subtlety, suggestion in any form, have no part in it. During the five years of my exile amid this tropical extravagance I can recall no single instance of beauty "hinting" anywhere. Nature seems, rather, audaciously abandoned; she is without restraint. She shows her all, tells everything--she shouts, she never whispers. ”
Algernon Blackwood,
The Garden of Survival — Chapter IV
(1918)
“ A sudden ravishment of the senses is impossible. One never can experience that sweet and troubling agitation to which a breathless amazement properly belongs. You may be stunned; you are hardly ever "thrilled."Now, this new sensitiveness to Beauty I have mentioned has opened me to that receptiveness which is aware of subtlety and owns to sharp surprise. The thrill is of its very essence. ”
