{"id":3246,"date":"2020-12-02T20:30:59","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T20:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/mediumrare\/?page_id=3246"},"modified":"2020-12-10T16:17:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T16:17:38","slug":"olivia-arthen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mdocs.skidmore.edu\/mediumrare\/olivia-arthen\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivia Arthen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AH!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH!<\/em> is a pseudo \u201cself-help\u201d book in the form of a collaged zine. The \u201cadvice\u201d within reads almost like a meditation guiding the reader through their own relationship with the interminglings of beauty and terror. The book is a work-in-progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In my research into this relationship, I kept stumbling upon quotes from various poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. These texts relate the two concepts to each other philosophically as well as physically; our human experiences of the two are surprisingly similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Rilke\u2019s First Elegy from The Duino Elegies<\/em>, he writes:<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFor beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,
which we are still just able to endure,
And we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The connection between the two is in the experience of weakness or inferiority in the face of something. A fear for your life knowing that something has enough power or strength to end it, or a sense of awe from knowing that something is far beyond yourself or your own ability<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the end of his essay (which I highly<\/em> recommend), George Menz describes beauty: \u201cit is blinding, like the light of the sun; it is destructive, like the light of a nuclear explosion. Beauty is that which we refuse to acknowledge, because in acknowledging it, we risk our own destruction at its hands. Better, then, to take what has been said as idle speculation, and think on beauty no more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The zine aims to lead the reader to find the line where beauty turns to terror in their own perception and their own memory, though the advice is not necessarily advisable to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Rilke says:<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cLet everything happen to you: beauty and terror.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just keep going. No feeling is final.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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