Another myth of great beauty and far-reaching significance is that of
Medusa. It is peculiarly interesting on account of its double edge, for
it shows us both the high possibilities of ideal beauty and the deepest
depths of pagan horror. Robert Louis Stevenson tells us how, as he hung
between life and death in a flooded river of France, looking around him
in the sunshine and seeing all the lovely landscape, he suddenly felt
the attack of the other side of things. "The devouring element in the
universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a
running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had
heard some of the hollow notes of _Pan's_ music. Would the wicked river
drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?"
It was in this connection that he gave us that striking and most
suggestive phrase, "The beauty and the terror of the world." It is this
combination of beauty and terror for which the myth of Medusa stands. It
finds its meaning in a thousand instances. On the one hand, it is seen
in such ghastly incidents as those in which the sheer horror of nature's
action, or of man's crime, becomes invested with an illicit beauty, and
fascinates while it kills.
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