The Beautiful Sublime

"When the starry sky, a vista of open seas or a stained glass window shedding purple beams fascinate me, there is a cluster of meaning, of colors, of words, of caresses, there are light touches, scents, sighs, cadences that arise, shroud me, carry me away, and sweep me beyond the things that I see, hear or think. The "sublime" object dissolves in the raptures of a bottomless memory. It is such a memory, which, from stopping point to stopping point, remembrance to remembrance, love to love, transfers that object to the refulgent point of the dazzlement in which I stray to be... Not at all short of, but always with and through perception and words, the sublime is a something added that expands us, overstrains us, and causes us to be both here as dejects, and there, as others and sparkling. A divergence, an impossible bounding. Everything missed, joy - fascination".

-- Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror trans. Kelly Oliver.