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fight the vision of horror they offer - a vision that culminates in that which horrifies us the most: ourselves at our worst. And we take on what we call evil; take it on ourselves so that the world can be free of its despair. Of course, that despair, lying like a chasm in our hearts, is a reflection of the indifferent cosmos, cold with a beauty that kills life even as it fosters it. It is the other face of beauty, its reflection in the mirror of love - brutal and hard and destroying. Kali was, as we know, a goddess. And in such ways, beauty and ugliness, hatred and love meet, mix, mingle; become one. 6. The Ice in the Mouth of Venus She rises naked from the waves. A retainer huddles a wrapping toward her to warm and hide 
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her. Two spirits ride the air nearby, wrapped in each other's limbs, a certain awed joy on their faces. She herself stands pensive, unself-conscious, gazing at, yet through, the viewer, rapt in daydream. The revelation seems complete, or as complete as it can be (what is she thinking? she does not, cannot speak). The veil has fallen, the vision appears; the ghost of that ancient presence has raised its eyes to meet our own. Thus beauty speaks to us: there is no veil between us and its startling joy, and yet there is a sense of hiddenness in even the clearest, most sharply defined beauty, a sense that there is more to find here, an infinite progression behind each shape, like a door opening into a palace of labyrinths. Thus beauty, insofar as it is beauty. Yet there has grown up a counter-myth of beauty: beauty as deception, lure and snare, will-o'-wisp leading  |
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