books read in 2020✨
“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt
“And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,” said Bunny, chin cupped in palm.”
“we don’t like to admit it,“ said julian, “but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than anything. all truly civilized people - the ancients no less than us - have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self. are we, in this room, really very different from the greeks and the romans? obsessed with duty, piety, loyalty, sacrifice? all those things which are to modern tastes so chilling?”
a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
character moodboards: camilla macaulay, the secret history
character posters: francis abernathy, the secret history
↳ requested by @queerfrodo
“Forgive me.”
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MAKE ME CHOOSE — @kuweisyulbos asked the secret history or vicious
It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? [insp]
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
character posters: camilla macaulay, the secret history
↳ requested by @marvolos
“ Murder is pollution. The murderer defiles everyone he comes into contact with. And the only way to purify blood is through blood.”
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everything i read in 2020: [1/?] the secret history by donna tartt
They too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape; they’d had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home.
Henry Winter — The secret history
— destructive beauty
He wore dark English suits and carried an umbrella (a bizarre sight in Hampden) and he walked stiffly through the throngs of hippies and beatniks and preppies and the punks with the self conscious formality of an old ballerina, surprising in one so large a he. ‘Henry Winter’, said my friends when I pointed him out, at a distance, making a wide circle to avoid a group of bongo players on the lawn.
“And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?” — Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn’t it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?
THE SECRET HISTORY — murder clique
for if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. it is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. but though I can digress with the best of them, i am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.
— the secret history
Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn’t it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?
