Cirrus@Austlit

'It is a prejudice that I think we can already see in Herodotus that there is something prized but also irredeemable about a Gorgon’s head, and in particular Medusa’s mortal one, and it treads a narrow bridge between arrestingly beautiful (illustrations of which coalesce around neo-spiritual work) and grotesque (a few of these, but classically, Caravaggio). And though I recognise that the preceding references are already unwieldy it would be impossible not to mention, (in passing), the utility of the sublime which I think helps to bridge the slippages between gorgeous (I see now, close to Gorgon) and terrible, which are adjectives used (at times interchangeably) to convey the Medusa.'  (Introduction)