“I want to know, for example, why beauty exists,” she said, “why nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power?”
In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art ~the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard’s canvases~ beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.
Elegant Goddess Translation 