One cannot know extreme beauty or pleasure without also knowing the complete opposite, or at least being able to conceive of it.

Beauty could be a bridge, but we can’t be so sure. Huldra’s back may be a horror; after all, the woodsman dies lost and frozen. So, though beauty has been defined by Neoplatonists1 as invisible presence in visible form and the divine enhancement of earthly things, it offers no structure and no permanence. Tracking its definitions through history wi