"Awesome", for real

This vista encountered approaching Zermatt on my recent Swiss Alps hiking trip made me thing about the word "awesome". A little context..this hiking day, while enjoyable, had been a lot of pounding up a pass 3000 feet and then across a very rocky, desolate trail. Then, we turned the corner, and...wham! Awesome. My sense of the word has always been: overwhelming, grand, wondrous, pulse-raising. Maybe even a little scary. Looking it up, that is indeed the origin...both "awesome" and "awful" were synonyms and originally meant either "fear-inducing" or "being filled with fear" in old English, synonymous with "frightening" or "frightened" like when you encounter a bear. Over time, "awesome" evolved into a more abstract fear (more from a distance than up close, like an approaching storm), then into grandiosity and religious wonder mixed with fear, and was finally devalued in the 20th century by Valley Girls into "excellent" or "cool", even "tolerably OK". (BTW, "awful" kept more of its original intent, that of something that induces fear/loathing, see this interesting article if you like word origins).  The Germans, as they often do with words, get "awe" right--"die Ehrfurcht" = glory + fear.

This made me think about which works of art really qualify as "awesome" in the sense of breathtaking, inspiring (with or without religion) and a little fearsome. Some architecture is perhaps closest to evoking the emotion I felt at the grand mountain overlook above...I have certainly felt awe at such places as the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, and inside Amiens cathedral--all combined great beauty with overwhelming size to make me feel uplifted, breathless, and very small. Frank Gehry's Disney Symphony Hall in Los Angeles comes very close, too, showing that the ability to do this is not limited to bygone religious eras lauding conventional gods. In sculpture, Michelangelo's David qualifies... I remember just walking around it (not him) feeling tiny and non-analytically gaga for some time. Size alone doesn't cut it, as I did not get breathless at Mt. Rushmore or Stone Mountain, but did seeing the large-but-not-gigantic Michelangelo Pieta in the Vatican. Michelangelo also seemed to have a near-unique ability to do this; in painting The Last Supper and the Sistine Chapel ceiling do the trick, where Raphael's School of Athens, Picasso's Guernica, and Leonardo's Last Supper don't quite get the fear factor going, despite being wonderful and large. This was recognized by Michelangelo's peers, who called his awesomeness "terribilitá", from the latin "terribilis", or terror-provoking. BTW, "terrible" is another English word now emasculated from its original meaning of "terror-provoking". A century or so ago it was used this way in The Battle Hymn of the Republic: "...He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword..." Now the poor word just means "bad" (or at most "awful"!).

Theater and literature have, I think, a built in limitation for inducing awesomeness: they usually achieve greatness by taking us deep into the psyche of an individual, and that in itself this precludes the sort of floating-above-it-all fearsome grandiosity that I am talking about. Also, they achieve their impact over time or many pages, thus diluting the "kerpow" factor of turning around the corner of a rocky trail and seeing the sheer vista, or walking from a plain church courtyard into a room with David looming. Poetry? Not big enough--its micro-quality is analogous to admiring an intricate medieval carved reliquary. Dance? Again, too individually and inwardly focused, I think. Opera with its grandeur can get close when everything goes right, like a couple time-suspended performances of Tristan und Isolde and one of Elektra that I have seen, but this is rare, as opera generally goes on far too long, however well.

Which leaves music to consider. Like art and architecture, it is well designed to transcend the mortal. Which pieces are big, wonderful, tachycardia-inducing, and a little scary? I am not sure that any pieces really meet the Sistine Chapel test, but I have gotten close with Bach's St. Anne prelude BWV 552 (at least live with a great pipe organ), The Rite of Spring, the first couple movements of the Schubert 15th String Quartet in G (D 887), and Mahler's Sixth Symphony.

Ultimately, I think awe is one of those really great feelings/neurologic surges that comes rarely but memorably. Its sad that we have little room in modern society for the original intents of "awesome" and "terrible". For me, seeking this feeling is reason alone to travel, to go to concerts and museums, and to experience life to the fullest.

Can you think of artworks (in any category) that induce old-fashioned awe for you? Add your awesome comments to this blog if so!