Terror

But terror need not imply persecution or a life-threatening situation. It has another strand, a religious, aesthetic aspect that implies awe or reverence before a universe whose many mysteries—including those of religion—have never been fully grasped. William Wordsworth (1770–1850), in his poem The Prelude (published 1850), spoke of the "ministry of fear" and evoked the brooding silence of a huge mountain peak hemming him in as he rowed across Esthwaite Lake. The British The Nightmare, engraving after 1790 painting by Henry Fuseli. The popularity of horror-themed books, films, and works of art suggests that on some level people are drawn to the concept of terror—or at least that of fabricated terror that can be easily banished. © HENRY FUSELI/FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY politician and thinker Edmund Burke (1729–1797), in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), saw terror as an elevating, thrilling sensation deriving from the "sublime" and accompanying the observation of soaring, stupendous scenery. In the Duino Elegies (1923), the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) perceived "beauty" as "nothing but the beginning of terror," implying that, in the act of emotional surrender or identification, man lays himself open to a force over which he can exercise little control. Buildings, too, can produce such an effect. There are churches whose massive, solemn architecture, like those of the London architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (c. 1661–1736), induce a dread concomitant with an all-powerful deity.

Contemporary evangelists emphasize the "love of God," but men like Martin Luther feared God just as much. The latter was literally a "terrible" power capable of visiting plague, famine, and earthquake. During the Middle Ages and the early modern period, numerous "panic" and "God-fearing" cults sprang up—from the flagellants to the Anabaptists—that exploited mass credulity, drawing upon the end of the world or "day of judgment" theme and the glorious, terrifying visions of the Book of Revelation—a favorite text, significantly, of the deranged, self-appointed messiah David Koresh (1959–1993), who died amid the blood and flames of his apocalyptic vision at Waco, Texas, taking his followers with him.

During the early Romantic period, the classic terror image The Nightmare (1782) was painted by Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), showing a young woman sprawled out sleeping and the head of a phantom horse rising above the bed. Perched on the woman's breast is a small hairy incubus. The popularity of such works gives rise to the question: Do people enjoy being terrified? The answer is that, in comfortable surroundings, they may enjoy the vicarious thrill of a mental journey through terrains littered with ruined castles, skulls, vampires, and apparitions: hence the enduring appeal of Gothic novels like The Castle of Otranto, Dracula, Frankenstein, and, more recently, the horror film and works of popular authors like Stephen King. Furthermore, the terrors banished at the climaxes of books and films are reassuring compared with the spectacular diseases and potential nuclear catastrophes filling much contemporary reality. Ghosts and ghouls, for all their menacing antics, hint at a startling extension of existence rather than the terminal facts of modern warfare. The effect of such works is to reassure more than terrify, for usually the fears are objectified and framed in the neutral environment of the page or screen.