Cosmos: a fearful symmetry?

Adam Michał Ostrowski

Many of us view the cosmic realms and iconography from the Renaissance as filled with harmony, ordered and simply beautiful. The incessant movement of the heavenly spheres, the silence of the void where no one can hear any screams or tragic wallowing; finally, the eternal peace of the endless night illumined by the solitary, stationary stars. Indeed, the aestheticization of space is somewhat of a naïve tendency to make sense of that which could not possibly make any sense, because it is all just too big. Let us, therefore, briefly dive into all that vastness by taking a small step outside of the principle of beauty, into the sublime.

It was Immanuel Kant and consequently Edmund Burke who led the modern, romantic aesthetic thought into the primary dualism between the beautiful and the sublime: the simple yet harmonious, almost Hellenic forms of ideality, proportion and soothing, contrasted by the great, aweinspiring and dynamic powers which inhabit the earthly elements. There is something fearful, even terrifying in nature, which the human spirit simply cannot capture, and can only contemplate in awe, perhaps giving a testimony that only falls short of the true thing.

The terror is real. When we witness the cataclysms befalling the planet, the mythical storms and deluges sweeping through entire towns, as well as wildfires, cyclones and earthquakes of unimaginable magnitudes, we understand how small and fragile we really are. My recollection of the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009, hundreds of kilometers away from Rome, where I was at that time, is that of the shaking walls of the house. A construction destined to hold, embody the essence of safety and stability, now as light as a house of cards, ready to crumble and swallow us under its shattered walls. And then we begin to consider the Earth, a water-laden rock hurtling through space, inhabited by life, ourselves included. The fear of oceans and depths, commonly known as thalassophobia is precisely the terror of the vast unknown that dwells below. In our quest for discovery, we have reached a by far better understanding of the far edges of the cosmos, a space measured in light-years, than our own oceanic depths, populated by species we still know very little about.

Looking up, let us try to reexamine the space above as the very same abyss we may encounter when we sail a little too far offshore. The history of religions gives us a plethora of the so-called uranic deities, those whose domain is the sky, the heavens, all of that which is above the mortal plane. It is not only a matter of vertical power and hierarchy that these very gods were conceptualized as monarchs and rulers in their own respective pantheons. The sky, especially on an unclouded starry night, is the first countenance of the transcendent. Silent and unchanging, overwhelming the horizon from East to West, it had always been there, the most certain element of the natural, divine scenery. It was in the face of the Above that we first began to feel small and insignificant – it was while that very Above would give us meaning, at the onset of monotheisms.

Contrary to the positive treatment of the religious imagination, H. P. Lovecraft was the one to construct the imagery and terror of the Great Old Ones, including the most well-known among them, Cthulhu, fathering the theme of cosmic horror. Eldritch, not shape-less, but rather shapeabundant, ancient deities whose vastness causes human minds to concave and give into madness, capable of devouring suns and ending realities solely by their uncanny presence. Escaping visualization and sanity, these entities inhabit the distant abyss of space, dormant and indifferent to the fact of our existence. Should they one day awaken, the repercussions are inconceivable. The very thought of the possibility of their existence out there is enough to keep us sleepless and manic.

Not without reason does the human imagination find itself crippled at the notion of a possible asteroid, comet or meteorite heading towards us. The tradition of catastrophic film and art pictures it as a top-shelf kind of doom – total, immediate and imminent. The end from above, an unwelcome visitor, a planet killer. As children we watched in terror and fascination how one such cosmic rock ended the dinosaurs, the great reptiles we love and cherish. It was then that we began to consider ourselves, the Earth and all its inhabitants, to be a tragic whole, hurtling through space together, unaware of the brevity and frailty of our undisturbed condition.

In this, Netflix’s latest star-studded blockbuster, if that term still applies in the times of the pandemic, Don’t Look Up offers a fresh take on the total cataclysm scenario. A planet-killing meteorite is indeed spotted heading towards the planet by a pair of astronomers, yet the powers-that-be and the media try their very best to muffle any possibility of averting the catastrophe and the capitalist status quo triumphs in its survival. In short, it all ends badly – or does it? The imminence and gravity of an apocalyptic finale urge us to rethink our priorities. What more can we do when we have given our best than sit down together at dinner and cherish those we feel at home with? At times like these, it is indeed safer not to look up – the heavens, it should not be forgotten, pose a threat far surpassing our cataclysmic fantasies.