Turn to Stone

The ancient Greeks told a myth about Medusa. She was a stunningly beautiful sea nymph who desecrated the temple of Athena with the sea god Poseidon. In punishment Athena cursed Medusa with snakes for hair and a visage so horrible that anyone who met her gaze was turned to stone.

Rondanini Medusa
Roman copy of a 5th-century B.C. Greek original by Phidias

The Medusa story is a gripping tale on its own, an account of sacrilege punished by divine retribution. One point that can be derived from the myth, however, is that when you look evil square in the face, it will kill you.

We're meant for contemplating goodness and beauty, but in our disordered state resulting from Original Sin we have a morbid fascination for evil.

Not that we can really stand to look at evil head-on, of course: the Greeks with mere human wisdom recognized the folly of that.* That's why when our novels and films portray evil, they are obliged to mix in something to sweeten the eye of newt and toe of frog hell-broth. Yes, this character abuses his power -- but isn't power better than impotence? Certainly he misuses his mental gifts to commit unmentionable crimes -- but can't we admire the brilliance of his intellect? In such a fashion we can come to find the false less alarming, the depraved less repugnant, the ugly less offensive.

Given our fallen nature, it is easier to be dragged down by proximity to malevolent things than to be elevated by attending to edifying ones. Too much of the former -- and too little of the latter -- turns us callous and makes us hard and unfeeling.

Dare I say it: it gives us hearts of stone.

* The old Celts in their turn had a myth about Balor of the Baleful Eye: he was king of the giant Fomorians with a single eye that would kill anyone it looked upon.