Archaic Torso of Apollo Awe and Amazement Quotes

There's certainly something awe-inspiring about the fact that this statue can never be fully "known"—even its state of decay (a missing head seems pretty significant) doesn't diminish its power. We get the feeling that if it did still have its "legendary" head (or in German, unerhörtes, which means unheard of, outrageous, inconceivable), we might not be able to handle it.

Okay, we could have picked any of the lines in the middle section of this poem to express the speaker's utter awestruck-ness (if that's not a word, we're making it one now) at viewing the statue. The inner "brilliance" (3) that he perceives is a result of his own amazement at the beauty of the object, and it "dazzles" him like the sun.

Again, the image of dazzling light comes up. The statue, in the speaker's view, cannot contain its own radiance, the piercing rays of pure beauty that are so powerful in this image that they have a certain violence.