The modern descriptive term for Victor's experience would be awesome. Although he
dwells on how satisfying is this kind of response to nature (and in the third edition
it is particularly accentuated), it is probably so because of its reliable alterity
from his own situation. In a few paragraphs, with startling irony, he will have that
dependability rudely broken, and the sublime will come directly home to the human
who, thinking to master it, had fled from its tremendous power.