Again there is motion, this time with awe and terror; for whatever my condition, the condition of thought and flesh, the reality in which I am formed and deformed, in which I am known to myself and to others — all is become mutable. I am monstrous, my head merges into the attic, the attic into blackness. .
my breath comes rapidly, I am restless. . flashing the pages before me, I stop at
the picture of the uterus and tubes — like the head of a longhorn steer, the ends of the horns exfoliating with fimbriae,
and the ovum, bursting from the follicle, to become momentarily free in the abdomen, out of all direct contact. . communicating its condition, perhaps, by means of hormones, but nonetheless adrift, as in an open ocean. .
MOBY-DICK: “All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air. .”
And Columbus, reported by Fernando: “On the same Saturday, in the night, was seen St. Elmo, with seven lighted tapers, at the topmast. There was much rain and thunder. I mean to say that those lights were seen, which mariners affirm to be the body of St. Elmo, in beholding which they chaunted many litanies and orisons. .”
The corpusants.
I am still for some moments, as though waiting for lightning — but there is none; only the steady hum of wind and rain, the muffled voices of children, vague sounds of the city in the distance — and the creaking of the television aerial, in the wind, straining the chimney brackets.
In Lisbon, — rank with bodega, wine in the wood, salt fish, tar, tallow, musk, and cinnamon — the sailors talk
of monsters in the western ocean, of gorgons and demons, succubi and succubae, maleficent spirits and unclean devils, unspeakable things that command the ocean currents — of cuttlefish and sea serpents, of lobsters the tips of whose claws are fathoms asunder, of sirens and bishop-fish, the Margyzr and Marmennil of the north, goblins who visit the ship at night, singe hair, tie knots in ropes, tear sails to shreds — of witches who raise tempests and gigantic waterspouts that suck ships into the sky — of dragon, crocodile, griffin, hippogrif, Cerberus, and Ammit
or Melville:
“Megalosaurus, iguanodon,
Palaeotherium glypthaecon,
A Barnum-show raree;
The vomit of slimy and sludgey sea:
Purposeless creatures, odd inchoate things
Which splashed thro’ morasses on fleshly wings;
The cubs of Chaos, with eyes askance,
Preposterous griffins that squint at Chance. .”
And the medical book:
“At one time the human sperm cells were regarded as parasites, and under this misapprehension the name spermatozoa, or ‘semen animals,’ was given to them.”
Melville again:
“You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the Truth in; especially when it seems to hare an aspect of newness, as America did in 1492, though it was then just as old, and perhaps older than Asia, only those sagacious philosophers, the common sailors, had never seen it before, swearing it was all water and moonshine there.”
The sailors talked of islands:
of Antilia, and the splendid mirages beyond Gomera; of the French and Portuguese Green Island, and the Irish O’Brasil;
of the great pines, of a kind unknown, cast ashore on the Azores by west and north-west winds — and the lemons, green branches, and other fruits washing upon the Canaries;
of Saint Brandon’s, to be seen now and again from the Canaries, but always eluding discovery,
except by the Saint himself, who set out in search of islands possessing the delights of paradise, and finally landed,
found a dead giant in a sepulchre, revived him, conversed with him, found him docile, converted him, and permitted him to die again. The sailors talked of
“the desert islands inhabited by wild men with tails. .”
or of Atlantis, where the gods were born, and whose first king, Uranus, was given to prophecy. .
discovered, perhaps, by Phoenicians blown west, and reported by Silenus (whose words are beyond question, as he was drunk at the time) to be “a mass of dry land, which in greatness was infinite and immeasurable, and it nourishes and maintains by virtue of its green meadow and pastures many great and mighty beasts. The men who inhabit this clime are more than twice the height of human stature. .”
The shore was lofty and precipitous, with a vast, fertile plain lying inland, and great mountains to the north. The land abounded in all precious minerals, and cattle and elephants were plentiful.
(modern excavations in southwest Spain have unearthed elephant tusks. .
There was a canal, and a proud, barbaric city, with copper-clad walls, and a great temple to Poseidon, clad with silver, and a gigantic statue in gold.
And there was Scheria, home of Nausicaa and the Phaeacians, UIysses’ longest resting place before his return home — like Atlantis, it boasted a great city, and was located beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
And Tarshish, the port for which Jonah set sail from Joppa.
(Melville in Joppa: “No sleep last night — only resource to cut tobacco, and watch the six windows of my room, which is like a lighthouse—& hear the surf & wind. . I have such a feeling in this lonely old Joppa, with the prospect of a long detention here, owing to the surf — that it is only by stern self-control & grim defiance that I continue to keep cool and patient.”
Joppa, the point of departure, the Palos, from which Jonah sought to escape, to Tarshish. .
But perhaps Tarshish, Atlantis, and Scheria were all one: islands locked in the minds of those who dwelt in the internal sea. .
perhaps they were all Cadiz: the barbaric western city beyond the Pillars, on the southwest shore of Spain (not far from Palos), where the Guadalquivir pours into “the real ocean,” as the Egyptian priest called it; or, in the words of the Arabians, “the green sea of gloom”. .
The Western Ocean.
In Lisbon, the sailors say: “He who sails beyond the Cape of No may return or not.
“For many said: how is it possible to sail beyond a Cape which the navigators of Spain had set as the terminus and end of all navigation in those parts, as men who knew that the sea beyond was not navigable, not only because of the strong currents, but because it was very broken with so much boiling over of its waters that it sucked up all the ships.”
TWO
there was Marco Polo, talking of Cipango, from a jail cell in Genoa:
reporting it to be fifteen hundred miles east of Asia, to be reached by huge Chinese ships made of the fir tree, ships that sailed freely upon the ocean that washed the eastern shores of that continent. .
(and if Asia extended to the ocean, and Cipango were fifteen hundred miles east of Asia — to where did the ocean extend?
And Melville in Genoa: “Ramparts overhanging the open sea, arches thrown over ravines. Fine views of sections of town. Up & up. Galley-slave prison. Gratings commanding view of sea — infinite liberty.”
And Genoa itself:
“Janus, the first king of Italy, and descended from the Giants, founded Genoa on this spot in the time of Abraham; and Janus, Prince of Troy, skilled in astronomy, while sailing in search of a place wherein to dwell in healthfulness and security, came to the same Genoa founded by Janus, King of Italy and great-grandson of Noah; and seeing that the sea and the encompassing hills seemed in all things convenient, he increased it in fame and greatness.”