He who looked into the abyss: HP Lovecraft and "The ocean at night"

In "The Night Ocean", the last story written by the Providence Dreamer before his premature death, the profound relationship of communion and at the same time of "cosmic terror" towards the oceanic element and its abysmal depths is revealed in a complete way,Β from Lovecraft experienced firsthand.


di Marco Maculotti
cover image from "Weird Tales" (1942)

β€œWe have known it for a lifetime and yet it has a foreign aspect, as if something that is too big to take shape is hiding in the world of which it is the door. The ocean in the morning, sparkling with mist that mirrors the blue and bejeweled foam, has the eyes of one who reflects on mysterious things; And in the intricate currents where a myriad of colorful fish whizzes the presence of an inert colossus that will finally rise from the ancient abyss and walk the earth Β»

The ocean at nightΒ (1936), the last short story Howard Phillips Lovecraft worked on (four hands with Robert H. Barlow, that Joseph Lippi considered the best of his collaborators) before his premature death (1937), he places himself in an ideal "strip" of "oceanic" tales, the most famous of which form the triptych Dagon (1919) The Call of Cthulhu (1926) and The Innsmouth mask (1931). However, these are not the only literary labors of ours in which the marine element assumes an ignominiously central role: as such we can also mention The white ship (1919) The temple (1920) The horror of Martin's Beach (1923, edited with the one who soon became his wife, Sonia Greene), The mysterious house up there in the fog (1926) andΒ From the abyss of time (1933), in addition to the early story The mysterious ship (1902)

The importance of the story in question in the overall picture of Lovecraftian mythopoeia, much more than in the occasional passages involving the existence of hybrid creatures of the type mentioned in the preceding DagonΒ eΒ The Shadow over Innsmouth, is to be found in some passages that clearly define the relationship of profound communion and at the same time of "cosmic terror" that Lovecraft felt towards the ocean depthsimpressions which, on the other hand, had already significantly emerged in the previous "oceanic" tales reported above. Towards the end of the story, betraying undoubtedly autobiographical emotions and moods, our man writes:

β€œEven now I don't know why the ocean has such a great fascination on me. But perhaps no one can solve these problems: they exist in spite of any explanation. There are men, even wise men, who do not like the sea and the lapping of the waves on the golden beaches: they judge us strange, we who love the mystery of the ancient and infinite abyss. But for me in the moods of the ocean there is a mysterious, indefinable charm. It will be the whiteness of the melancholy foam under the waxy and dead moon; will be the waves that break eternally on unknown shores. In any case it is there, and so it will be when life disappears and only the unknown creatures that slip into its dark depths remain.

When I see the terrible waves surging with unending strength, an ecstasy like fear seizes me: then I must bow before the might of the ocean, for otherwise I would hate it and hate its beautiful waters. It is vast and lonely, and all things that were born from its womb will return to it. In the remote epochs of the future no one will inhabit the earth and movement will no longer exist, except in the eternal waters Β»

Peder Balke (Norwegian, 1804-1887), Nordkapp i mΓ₯neskinn: The North Cape by Moonlight (1848) Oil on canvas Oslo, private collection
Peder Balke, "The North Cape by Moonlight", 1853

As in other Lovecraftian β€œoceanic” tales, here too the infinite sea is almost revealed blackwoodiana A imagicianΒ 'cosmic' of solitude and isolation in which the narrator's psyche is mirrored and with which he has an almost osmosis relationship ("I couldn't tell if the dark landscape was a reflection of my melancholy mood or if the darkness inside me was caused by the scene before meΒ»). As the story progresses, the protagonist's inner soul merges indissolubly with the Oceanic Soul with which he has come so sensibly in contact, enigmatically stealing the atavistic as well as indescribable mysteries:

"[...]Β now I think that little by little the consciousness of the immense solitude of the ocean crept into me; a loneliness made vaguely frightening by the impression […] that an animated and intelligent force prevented me from being totally alone.Β Β»

Even the purely meteorological elements appear as it were 'personified' in some kind of atavistic and no better definable Will., in the same way as Lovecraft does towards the ocean: in this sense the oppressive progressive change of the meteorological element - with the description of the dark gray clouds that are massed in an ever more oppressive way and the "purple glow" that seems permeate them - they rise, in the narrative economy, to the vehicle ofΒ omenΒ fatal of an imminent "cosmic tragedy" that the protagonist feels in an increasingly palpable way, precisely by virtue of the osmosis relationship maintained towards the ocean itself and the 'natural' and 'meteorological' elements:

Β«I was tight in the pitiful and paralyzing fear of an ineluctable fate which, I felt, embodied the hatred of distant stars and some black, huge waves hoping to take my bones away: the revenge of the indifferent, hideous majesty of the nocturnal ocean Β»

Significantly, the "monstrous thing" that seems to hide imperceptibly, beyond the "horizon of the perceptible", behind the ocean and the meteorological element is fully 'revealed' to the psyche of the protagonist around the date traditionally attributed to theautumnal equinox:

Β«[…] As the month progressed towards the day of which I speak the spark of a gray, infernal dawn was born in my soul, in which I knew a menacing spell would be performed. Since I feared it more than my terrible suspicions (but less than the elusive hints of the monstrous thing that lurked behind the great scenery), I awaited the day of horror that kept approaching with a sense of curiosity rather than fear. I repeat that it was at the end of September, although I couldn't swear if it was the 22nd or the 23rd Β»

Then occurs what eliadianally could be defined as an "exit from historical time" with consequent access to "sacred time" (illud tempus), experienced by the protagonist thanks to the "level break" which occurred by virtue of his relationship of "subtle communion" with the Oceanic Soul: suddenly he feels the sensation that "someone had silenced Time and the touch of its great bell"And realizes how inexplicably, all of a sudden,"the night was neither hot nor cold, indeed strangely neutral ... as if the laws of physics were suspended and the forces that govern normal existence were shatteredΒ».

In this general framework of β€œOsmotic communion” with the outside world, the protagonist's psyche is not limited to reflecting only in the 'natural' element, even reflecting itself in the so-called 'artificial' or 'architectural' one: in fact, he accesses a similar "subtle" relationship in relation to the small house on the ocean that he rented in order to escape the human consortium for a few weeks ("when I saw her I thought that the little house was alone and that, like me, she was aware of her nothingness in front of the great sea").

L'absolute' seclusion 'and' solitude 'of the little house on the ocean (and of the narrating voice, and therefore, ultimately, of Lovecraft himself) are opposed not only to metropolitan life stricto sensu, so notoriously abhorred by ours, but also to that of the nearby seaside town Ellston, whose vulgar vacationers are outlined by Lovecraft with tints hoffmannian and Ligottiane, to the point that at a certain point in the narrative their existence is defined as oneΒ "Pantomime of life":

"There were women in makeup and lacquer, men bored and no longer young: a crowd of absurd puppets perched on the edge of the ocean, blind and determined not to see what lay above and around them, in the infinite grandeur of the firmament and in the nocturnal expanse of the ocean.Β Β»

Having said that, at the end of this brief comment and wishing you a good reading, it is important to underline how the "fairy tale" that the narrator had heard as a child evokes in an indelible and indubitable way the more 'esoteric' themes of the previous onesΒ DagonΒ eΒ The Shadow over Innsmouth:

Β«The fairy tale […] was about the woman loved by a black-bearded king who ruled over an underwater country where fish lived among flickering reefs; and how a dark being, who wore a cardinal's miter and had the features of a parched monkey, had kidnapped her from her legitimate boyfriend, a young man with golden hair. "

Salvatore Fergola (Italian, 1799-1874), Notturno a Capri: Night in Capri (ca. 1843) Oil on canvas, 107 x 132 cm Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (under delivery at the Museo
Salvatore Fergola, "Night on Capri", 1843

Howard Phillips LOVECRAFT

in collaboration with

Robert H. Barlow

"THE OCEAN BY NIGHT"

(translation by Giuseppe Lippi, Mondadori 1992)

I hadn't gone to Ellston Beach just to enjoy the sun and the ocean, but to rest my weary mind. Since I did not know anyone in the town, and it is one of those places that thrive on summer tourism and for most of the year they only have to show closed shutters, there was no danger of being bothered. This pleased me, because I wanted only the expanse of resonant waves and the beach that stretched out beneath my temporary home.

When I left the city my long summer job was over, and the large mural that was the fruit of it had been admitted to the competition. It had taken me most of the year to finish the painting, and after cleaning the last brush I was not at all averse to giving something to my health, therefore to rest for a while in solitude. In reality, after a week spent on the beach I was thinking only vaguely about the work whose success, until a few days ago, had seemed so important to me. I was not worried about the old problems of color and shades, I did not feel fear or mistrust of my ability to realize an image born of fantasy, nor of having to rely on my only technique to transform an elusive idea into a sketch of a drawing . Still, what happened on the lonely beach could be nothing more than the product of one mindset accustomed to worry, fear and mistrust. I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, a man fascinated by reflections on dreams and mystery; and who knows that a nature of this type does not have secret eyes, capable of seeing unsuspected worlds and orders of existence.

Having to tell what I have witnessed, I realize a thousand absurd limitations. Things seen with the inner eye, like the scenes that appear when we are about to slip into sleep, are more vivid and meaningful in that form than when we try to blend them into reality. Describe a dream with the pen, and the color will disappear. The ink we use must be diluted with a substance that contains too high a percentage of reality, and ultimately we find ourselves unable to express the incredible memory. It is as if our inner "I", freed from the bonds of waking and objectivity, fully enjoyed captive emotions which, once translated on paper, immediately languish. The greatest creations of man are hidden in dreams and visions, because the lines and colors of which they are made do not respect any obligation. Forgotten scenes and the most mysterious lands of the enchanted worlds of childhood leap into the sleeping mind, where they reign until awakening destroys them. It is in their midst that we can win some of the glory and happiness we aspire to, find images of supreme beauty - intuited but never before revealed - which are to us what the Grail was to medieval souls. To give shape to all this with the means of art, to try to bring back to the world a pale trophy of that intangible realm of shadows and whispers, requires memory and great skill. Because although dreams are everyone's heritage, few hands are able to shake the moth's wings without tearing them.

There is no such skill in this tale. If I were able, I would explain to you the elusive things I have seen in dreams, like someone who looks into a place without light and sees figures whose movement remains secret. In my painting, which is found with many other works in the building for which they were made, I have tried to capture a part of this elusive world of shadows, perhaps with more success than what I will get here. I had gone to Ellston to await the judgment on my work, and after a few days of unusual rest I saw things with a certain detachment: then I realized that - despite the defects that an artist always identifies clearly - in the stroke and in the color of the painting I had managed to save some fragments of the infinite world of the imagination. The difficulties of the job and the effort it had cost me had undermined my health, convincing me to spend the waiting period in a seaside resort. Since I wanted to be absolutely alone, I rented (to the delight of the incredulous owner) a small house some distance from the village of Ellston, which at the end of the season was populated by an increasingly small number of tourists completely indifferent to me. The house, darkened by the wind blowing from the sea but not painted, was not even a satellite of the village: it was located lower down, swinging on the coast like a pendulum under an immobile clock, and stood isolated on a mound of sand overlooking the sea, surrounded by weeds. She crouched like a warm animal and alone in front of the ocean, and the inscrutable dirty windows stared at a realm of equal solitude that included the land, the sky and the immense sea. But it is not necessary to use picturesque images in a story whose events, if taken to the extreme and welded into a single mosaic, will in themselves be quite strange. However, when I saw it I thought that the little house was alone and that, like me, it was aware of its nothingness in front of the great sea.

I rented it at the end of August, but arrived a day earlier than expected and found a van and two workers unloading the furniture provided by the owner. I didn't know how long I was going to stop and when the food truck had pulled away, I packed up my small luggage and locked the door (having a house made me feel very owner, after months spent in a furnished room) and went down to the mound of grass and sand that sloped down to the beach. The little house was square and had only one room, so it didn't require much exploration: two windows on each side provided plenty of light and a door had been jammed into the wall facing the ocean at the last moment, as if in an afterthought. The house had been built about ten years earlier, but due to its remoteness from Ellston it was difficult to rent even during the busy summer season. Since there was no fireplace, it remained deserted from October until late spring. Although the distance from Ellston was only a mile, the house seemed more secluded because a curve in the coastline meant that only grass-covered dunes were visible towards the town.

After arranging my things the first day was half past, and I just enjoyed the tireless sun and waves - things whose quiet majesty made painting seem like a boring and distant occupation. It was the natural reaction to an activity and a set of habits that had been exclusively cultivated for too long; luckily the work was done and the vacation had begun. This fact, which I did not immediately realize, was evident in everything around me and in the abandonment of the old landscape for the new. The effect of the shining sun on the restless waves sprayed those curves agitated by a mysterious force with diamonds. Perhaps the watercolor could have captured the solid, almost intolerable mass of light that hit the beach with each wave, where the sea mingled with the sand; and although the ocean had a color of its own, it was completely and incredibly dominated by the enormous reflection. There was no one next to me, and I enjoyed the show without strangers disturbing the scenario. All my senses were involved, albeit in different ways, but sometimes it seemed that the roar of the sea was one with the great splendor or that the light emanated from the waves, not the sun; and each of these sensations was so intense and vigorous that conflicting impressions ensued. It is strange, but neither that afternoon nor the following did I see bathers near the square house, even though the cove offered a much more inviting beach than that of the village, where the foam of the waves was dotted with scattered figures. I assumed it was because of the distance, or because there had never been any other houses below town level. I could not imagine why that strip of beach had escaped construction: other houses were scattered on the north coast and looked out at the sea with empty eyes.

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I swam until the end of the afternoon and then, after resting, I walked towards the small town. When I got dark it prevented me from seeing the sea, and in the light of the rickety street lamps I had the confirmation of a kind of life that did not even realize the great being cloaked in darkness that lay a few steps away from us. There were women in makeup and lacquer, men bored and no longer young: a crowd of absurd puppets perched on the edge of the ocean, blind and determined not to see what lay above and around them, in the infinite grandeur of the firmament and in the nocturnal expanse of the ocean. Returning to the small bare house, I walked along the black edge of the sea, projecting the beam of my flashlight into the naked and impenetrable void. There was no moon, and that light crept like a bar of solid matter into the restless wall of the waves; I felt then an indescribable emotion, which arose from the sound of the water and the perception of my smallness, with the tiny torch, on the shore of a kingdom which was immense in itself and which was just the edge of the depths of the earth. And the abyss immersed in the night, on which the ships moved above in a darkness that prevented me from seeing them, emitted in the distance a growl that seemed like fury and rage.

When I got to the house on the sand ridge I realized that in the walk of over a kilometer and a half I had not met anyone; however, I felt that the spirit of the desert sea had kept me company. He had personified himself, I imagined, in a form that I was not given to know about, but which acted quietly just beyond the reach of my consciousness. He was like one of those actors waiting, behind the dark stage, for the line that will soon call them before our eyes and make them act and speak like a sudden revelation of the limelight. But then I abandoned this fantasy and looked for the key to enter the house; and the bare walls gave me a sudden sense of security.

The cottage was free from the presence of the village, as if it had been lost along the coast and could not return; and when in the evening, after dinner, I returned to its walls, I did not hear the noise of the prying people. I usually stopped short on the streets of Ellston, but sometimes I enjoyed taking a stroll. There was the usual crop of curious shops and pseudo-opulent cinema facades that characterize seaside resorts. I never went there, and for me the usefulness of the village was limited to the restaurants. It's amazing how many useless things people find to do.

At first there were several sunny days. I got up early and watched the gray sky light up with the impending sunrise, a promise that was kept before my eyes. The dawn was cold and the colors pale compared to the uniform brightness of the day, which made every hour seem like a bright noon. The great light, so evident from the moment of my arrival, turned each successive day into a yellow page in the book of time. I noticed that many vacationers complained about the blazing sun, while I wanted it. After the gray months of work, the laziness favored by mere existence in a region ruled by elementary things - wind, light and water - had an immediate effect on me; and as I was anxious to continue the healing process, I spent all my time outside the home, in the sunlight. This plunged me into a state that was, at the same time, one of detachment and submission, and gave me a sense of security against the greedy night. As darkness is similar to death, so is light to life. Thanks to the experience accumulated over a million years, when men lived closer to mother water and the creatures of which we are descendants swam, lazy, in shallow basins crossed by the sun, when we are tired we still look for the essential things, abandoning ourselves to their cradling safety like the first mammals that did not yet dare to venture on the damp earth.

The monotony of the waves was restful and I had no other occupation than to observe the thousand aspects of the sea. There is an indefatigable change in the waves: colors and shapes pass over them like elusive expressions on a well-known face, and are immediately communicated to us by senses that we cannot fully recognize. When the sea is restless we think of the ancient ships that sank into its abysses and in our hearts the desire for a lost horizon appears in silence. But when the sea forgets, we forget too. We have known it for a lifetime and yet it has a foreign aspect, as if something that is too big to take shape is hiding in the world it is the door to. The ocean in the morning, sparkling with mist that mirrors the blue and bejeweled foam, has the eyes of one who reflects on mysterious things; and in the intricate currents where a myriad of colorful fish whizzes the presence of an inert colossus that will finally rise from the ancient abysses and walk the earth.

Ivan Konstantinovič Ajvazovskij (Russian, 1817-1900), Π›ΡƒΠ½Π½Ρ‹ΠΉ свСт Π½Π° БосфорС: Moonlight on the Bosphorus (1865) Oil on panel, 24.5 x 30.5 cm Private collectio
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, β€œMoonlight on the Bosphorus”, 1865

For several days I was glad and glad to have chosen the lonely house that perched like an animal on the round sand hills. Among the pleasant and useless diversions offered by such a life, I chose the one which consisted in following for long stretches the edge of the sea, where the waves left a wet and irregular patch edged with evanescent foam; and sometimes, among the debris abandoned by the ocean, I found curious fragments of shells. There was an incredible amount of marine deposits in the cove on which my little house stood, and I reflected that the currents that drifted away from the village beach must have reached me. In any case, my pockets (when I had any) were full of junk of all kinds: most of it I threw away an hour or two after picking it up, wondering why I was bothered. But once I found a small bone that I couldn't identify, other than the fact that it certainly didn't belong to a fish. I held it, along with a large drop of metal whose meticulous ornamentation had a rather strange appearance: in fact instead of the usual floral or geometric designs it represented a sea creature against a background of algae, and despite being worn by years of immersion the carving was visible with some clarity. Since I had never seen anything like it, I assumed it was a fashion item a few years earlier in Ellston, where such curiosities are common.

I had been here for a week when the weather slowly began to change. Each stage of this progressive deterioration was followed by a subtly darker phase, and eventually the sky above me changed from day to night. This manifested itself more clearly in my sensations than in what I actually saw; the little house was alone under the gray sky and sometimes a damp wind blew up from the ocean. The sun was obscured by long intervals of overcast sky: layers of leaden vapors beyond whose unspecified depths the disc was cut off. And if at times he could shine with ancient strength on the gigantic veil, yet he could not penetrate it. For hours the beach was imprisoned in a colorless cloak, as if a part of the night crossed over into the day.

And although the wind was strong and the ocean swirled with life, the water was getting colder and colder and I couldn't dive as long as before; so I got into the habit of taking long walks which - when I couldn't swim - gave me the opportunity to exercise as I wanted. Seaside walks covered a much larger stretch than my first wanderings, and as the beach continued for miles beyond the quaint village, I often found myself completely isolated on an immense stretch of sand in the evening. When this happened, I hurried along the murmuring shore of the ocean and followed its boundary to avoid getting lost inland. Sometimes, when the walks were getting late (as they were now more and more often), I hurried to the perched house that looked like a village watchman. Insecure on the windswept heights, a black dot against the eerie hues of the ocean sunset, she seemed more isolated than if the sunlight or the moon had illuminated her in full; and to my imagination it seemed a dumb face looking at me questioningly, waiting for me to decide to act somehow. I have already said that she was isolated and that at first this pleased me; but in the brief hour of the evening when the sun set in a purple trail and darkness came like an expanding stain, a foreign presence weighed on the house: a spirit, an atmosphere, an impression that came from the rushing wind, from the huge sky and the sea that spilled black waves on a beach that had suddenly become a stranger. At times like these I felt a discomfort that had no definite origin, although my solitary nature had long since accustomed me to the ancient silence and ancient voice of nature. This distrust, which I would not have been able to define better, did not torment me for long, even if now I think that little by little the consciousness of the immense solitude of the ocean crept into me; a loneliness made vaguely frightening by the impression (never more than this) that an animated and intelligent force prevented me from being totally alone.

The noisy and vulgar streets of the town, with their almost unreal activity, were very far away, and when I went there in the evening for dinner (not trusting a diet based solely on my bad cuisine) I was careful, even unreasonable, to return at the cottage before it was dead of night, and that even though I sometimes stayed out until almost ten. You will say that it is unreasonable behavior, that if I feared the dark for some childish reason I had better avoid it altogether. You will ask me why I did not leave the house, since so much loneliness depressed me. I do not know what to answer, apart from the fact that whatever my restlessness was, what mysterious melancholy the setting of the sun aroused in me or the sharp and salty wind that blew on the nocturnal robe of the sea, spread around me like an immense rolled-up dress, was something that was half born of my own heart and manifested itself only at certain moments, without having prolonged effects on me. On days when the light was the color of diamonds and the blue waves cheerfully crashed on the brightened beach (there were still some, of these moments) the memory of the black humor seemed downright impossible, but an hour or two later I could swoop in again and descend into a black world of despair.

Perhaps those inner sensations were a reflection of the mood of the sea: because, if it is true that half of things appear to us with the color of our psyche, other feelings are clearly influenced by physical and external factors. The sea can bind us to itself in a thousand ways, attracting us with the subtle expedient of a shadow or a sparkle on the waves and making us understand if it is sad or cheerful. The sea always remembers ancient things, and even if at times we cannot grasp them they are still transmitted to us: so we share its gaiety or its pain. Since I wasn't working and didn't see a soul, perhaps I was more susceptible than others to the hidden meaning of his messages. During that part of the summer the ocean dominated my life, demanding it as compensation for the healing it had given me.

Some swimmers drowned that year, and although I only heard about it casually (such is our indifference to the death of someone we don't know and haven't witnessed), I knew the details were gruesome. The dead - some of them skilled swimmers - were found, in some cases, only several days after drowning; and the vengeance of the abyss had devastated their bodies horribly. It was as if the sea had lured them to a buried den at the bottom, macerating them in the dark until, convinced that they were now of no use, it had thrown them back to shore in a frightening state. No one could explain the cause of the drownings and their frequency alarmed the fearful, because at Ellston the underwater currents are not strong and there was no news of sharks. I could not find out if there were any signs of injury on the corpses, but the terror of death that rushes through the waves and attacks the lonely bathers from a quiet dark spot is well known to all, and makes you tremble at the very thought. An explanation had to be found for those dead, even if there were no sharks. And since sharks were only one of the possible causes - never confirmed, to my knowledge - the swimmers who continued to venture into the ocean at that part of the season were more attentive to any treacherous currents than to a possible sea monster. Autumn was not far off, and someone made up this excuse to leave the sea where men were seized by death and to reach the safety of the countryside inland, where the roar of the waves is not heard at all. Thus came the end of August: by now I had been on the beach for many days.

There had been a threat of a storm since the fourth of the new month, and on the sixth, when I went out for a walk in the damp wind, I saw a shapeless mass of oppressive, colorless clouds massing over the choppy, leaden-gray sea. The wind, which did not blow in a specific direction but stirred everything, gave a feeling of imminent animation: a hint of life in the elements that was to lead to the long-awaited storm. I had had breakfast at Ellston, and although the sky looked like the lid of an immense coffin closing, I ventured to the bottom of the beach, away from both the town and my now invisible home. The universal greyness was punctuated by a purple, corpse-like hue which, despite the dark tint, had a luster of its own; then I realized I was a few kilometers away from any possible refuge. But it didn't matter, because despite the black sky and the purple glow that announced mysterious omens, I was in a strange mood and my body had suddenly become sensitive to certain details and atmospheres that had previously been too nuanced. A memory emerged from the darkness: it had sprung from the similarity between the scene I had before my eyes with one I had imagined as a child, after a fairy tale had been read to me. The fairy tale - which I hadn't thought of for many years - was about the woman loved by a black-bearded king who ruled over an underwater country where fish lived among quivering cliffs; and how a dark being, who wore a cardinal's miter and had the features of a shriveled monkey, had kidnapped her from her legitimate boyfriend, a young man with golden hair. In one corner of my imagination remained the vision of the underwater cliffs that stood out against the gloomy and opaque non-sky of that world: and although I had forgotten much of the fairy tale, the scene came back to my mind because the cliffs and the sky in front they looked the same to me. The spectacle was similar to what I had imagined many years ago, and which I had forgotten except for a few fleeting and casual impressions. The suggestion provoked by the tale had survived, perhaps, in some incomplete and elusive memory, and in the emotions conveyed to my senses by scenes that in other circumstances would have said nothing to me. Sometimes we experience sensations that last a moment and we realize that for example, an elusive landscape, a woman's dress on the curve of an afternoon road, a large tree that defies the centuries and stands out against the pale morning sky ( often the situation of the object is more important), they contain something precious, a golden virtue that we must capture. Yet when we review one of these scenes or situations later, or from another angle, we find that they have lost their value and meaning. Perhaps this is because the thing we see does not contain any elusive quality, but merely suggests something quite different to the mind that we cannot remember. The mind is amazed, and not fully grasping the cause of that immediate appreciation, it clings to the object that excites it and is surprised to see that there is no value in it. And just this happened while I was staring at the purple clouds: in them there was the solemnity and the mystery of the old towers of a monastery at dusk but also the image of the cliffs in the old fairy tale.

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Magnus Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (Swedish-Finnish, 1840-1905), Kuunvaloa MerellΓ€: MΓ₯nsken ΓΆver havet: Moonlight over the Sea (1876) Oil on canvas, 58 x 93 cm Private collection
Magnus Hjalmar Munsterhjelm, "Moonlight over the Sea", 1876

In reality I did not see any ghost of the imagination but when the cold wind rose, attacking the sky with stabbings, in the darkness of the clouds that merged with the sea, an object as gray as a piece of drifting wood appeared, waving vaguely in the foam. The object was at a considerable distance from me, and since it disappeared a moment later it may not have been a piece of wood, but a porpoise emerging to the restless surface.

Then I realized that I had spent too much time watching the advancing storm and imagining correspondences between its majestic appearance and my childhood fantasies. A freezing rain began to fall, and a uniform mantle of darkness spread over the scene already too dark for that hour. Running across the gray sand I felt the impact of cold drops on my back, and within seconds I was soaked from head to toe. At first I ran, pursued by the colorless drops that fell in long continuous lines from the invisible sky; but when I realized that the shelter was too far away to avoid getting drenched, I slowed down and walked home as if the weather was fine. There was no reason to run even if I didn't linger like on other occasions. The wet clothes were cold and embarrassed: as the darkness advanced and the ocean wind blew stronger, I could not suppress a shiver. But together with the annoyance of the pouring rain, I felt a sense of elation strictly connected to the mass of purple clouds and the urged reactions of the body. In a mood of exhilarating pleasure from the resistance I opposed to the rain - which poured down on me filling shoes and pockets - but also of mysterious appreciation for the majestic and upset sky that hung like a pair of black wings over the sea eternally moved, I crossed the gray corridor of Ellston Beach. Earlier than I expected, the house perched on the beach appeared to me in the slanting, pouring rain; the weeds growing on the mound of sand trembled in the lash of the maddening wind, as if they wanted to uproot themselves and follow the swift element of the sky. Sea and clouds had not changed at all and the scene was the one that accompanied me from the beginning except for the added detail of the roof that seemed to curl up to escape the pouring rain. I hurried up the insecure staircase and entered the dry room where, subconsciously surprised that I was no longer at the mercy of the whipping wind, I stood for a moment with the water pouring from all sides.

There are two windows at the front of the house, one on each side, and they directly overlook the ocean which now appeared to me partially obscured by the double veil of rain and impending night. As I wore a set of worn, dry clothes from convenient hangers and a chair too loaded to sit on, I looked out the windows. On all sides, I was a prisoner of an unusually dark twilight, descending on the scene at an unspecified hour and taking advantage of the cover offered by the storm. I didn't know how long I'd been on the gray beach or what time it was; but a brief search brought my watch to the surface, luckily it stayed home and spared the downpour that had soaked my clothes. The hands were almost invisible and slightly less indecipherable than the numbers on the dial. I had to guess rather than read, but a moment later my eyes entered the darkness (deeper in the house than beyond the blurred window) and I saw that it was six forty-five.

When I entered the beach house there was no one, and on an evening like this I didn't expect to see bathers; yet, still looking out of the window, some figures appeared to me that stood out against the dirty background of the stormy evening. I counted three that moved inexplicably, and a fourth closer to the house (although perhaps the latter was not a person, but a driftwood, because now the waves were very high). I was not a little amazed and wondered why those brave people faced such a storm. Then I told myself that the rain must have caught them off guard like me and that they had surrendered to the force of the waves. A moment later, driven by a sense of civil hospitality that got the better of my love of solitude, I looked out the door and went out for a moment on the tiny porch ); then I made a few gestures to the strangers. Maybe they didn't see me or didn't understand, but they didn't respond to my signals. Barely visible in the dark of the evening they seemed surprised or waiting for me to do something. In their attitude was the same mysterious expressionless (which could mean all or nothing) of the house as it had appeared to me in the eerie sunset. Suddenly I had the sensation that something sinister was hovering over those immobile beings, I decided to stay in a rainy night on a beach abandoned by everyone, and closed the door with a sense of annoyance that tried to hide in vain a deeper emotion, the fear; a devouring fear that rose from the shadows of my soul. A moment later, when I approached the window, I saw nothing but the terrible night. Vaguely intrigued and even more vaguely frightened, I behaved like someone who, despite not having seen anything to worry about, is equally afraid of what may be hiding around the corner of the dark road he is forced to cross. So I decided that I hadn't seen anyone and that the darkness had deceived me.

That night the air of isolation that hovered around the house increased, although just out of sight a hundred houses were scattered on the north beach in the rain and darkness, with dim yellow lamps reflected in the shiny, goblin-like lanes. in a forest pond. But since I could not see them, let alone reach them at that time (I had no car and I could leave the house perched on the ridge only on foot, in the dark populated by mysterious figures) I realized that in all respects I was alone with the desolate sea that it rose and fell invisible, intangible in the fog. And the voice of the sea had become a hoarse growl, like that of a wounded creature turning on its side before trying to get up.

I had a battered lamp at my disposal to drive out the darkness, and with its help - because the night came through the windows and stared at me darkly from the corners of the room, like a patient beast - I made myself a meal, since I had no intention of going to the village. . It seemed very late even though it wasn't nine o'clock when I went to bed. Darkness had fallen quickly and stealthily, and for the whole time I was at the sea they hovered elusive over every scene and every action. Something had come out of the night that would remain vague forever but that excited a deep feeling in me. I was like an animal waiting to hear the rustle of the enemy at any moment.

The wind blew for several hours and the rain continued to lash the thin walls that separated it from me. Every now and then the storm calmed down and I heard the rumbling of the sea: I imagined that great shapeless waves chased each other in the colorless wail of the wind, and spilled a foam on the beach that smelled of salt. But in the monotony of the restless elements there was a lethargic note in a background that after a while made me slip into a dark and colorless sleep like the night. The sea continued its mad monologue, the wind its lashing run; but all this took place beyond the circle of my consciousness, and for a while the nocturnal ocean disappeared from my sleeping mind.

There was a little sunshine in the morning, but it was dim, like what men will see when the earth ages, if they still exist; a star more tired than the veiled and dying sky. Pale copy of his old image, when I woke up Phoebus was struggling to cross the very vague and torn clouds: now he sent a gush of yellow light in the northwest corner of the house, now it faded and was reduced to a simple luminous ball, incredible forgotten game on the celestial field. After a while the rain (which evidently continued from the night) he washed away the remains of purple clouds that reminded me of the cliffs of an old fairy tale. Deprived of sunset and sunrise, the day merged with the previous one, as if the storm that had come in the meantime had not cast a sudden darkness on the world, but had dilated and calmed it in a single interminable afternoon. Gaining courage, the hidden sun exerted all its strength to disperse the mist, now streaked like a dirty window, and pushed it away from his realm. The bluish day advanced, the dark filaments receded, and the loneliness that had gripped me retreated to his observation post. There she stood, ready to leap and waiting.

The sun had regained its ancient splendor and the waves their sparkle: blue shapes chasing each other on that strip of beach from before the man appeared and would continue to do so without witnesses when he descended into the tomb of time. Won by those feeble reassurances like those who believe in the friendly smile on the face of the enemy I opened the door and pushing it out like a black spot against the background of the explosion of light I saw the beach washed of every trace as if no foot before me trampled on the smooth sand. With the rapid euphoria that follows a period of depression, I felt - purely passively and with no will on my part - that at that moment my memory was clear of suspicions of distrust and the very disease of fear I had felt for a lifetime. : Just as debris at the water level is cleared and carried elsewhere by the swelling of the tide. There was a scent of damp brackish grass like the wet pages of a book, and it was mingled with a sweeter odor that the hot sun brought from the inland fields; and all this acted on me like an exhilarating drink, filtered and flowed through my veins as if to transmit something of its impalpable nature to me and made me fly in the breeze drunk and aimlessly. Joining these things the sun continued to flood me like the rain of the day before an incessant cascade of light rays: as if he too were trying to hide from me the presence that I sensed in the background, and that moved beyond my sight, betrayed only by a rustle imperceptible at the edge of consciousness or by the appearance of the expressionless shapes that had stared at me from the void of the ocean. The sun, proud and lonely globe in the expanse of infinity, was like a swarm of golden moths on my relieved face. A white, divine and incomprehensible fire that denied a thousand others for every fulfilled dream or promise. Because the sun actually pointed to safe and wonderful realms where, if I had known the way, I could have ventured into that unusual exultation. But this feeling comes from within ourselves, because life has never, for a single moment, revealed its secrets, and only the interpretation we give of its symbols allows us to find happiness or boredom, according to a mood that it is deliberately induced in us. But every now and then we have to give in to his deceptions, deluding ourselves for a moment that this time we will find the joy denied. For this reason the sweetness of the fresh wind, on a morning following an unfortunate night (whose evil suggestions had given me greater disquiet than any threat to my body), whispered to me ancient mysteries are partially linked to the earth, speaking to me of pleasures that they were stronger precisely because I felt that I could only know part of them. The sun, the wind and the scents that rose in the air made me a participant in the festivals celebrated by the gods, whose senses are a million times more acute than human ones and whose delights are a million times more subtle and prolonged. All this could be mine, the elements said, if I had surrendered completely to their luminous and deceptive power; and the sun, a crouching god with bare celestial skin, an unknown and powerful furnace on which no one can look, had become a sacred object in the glow of my acute sensations. The blinding light that emanates into space is something that all beings should bow down to, astonished. The swift leopard, in the green depths of the forest, must have paused briefly to examine the rays divided by the leaves, and all the things it fed must have retained its luminous message, at least for that day. Because when the sun disappears into the depths of eternal space, the earth will be lost and will turn black against the backdrop of the boundless void.

Ivan Konstantinovič Ajvazovskij (Russian, 1817-1900), Π›ΡƒΠ½Π½Ρ‹ΠΉ Π±Π΅Ρ€Π΅Π³: Moonlit coast (1864) Oil on canvas, 56 x 80 cm Private collection
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, "Moonlit coast", 1864

I was on my way to the village - wondering what it looked like after the rain had cleaned it up - when I saw, in a glint of sunlit water that covered it like a puddle of gold, a small object that it could have been a hand and that was six or seven meters away from me, barely touched by the foam. The shock and disgust I felt when I realized, astonished, that it was really a piece of rotten meat, overwhelmed my new contentment and fueled the suspicion that it was indeed a hand. Certainly no fish, or part of a fish, could have looked like it, and I thought I could distinguish the greenish and corrupted fingers. I turned the thing over with my foot, because I didn't want to touch such an unclean object, and found that it adhered to the leather of the shoe as if it were sticky and tried to hold me in the grip of corruption. The piece of meat, which had almost no shape, nevertheless had too much resemblance to the one I feared, and I pushed it into the sucking of a wave that carried it away with unusual rapidity for those extreme edges of the sea.

Perhaps I should have reported my discovery, but it was too ambiguous to justify such an action. Since the thing had been partially devoured by a sea beast, I didn't think it was identifiable enough to be evidence of a possible, unknown tragedy. Of course, the numerous cases of drowning came back to me, as did other sinister things that remained in the realm of possibility. Whatever was the fragment brought ashore by the storm - a fish or a human-like animal - this is the first time I speak of it. After all, it's not impossible that rot had given it that strange shape.

I approached the town, disgusted by the presence of such a macabre object in the apparent neatness of the washed beach, and reflected that it was a typical sign of the indifference of death in a world that combines decay with beauty, and perhaps prefers the former. There was no news in Ellston of any other drownings or sea disasters, nor in the columns of the local newspaper, the only one I read during my stay.

It is difficult to describe my inner condition in the days that followed. Always susceptible to morbid emotions whose terrible anguish could be unleashed by external objects as well as from the depths of my spirit, I was tormented by a feeling that was not fear or despair, no, nothing like that; it was rather the awareness of that brief horror that is life, of the filth that underlies it: a feeling that is partly inherent in my nature and partly the result of the macabre reflections aroused by the torn piece of flesh that perhaps had been a hand. In those days my mind was a place of shadowy cliffs and indecipherable moving figures, like the ancient and forgotten kingdom of the sea that the fairy tale had brought back to my memory. I felt, in brief pangs of bitterness, the gigantic darkness of the universe that overhangs us, where my life and that of the species to which I belong is worth nothing in the eyes of distant stars; a universe where every act is in vain and even pain is a wasted emotion. The hours that I had previously dedicated to health, physical well-being and serenity passed by now (as if the moments of the previous week had ended forever) in an indolence similar to that of those who no longer have an interest in living. I was gripped by the pitiful and paralyzing fear of an ineluctable fate which, I felt, embodied the hatred of distant stars and of the black, enormous waves that hoped to take away my bones: the revenge of the indifferent, hideous majesty of the nocturnal ocean. .

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A part of that darkness and that tireless marine activity had penetrated into my heart, so I was living in an unreasonable, darkened torment; and yet it was a sharp torment due to its elusive origins, the extraordinary and unmotivated quality of its vampire existence. Before my eyes lay the phantasmagoria of purple clouds, the mysterious silvery bubbles, the monotonous and stagnant foam, the solitude of the house with the darkened windows, the mockery of the town inhabited by puppets. By now I had stopped going there, because it was nothing but a pantomime of life. Like my soul, it stood on the edge of a dark ocean that enveloped everything; an ocean that little by little had become hateful to me. And among those images crept, corrupt and impure, the vision of an object whose human aspect left less and less doubts about what it had once been. These words cannot express the horrible loneliness that had crept into me: a feeling so deeply rooted in my heart that I didn't even want to soothe it, and thanks to which I foresaw mysterious and unknown events that held me more and more furtively, like pincers. It was not madness: it was, rather, the clear and naked perception of the void that extends beyond this fragile existence, illuminated by a passing sun and no more stable than ourselves; the awareness of a futility that it is not possible to feel and then return to life, the awareness that, however much I rebelled, however much I fought with the forces that remained in my spirit, I would not have stolen an inch of ground from the enemy universe , nor could I defend for a moment the life that had been entrusted to me. Fearing death as I feared life, burdened by the burden of a nameless fear, I awaited the final horror that took shape in the immense region beyond the walls of consciousness.

In these conditions autumn found me, and what I had gained from the sea I lost again in its waters. Autumn on the beach: a bleak time, without a red leaf or other familiar mark to set it apart. And the frightening sea that never changes, even if man changes. The water was cold and I no longer got wet; the funereal sky had grown darker, as if snow avalanches were waiting to descend on the ghostly waves. Once the snow began, it would never stop, but it would continue under the white, yellow and scarlet sun, under that last little ember that will make room for the uselessness of the night. The once friendly waves muttered incomprehensibly and stared at me with a strange eye, though I couldn't tell if the dark landscape was a reflection of my melancholy mood or if the darkness within me was caused by the scene before me. A shadow similar to that of a bird hovering in silence had fallen on the beach and on my being, a bird that our attentive eyes do not suspect until the image on earth replicates the one in the sky, and suddenly we raise our eyes. eyes to realize that something unsuspected flies over our heads.

It happened at the end of September; the town had closed the places of amusement in which absurd frivolities marked the pace of lives dominated by fear, and the embellished puppets performed the rite of summer. Now the puppets had been set aside smeared with painted smiles or the frowns they had assumed at the last moment; there were not a hundred souls left in the village. The picturesque stuccoed buildings that stood facing the sea were once again allowed to crumble in the wind, undisturbed. And as the month progressed towards the day I speak of, the spark of a gray, infernal dawn was born in my soul, in which I knew a menacing spell would be performed. Since I feared it more than my terrible suspicions (but less than the elusive hints of the monstrous thing that lurked behind the great scenery), I awaited the day of horror that kept approaching with a sense of curiosity rather than fear. I repeat that it was at the end of September, although I could not swear if it was the 22nd or the 23rd. The details fade into the memory of those unfinished events ... fragments that no normal existence should be obsessed with, due to evil suggestions - and only suggestions - which they are capable of arousing. I knew that this was the moment because I had fallen into a dejection of the spirit that was born of intuitive causes and a sense of familiarity too elusive to be able to explain it. In the hours of the day I did nothing but wait for the night, impatient for the sun to cross the sky like a reflection just glimpsed in the rippling water. And I don't remember anything about the events of the day.

It had been a long time since the violent storm had cast a shadow on the beach, and after various hesitations which I cannot attribute to any concrete cause, I had decided to leave Ellston; the season was starting to get cold and there was no hope of regaining the happiness of sunny days. Then came a telegram (he had stayed two days in the Western Union offices before they tracked me down, proving how little my name was known) saying that my painting had been accepted and had won the competition, winning over everyone. the others. At this point I decided on the date of departure. The news, which at another time of the year would have hit me strongly, was now greeted with a kind of apathy. She seemed so detached from the reality around me, so irrelevant to my person, that she could have been directed to someone else, a stranger whose message I had received by mistake. However, it was the telegram itself that forced me to make my plans and leave the cottage by the beach. I should have spent another four nights there, when the last of a series of events occurred whose meaning lies not so much in an objectively threatening, but rather in the dark and sinister atmosphere that surrounds them. Night had fallen over Ellston and the coast, and a pile of dirty dishes testified that I had recently eaten and had no desire to get busy. The darkness surprised me in front of one of the windows overlooking the sea, with a cigarette in my mouth: it was a dark liquid that filled the sky little by little, bringing with it the moon that floated in the void, to a monstrous height. The flat sea that lapped against the silver sand, the complete absence of trees, men and signs of life of all kinds, the gaze of the very high moon suddenly made clear the vastness of the landscape that surrounded me. Only a few stars winked from the dark, as if to accentuate with their smallness the solemnity of the lunar disk and the tireless work of the waves. I had stayed at home, fearing to venture along the sea in what must have been a night of unspecified portents, but I could still hear him murmuring the secrets of incredible wisdom. Then, carried by a wind that came from nowhere, came the throbbing breath of an extraordinary form of life: the embodiment of all that I had sensed and suspected, and which now stirred in the abysses of the sky or under the silent waves. . I was unable to say in what place that mysterious being awoke from an ancient and terrible sleep: but how does one who follows a sleepwalker, and fears that he might wake up at any moment, I knelt beside the window, with the almost completely consumed cigarette between his fingers, staring at the crescent moon.

Little by little the still landscape was crossed by a kind of splendor whose brightness was increased by the twinkling of the stars and the moon in the sky. The more time passed, the more it seemed to me that I was forced to watch what was about to happen; the shadows retreated from the shore, and with them all that could have defended my thoughts at the moment of the awaited revelation. Where the shadows remained, they were empty and black as ebony: mounds of motionless darkness that stretched out under cruel, brilliant rays. Before me, horribly vivid, was the eternal picture of the dead moon - which regardless of its past was as cold as the inhuman tombs it houses among the ruins of infinite centuries, before the appearance of man - and of the troubled sea. from an invisible life, perhaps from a forbidden intelligence. I got up and closed the window, partly out of an instinct that arose within me, but mostly, I think, to have the opportunity to momentarily divert the flow of my thoughts. I had placed the lamp on a box in the western part of the room, but the moon was brighter and its blue rays invaded even the corners where artificial light was scarce. The ancient light of the silent planet spread across the shore as it had for millions of years, and I waited in agony made more acute by the delay of what was to happen, and the uncertainty of what I would witness.

Outside the cottage the white light flashed a series of ghostly shapes whose unreal and phantom movements seemed to mock my voluntary blindness, just as my ears were mocked by voices beyond the audible. For very long moments I remained motionless, as if someone had silenced Time and the touch of its great bell. In reality there was nothing I could fear: the shadows carved by the moon were not at all unusual and did not hide anything from my eyes. The night was silent, I knew it despite the closed window, and the stars were nailed, as in mourning, to the dark and immense listening sky. No gesture at the time, no words now could describe my situation or say the conditions in which my fear-ravaged soul was, imprisoned in the flesh that dared not break the silence, despite the torture it represented. As if awaiting death, and certain that nothing could ward off the danger that threatened my soul, I was crouched with a cigarette in my hand. Beyond the poor dirty windows lay a silent world, and in one corner of the room a pair of caked oars, left by someone before my arrival, shared the vigil of my spirit. The lamp continued to burn, emitting a sickly corpse-colored light. Staring at it from time to time, out of the desperate distraction it provided, I noticed that numerous bubbles formed and vanished in the base full of kerosene. Strange, but no heat came from the lamp: and suddenly I realized that the night was neither hot nor cold, indeed strangely neutral… as if the laws of physics were suspended and the forces that govern normal existence had been shattered.

Then, with an extraordinary suck that rippled the silver-streaked sea to shore and echoed deep in my heart, a creature swam out of the waves. It could have been a dog, a human, or something stranger. He could not have known I was looking at her, and perhaps he did not care: but like a deformed fish he dived under the surface of the sea that reflected the stars and swam under the water. After a moment she emerged again and this time, since she was closer, I saw that she was carrying something on her shoulder. Then I realized that it couldn't be an animal, that it was a man or something like a man, and that it was approaching the land from the darkness of the ocean. But she swam with tremendous skill.

As I watched, passive and terrified, with the fixed eye of one who is waiting for death at the hands of another and knows he cannot avoid it, the swimmer approached the beach, even if too far south for me to be able to distinguish its shape. or features. Moving uncertainly, and followed by splashes of sparkling foam that his hasty step dropped in abundance, he emerged and lost himself in the dunes of the interior.

A sudden return of fear, which had previously subsided, took hold of me. A sense of bitter cold invaded me, even though the room (whose window I didn't dare open) was suffocating. I thought it would be horrendous if something tried to enter through an open window.

Now that I could no longer see the creature, I had the feeling that it was close and hiding somewhere in the shadows, or horribly spying on me from one of the windows I didn't watch. I turned my gaze, with extreme anxiety and tension towards all the windows of the room, fearing to meet the face of the intruder who stared at me but unable to escape from that terrifying inspection. I looked for hours but there was no one on the beach anymore.

Thus passed the night, and with it the portent that simmered like the evil concoction of a cauldron: in an instant he had risen to the brim and then, after a pause, he had withdrawn, carrying with him the unknown message he was carrying. Like the stars that we adore hoping for the revelation of terrible and glorious mysteries, and which actually reveal nothing, something had pushed me fearfully close to the discovery of an ancient secret that touched the world of man and hid cautiously beyond the line of the unknown. But ultimately I hadn't had anything; I had barely been given a glimpse, obscured by the veils of ignorance too. I can't even imagine what it would have looked like had I been closer to the swimmer moving towards the shore instead of towards the sea. I don't know what would have happened if the concoction had overflowed from the cauldron, spilling out in a rapid cascade of revelations. The nocturnal ocean had swallowed the fruit of his breast again. I will not know more.

Even now I don't know why the ocean has such a great fascination on me. But perhaps no one can solve these problems: they exist in spite of any explanation. There are men, even wise men, who do not like the sea and the lapping of the waves on the golden beaches: they judge us strange, we who love the mystery of the ancient and infinite abyss. But for me in the moods of the ocean there is a mysterious, indefinable charm. It will be the whiteness of the melancholy foam under the waxy and dead moon; will be the waves that break eternally on unknown shores. In any case it is there, and so it will be when life disappears and only the unknown creatures that slip into its dark depths remain. When I see the terrible waves that rise with interminable force, an ecstasy similar to fear takes me: then I must bow before the power of the ocean, because otherwise I would hate it and I would hate its wonderful waters.

It is vast and lonely, and all things are born from its womb will return to you. In the remote ages of the future no one will dwell on earth and the movement will no longer exist, except in the eternal waters. And the waters will crash with roar and abundance of foam on unknown shores, and in the dying world there will be no one left to admire the cold light of the aged moon playing on the tides and the rough sand. At the edge of the abyss stagnant foam will reign, gathering around the shells and bones of dead creatures that once inhabited the waters. Silent and flabby beings will drag and roll on empty beaches, and even that lazy spark of life will die out. Then darkness will reign over everything, for ultimately even the white moon will be extinguished over the waters. And nothing will remain above or below the surface of the sea; and until the last millennium, after all things have perished, the sea will thunder, restless, in the perpetual night.

(The Night Ocean, 1936)

Ilya Nikolaevich Zankovsky (Russian, 1832-1919), Darjalpasset Oil on canvas, 101,5 x 133 cm Private collection
Ilya Nikolaevich Zankovsky, "Darjalpasset"