…There would be enough here for a ballad, a piercing ballad howling like the wind—but only one. The poet would wrap himself in his cloak, squint into the distance, and grit the sand in his teeth, whispering the great line, as expressive as the naked Spit—and then drive away in the same carriage, rolling up the blind and fastening it shut without a backward glance. The immortal poem had already seen all, with its own sighted lines …No, I hadn’t seen the Spit that way, and I didn’t mourn it. Grounds for pondering whether one is always right to mourn the departed. Not all waters have flowed away before our very eyes …
But even this surprise, that the land was partly artificial—like the fact that it was not mine, like the fact that it was forbidden—still did not explain its peculiar incorporeality. There was yet another cause, finally and truly the last: this land was not land at all. A principled cartographer could have refrained from putting it on the map, or should have looked for a new symbol, neither land nor water, a kind of dotted line. The Spit did not meet the criteria by which we define dry land, or at any rate not the basic criterion from the standpoint of science, which believes criteria and not eyes. From that literal standpoint, the Spit was not land but sea. It was ocean floor, a hypertrophied sandbar thrusting itself above the water. A strict scientist would say that it was no more land than is the back of a whale that has surfaced from the water and will presently dive back down. He would smile condescendingly. The usual mistake—confusing human time with geological. From the standpoint of geology, the Spit has thrust itself temporarily above the surface of the World Ocean, for a time so brief that it is, indeed, more comparable with the whale back’s existence as dry land than with any geological epoch, even the most fleeting. It is a truly fleeting formation, this Spit—driven by the wind, it is drifting toward the mainland at a fabulous speed, tens of centimeters a year. Man tries to capture this geological instant: it is beautiful. He plants forests, designs a monstrous dam shielding the Spit from the sea. When he finally halts it, it will no longer be the Spit. It will be a dam.
This did serve for an explanation. It turned the surprising into the convincing: there was nothing of the mainland here. That this was not mere suggestion—the special condition of the earth’s surface on the Spit—is proved not only by reverse logic, the inability to state causes and the primordial quality of surprise, but also by the following fact, which caught up with me even later: there is a mainland pimple embedded in the spiritual purity of the Spit. In its flight, the Spit has overtaken a small island and hasn’t yet left it behind. On this fragment of mainland amalgamated into the Spit you will feel a difference. Here other currents run through the earth, here everything, even the sky, is more banal, more carnal and malicious; here the fishermen have settled, gnarled people with stunted, gnarled dogs running around (apparently a special breed, under the constant influence of the wind). Here the air is different, the rains are different—this is land. And the local inhabitants really do seem to live as though on an island, they don’t think of the Spit as dry land. Almost disdainfully, if not fearfully, they squint at it from their kitchen gardens as though gazing into the distance, at the sea. An alien thing—not theirs.
To the best of our knowledge, man is incapable of imagining anything that he hasn’t seen in some form or other. His mental images of hell are far more developed, differentiated, and detailed than his images of paradise. Moreover, hell is well populated, so to speak, with ourselves and our acquaintances. We seem to understand hell.
We need only depict in cramped intimacy and simultaneity (on one canvas, let’s say) the things we have met in everyday experience—and
But even this surprise, that the land was partly artificial—like the fact that it was not mine, like the fact that it was forbidden—still did not explain its peculiar incorporeality. There was yet another cause, finally and truly the last: this land was not land at all. A principled cartographer could have refrained from putting it on the map, or should have looked for a new symbol, neither land nor water, a kind of dotted line. The Spit did not meet the criteria by which we define dry land, or at any rate not the basic criterion from the standpoint of science, which believes criteria and not eyes. From that literal standpoint, the Spit was not land but sea. It was ocean floor, a hypertrophied sandbar thrusting itself above the water. A strict scientist would say that it was no more land than is the back of a whale that has surfaced from the water and will presently dive back down. He would smile condescendingly. The usual mistake—confusing human time with geological. From the standpoint of geology, the Spit has thrust itself temporarily above the surface of the World Ocean, for a time so brief that it is, indeed, more comparable with the whale back’s existence as dry land than with any geological epoch, even the most fleeting. It is a truly fleeting formation, this Spit—driven by the wind, it is drifting toward the mainland at a fabulous speed, tens of centimeters a year. Man tries to capture this geological instant: it is beautiful. He plants forests, designs a monstrous dam shielding the Spit from the sea. When he finally halts it, it will no longer be the Spit. It will be a dam.
This did serve for an explanation. It turned the surprising into the convincing: there was nothing of the mainland here. That this was not mere suggestion—the special condition of the earth’s surface on the Spit—is proved not only by reverse logic, the inability to state causes and the primordial quality of surprise, but also by the following fact, which caught up with me even later: there is a mainland pimple embedded in the spiritual purity of the Spit. In its flight, the Spit has overtaken a small island and hasn’t yet left it behind. On this fragment of mainland amalgamated into the Spit you will feel a difference. Here other currents run through the earth, here everything, even the sky, is more banal, more carnal and malicious; here the fishermen have settled, gnarled people with stunted, gnarled dogs running around (apparently a special breed, under the constant influence of the wind). Here the air is different, the rains are different—this is land. And the local inhabitants really do seem to live as though on an island, they don’t think of the Spit as dry land. Almost disdainfully, if not fearfully, they squint at it from their kitchen gardens as though gazing into the distance, at the sea. An alien thing—not theirs.
To the best of our knowledge, man is incapable of imagining anything that he hasn’t seen in some form or other. His mental images of hell are far more developed, differentiated, and detailed than his images of paradise. Moreover, hell is well populated, so to speak, with ourselves and our acquaintances. We seem to understand hell.
We need only depict in cramped intimacy and simultaneity (on one canvas, let’s say) the things we have met in everyday experience—and
Similar Books
