From Homer’s winedark seas to Shakespeare’s multitudinous seas incarnadine, the ocean in literature has provided man a bloody arena for battles, man against man and man against sea beast. But when Jacques Cousteau sets out, again and again, it is to convert God’s wonders to a kind of underwater Disneyland, in which real-life Dumbos are provided by whales Leviathan it turns out is a friendly creature who likes to have his belly scratched and makes sounds which when recorded resemble a chorus of giggling castrati. When in ancient times men heeded John Masefield’s call to set out to sea again, the business they did on great waters was serious stuff, in the words of the Psalmist to “see the works of the Lord: and his wonders in the deep.” These last included Leviathan, the symbol of might beyond man’s power to hook or harness.
0 kommentar(er)
