The stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old eternal rocks
I got up to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch greeting me with the news that Biden has dropped out of the race in favor of Harris, which hasn't actually defused my need to scream about how the media coverage of the presidential race seems to exist in a hands-free parallel universe. It doesn't make a difference to my vote: I have been in ethical artichoke mode since 2016. But it still feels like playing a fantasy sport with people's lives. I have to hope that people will vote for the lives and not the sport.
Elsenet a friend of mine linked a piece from Lord Dunsany's Fifty-One Tales (1915). Under the circumstances I should make clear that I am not sharing it as a presentiment of doom or even a resignation to the long run. It reminded me at once of Kipling and James Elroy Flecker and P. J. Hammond. I had never run across it, not even in a couple of collections I have of sea-poetry. I am confident I would have used its last line as an epigraph for something of my own if I had.
The Raft-Builders
All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships.
When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase or two and little else.
They that write as a trade to please the whim of the day, they are like sailors that work at the rafts only to warm their hands and to distract their thoughts from their certain doom; their rafts go all to pieces before the ship breaks up.
See now Oblivion shimmering all around us, its very tranquillity deadlier than tempest. How little all our keels have troubled it. Time in its deeps swims like a monstrous whale; and, like a whale, feeds on the littlest things—small tunes and little unskilled songs of the olden, golden evenings—and anon turneth whale-like to overthrow whole ships.
See now the wreckage of Babylon floating idly, and something there that once was Nineveh; already their kings and queens are in the deeps among the weedy masses of old centuries that hide the sodden hulk of sunken Tyre and make a darkness round Persepolis.
For the rest I dimly see the forms of foundered ships on the sea-floor strewn with crowns.
Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.
There goes the raft that Homer made for Helen.
spatch greeting me with the news that Biden has dropped out of the race in favor of Harris, which hasn't actually defused my need to scream about how the media coverage of the presidential race seems to exist in a hands-free parallel universe. It doesn't make a difference to my vote: I have been in ethical artichoke mode since 2016. But it still feels like playing a fantasy sport with people's lives. I have to hope that people will vote for the lives and not the sport.Elsenet a friend of mine linked a piece from Lord Dunsany's Fifty-One Tales (1915). Under the circumstances I should make clear that I am not sharing it as a presentiment of doom or even a resignation to the long run. It reminded me at once of Kipling and James Elroy Flecker and P. J. Hammond. I had never run across it, not even in a couple of collections I have of sea-poetry. I am confident I would have used its last line as an epigraph for something of my own if I had.
The Raft-Builders
All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships.
When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase or two and little else.
They that write as a trade to please the whim of the day, they are like sailors that work at the rafts only to warm their hands and to distract their thoughts from their certain doom; their rafts go all to pieces before the ship breaks up.
See now Oblivion shimmering all around us, its very tranquillity deadlier than tempest. How little all our keels have troubled it. Time in its deeps swims like a monstrous whale; and, like a whale, feeds on the littlest things—small tunes and little unskilled songs of the olden, golden evenings—and anon turneth whale-like to overthrow whole ships.
See now the wreckage of Babylon floating idly, and something there that once was Nineveh; already their kings and queens are in the deeps among the weedy masses of old centuries that hide the sodden hulk of sunken Tyre and make a darkness round Persepolis.
For the rest I dimly see the forms of foundered ships on the sea-floor strewn with crowns.
Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.
There goes the raft that Homer made for Helen.
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Oh, that's perfect.
*hugs*
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Oh, that is lovely - the whole thing is. Thanks for posting it here! I've never read anything by Lord Dunsany, but watching Dean Spanley recently made me curious, because the film was such an odd thing, and beautifully done, so I was thinking dly about what the original novella was like, or whether the film added the depth; this now, even more so. I think the only thing by him I ever saw in book form anywhere, was a volume in 'my' library (i.e. my official base library when I was a children's librarian), but it was quite hefty and I had many children's books to read for work, so I never tried it. Maybe I shall have to see what I can find by him some time....
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This so much!
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You're welcome!
Thanks for posting it here! I've never read anything by Lord Dunsany, but watching Dean Spanley recently made me curious, because the film was such an odd thing, and beautifully done, so I was thinking dly about what the original novella was like, or whether the film added the depth; this now, even more so.
I discovered him in college with The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924), which I liked very much and after which I seem to have read mystifyingly little of him beyond The Gods of Pegāna (1905) and some randomly anthologized short stories. Persual of Fifty-One Tales suggests he thought a lot about deep time and I would be inclined to believe that a lot of the oddness is in the original.
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*hugs*
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Yes. And now I'm bracing for the whine of: "Can't it be somebody other than her?"
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I just wrote to the DNC requesting them to follow the lead of the President and fully endorse the VP as the chosen candidate of the Democratic Party and the next President of the United States. We didn't have fuck-around time before and we don't now!
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He just went on my short list of great writers of the sea.
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In 2016 I started saying that I would vote for an artichoke over our state governor if it had a functioning sense of ethics, such as the Republican incumbent of the time was notably lacking. I believe the phrase itself came originally out of an exchange with
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"The Raft-Builders" is the piece that my friend linked and I love it. The book is composed of these flash-like pieces, some like parables, some like poems, some like satires, some better than others. I'm amazed I never ran across any of them before. This one is my favorite.
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I love—and find much stranger than the usual—the image of Time in the deeps of Oblivion, as opposed to Time itself as the obliterating sea.
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*eyes*
and I would be inclined to believe that a lot of the oddness is in the original.
Oh, I am in no doubt that the oddness was in the original, I just wondered how much of the emotional/character side was, and whether it would be explicit about things that are only implicit in the film. It's a very understated film on that side of things, and performed by Peter O'Toole, Judy Parfitt & Jeremy Northam, which would in itself bring depth that wouldn't have to have been there in the novella. I'm curious about that generally, and Why Henslowe Is Like That, and What Exactly Did Happen With The Boat, and I assume the grieving must be from both, or that would be no substance to the original tale - which, your quotes here have already shown to be unlikely.
I discovered him in college with The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924), which I liked very much and after which I seem to have read mystifyingly little of him beyond The Gods of Pegāna (1905) and some randomly anthologized short stories.
A quest is now ongoing! Probably he's one of those authors who you have to push for and don't just fall into your hands; idk about you, but it turns out there are so many of those around. Who knew? ;-)
Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.
Re: Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.
I'm so glad. The actual sea is like that for me, too.
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That, without having read the novella or seen the film, I am afraid I got nothing on. (Tubi has not been forthcoming with the film, as after the encouraging handiness of The Winslow Boy and Wish Me Luck I had hoped it would be.) I am just willing to vouch for a deep ambient level of weird.
A quest is now ongoing! Probably he's one of those authors who you have to push for and don't just fall into your hands; idk about you, but it turns out there are so many of those around. Who knew?
Once you put it that way, it was inevitable. Lord Dunsany was the source of the famous phrase, coined to describe the location of Elfland, taken up by any number of writers of the fantastic since, "beyond the fields we know." Naturally he requires questing.
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Yes, so I see. I just had a look - it appears to be streaming on Apple TV and for rent from Amazon in the US at the mo, otherwise mainly available to buy as a download from various places, but not very cheaply, & Roku has it in the UK. Hopefully it'll turn up somewhere else soonish, but it is super obscure. I think the distributor looked at it and then just gave up, which I can sympathise with, but very unfair to an actually excellent film.
Naturally he requires questing.
♥ And so does the Dean, I suppose!
"I have been in ethical artichoke mode since 2016."
I have hopes that Harris will do a great deal better than a houseplant.
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It could always be a live artichoke.
I have hopes that Harris will do a great deal better than a houseplant.
I would like to be able to find out.
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Good point.
Here is hoping that we will all get to find out.