Even though she cost him all he had to lose

[sovay]

Since I still feel like a train fell on me, I curled up on the couch downstairs and watched first David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) and then John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (1940). The former I found lovely and classic; the latter I want to own. It was the perfect film for me to watch right now. It's an Odyssey with no νόστος: the only real home for its sailors is either the sea itself or their awaiting deaths; the land is more alien to them than the water, but they all dream of it. It is not out of key with Kipling, either. And there are small points that the drama crests toward, the four one-act plays by Eugene O'Neill out of which the script was adaptated, but really it's one seam out of a narrative that starts nowhere and never stops; sea-like. But for others the long voyage home never ends. The film was made in 1940 and the action has been updated from World War I to II, but wartime is an incidental condition. It's the sea that calls you and the sea that never lets you go; it cuts you off and it binds you together. I don't mean the stories are nihilistic. People matter—who you hold on to, who you keep faith with, who you don't leave behind. (To be discussed in comments, if anyone wants to. I am too tired to deal with cut-tags and synopses that don't run on.) But the sea doesn't care. It was here first. You can swear to love till the seas run dry, but you can't outlive the ocean. I don't find this an upsetting thought. I think we've established already I'm not normal.

And some are drowned in deep water,
And some in sight o' shore,
And word goes back to the weary wife
And ever she sends more.
—Rudyard Kipling, "The Sea-Wife" (1893)

Comments

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to think I haven't read enough Kipling--between the two excerpts you've posted now.

Also, now I'm wondering if you've taken any sea voyages, and if so, how you made it back to land :)

[sovay]

I'm beginning to think I haven't read enough Kipling--between the two excerpts you've posted now.

I love his poems. I don't think he's as well-known for them now as he deserves; a fair number were set to music and so can be found as songs (performed by Bellamy himself or by folksingers like John Roberts and Tony Barrand), but almost all had music in them to begin with. And he can very often do personification without making it maudlin or simplistic, his narrators are often complex, and he can really do the sea.

Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered ’neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry—over headland, ness, and voe—
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!
—"The Coastwise Lights"

Blind in the hot blue ring
Through all my points I swing—
Swing and return to shift the sun anew.
Blind in my well-known sky
I hear the stars go by,
Mocking the prow that cannot hold one true!
—"The Derelict"

Who holds the rein upon you?
The latest gale let free.
What meat is in your mangers?
The glut of all the sea.
’Twixt tide and tide’s returning
Great store of newly dead,—
The bones of those that faced us,
And the hearts of those that fled.
—"White Horses"

Enjoy!

[chomiji]

Kipling was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I'm afraid. He was a marvelous writer. I loved most of his poems between the sections of the Jungle Book.

[sovay]

Also, now I'm wondering if you've taken any sea voyages, and if so, how you made it back to land

Never anywhere freer than a ferry (and when much younger, whale-watches); I would like to. Mostly I live on coastlines and look out to sea. Talking about The Long Voyage Home last night, nineweaving said that there isn't as much of a tradition of women lost to sea. I am working to change that.