Literary resonance
Oct. 4th, 2004 12:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vvvexationGenerally I don't expect to feel my soul poked at when studying for a history class. But for this class most of the required reading is in novel form, and the following paragraph just sneaked up and clubbed me over the head:
"'Broad the waves,' Thomas Buddenbrook said, 'ah, see them surging, watch them breaking, ever surging, ever breaking, on they come in endless rows, bleak and pointless, filled with woes. And yet there's something calming and comforting about them, too--like all things simple and necessary. I've learned to love the sea more and more--perhaps I preferred mountains at one time only because they were so much farther away. I wouldn't want to go there now. I think I would feel afraid and embarrassed. They're too arbitrary, too irregular, too diverse--I'm sure I'd feel overwhelmed. What sort of people prefer the monotony of the sea, do you suppose? It seems to me it's those who have gazed too long and too deeply into the complexity at the heart of things and so have no choice but to demand one thing from external reality: simplicity. It has little to do with boldly scrambling about in the mountains, as opposed to lying calmly beside the sea. But I know the look in the eyes of people who revere the one or the other. Happy, confident, defiant eyes full of enterprise, resolve, and courage scan from peak to peak; but when people dreamily watch the wide sea and the waves rolling in with mystical and numbing inevitability, there is something veiled, forlorn, and knowing about their eyes, as if at some point in life they have looked deep into gloomy chaos. Health or sickness--that is the difference. A man climbs jauntily up into the wonderful variety of jagged, towering, fissured forms to test his vital energies, because he has never had to spend them. But a man chooses to rest beside the wide simplicity of external things, because he is weary from the chaos within.'"
This isn't something I'd ever thought of myself, but it resonates with me. I'd almost like to do a study to confirm this idea, though that does seem rather like trivializing it.
I've always attributed my own love of the ocean (and by "love" I mean I include it in My Personal Pantheon), inasmuch as I tried to analyze it at all, to the power it represents, and if pressed I'd admit that there's something horribly seductive about the idea of just yielding to that power and letting it sweep me away. Probably this stems from my having too many things in my life that need to be taken care of and too much difficulty managing to do that, leading to the desire on some level to surrender control and, more importantly, responsibility (at this time I won't even get into what that implies for me in *ahem* other areas of life)--but that actually fits, now that I think about it, with Mann's talk of seeking simplicity. After all, when life is too complex, giving up control is the ultimate means of achieving simplicity.
I'd ponder this some more, but I almost don't feel I need to; for once, it's more like I've just had something click a little more firmly into place.
"'Broad the waves,' Thomas Buddenbrook said, 'ah, see them surging, watch them breaking, ever surging, ever breaking, on they come in endless rows, bleak and pointless, filled with woes. And yet there's something calming and comforting about them, too--like all things simple and necessary. I've learned to love the sea more and more--perhaps I preferred mountains at one time only because they were so much farther away. I wouldn't want to go there now. I think I would feel afraid and embarrassed. They're too arbitrary, too irregular, too diverse--I'm sure I'd feel overwhelmed. What sort of people prefer the monotony of the sea, do you suppose? It seems to me it's those who have gazed too long and too deeply into the complexity at the heart of things and so have no choice but to demand one thing from external reality: simplicity. It has little to do with boldly scrambling about in the mountains, as opposed to lying calmly beside the sea. But I know the look in the eyes of people who revere the one or the other. Happy, confident, defiant eyes full of enterprise, resolve, and courage scan from peak to peak; but when people dreamily watch the wide sea and the waves rolling in with mystical and numbing inevitability, there is something veiled, forlorn, and knowing about their eyes, as if at some point in life they have looked deep into gloomy chaos. Health or sickness--that is the difference. A man climbs jauntily up into the wonderful variety of jagged, towering, fissured forms to test his vital energies, because he has never had to spend them. But a man chooses to rest beside the wide simplicity of external things, because he is weary from the chaos within.'"
--Thomas Mann
This isn't something I'd ever thought of myself, but it resonates with me. I'd almost like to do a study to confirm this idea, though that does seem rather like trivializing it.
I've always attributed my own love of the ocean (and by "love" I mean I include it in My Personal Pantheon), inasmuch as I tried to analyze it at all, to the power it represents, and if pressed I'd admit that there's something horribly seductive about the idea of just yielding to that power and letting it sweep me away. Probably this stems from my having too many things in my life that need to be taken care of and too much difficulty managing to do that, leading to the desire on some level to surrender control and, more importantly, responsibility (at this time I won't even get into what that implies for me in *ahem* other areas of life)--but that actually fits, now that I think about it, with Mann's talk of seeking simplicity. After all, when life is too complex, giving up control is the ultimate means of achieving simplicity.
I'd ponder this some more, but I almost don't feel I need to; for once, it's more like I've just had something click a little more firmly into place.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-04 02:18 pm (UTC)My love of the sea also contains a component of wishing to be swept away. I'm going to ponder this some more. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-04 11:21 pm (UTC)Glad it resonated with someone besides me.
hydrophillia
Date: 2004-10-04 03:06 pm (UTC)I've loved both the mountains and the ocean for as long as I can remember, but my preference for one over the other has shifted from time to time. It's the times when I'm feeling overwhelmed, that my life seems to be headed in 15 different directions at once and is ripping me to pieces in the process, when I feel like I just need to abandon all purpose and responsibility and go where the tide takes me that I'm drawn to the sea.
I'm drawn to the mountains when I'm picking up the pieces from such an episode. My life seems to be constantly tearing me apart and reassembling the pieces into something new and (usually) better (stronger at least). I'm in a mountain phase right now, trying to find purpose and direction again after a turbulent few years.
Does any of this resonate with you or is your love of the sea completely different?
Re: hydrophillia
Date: 2004-10-05 07:30 am (UTC)I love the mountains as well, but I'm still trying to sort out in what way. They do offer more of a challenge, in the sense that you have to get farther into them before you feel you've reached them at all, and more importantly they don't have the same kind of active power to them--they force you to do more of the work of reaching out. That's a challenge I'm not sure if I've ever really felt up to. But then I'm not sure I've ever really been prepared to abandon myself either.
Hell, this needs more thinking. And just when I thought it didn't. Feh.
Re: hydrophillia
Date: 2004-10-05 02:50 pm (UTC)Don't the important ideas ALWAYS need more thinking?
Re: hydrophillia
Date: 2004-10-06 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 01:21 am (UTC)I've fantasized about grabbing a backpack full of books, another backpack full of power bars, and some water, and just floating out of the sight of land for a couple of days in a cheap boat.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-06 05:32 am (UTC)*chuckle* You too? Audrey uses that as a grounding song.
Hmm. Interesting passage, though. Tell me if you have more reactions.