Healed of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea...

Aug 04, 2006 16:32

This is great stuff.

"Know ye, now, Bulkington?  Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

"But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God--so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?  Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

*swoons*

I admit it. I'm in love with Herman Melville.
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