The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics) (76 page)
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Authors: Simon Leys
FOREWORD TO
THE SEA IN FRENCH LITERATURE
1
. Jean Marteilhe (1684–1777), a young Protestant who, trying to escape religious persecution in France, was arrested at the border and sentenced to serve on the galleys. Faithful to his religion, he rowed as a slave-convict for twelve years; eventually freed, he exiled himself to Holland, where he published a most remarkable narrative of his ordeal, well described in his long title,
Mémoires d’un Protestant, condamné aux galères de France pour cause de religion, écrits par lui-même: Ouvrage dans lequel, outre le récit des souffrances de l’Auteur depuis 1700 jusqu’en 1713, on trouvera diverses Particularités curieuses, relatives à l’Histoire de ce Temps-là, & une Description exacte des Galères & de leur Service
(Amsterdam, 1757).
René Duguay-Trouin (1673–1736), a famous Breton privateer who fought at sea against the English and the Dutch. Educated by the Jesuits, he knew how to write; his terse, vivid autobiography is a minor classic.
Louis Garneray (1783–1857), a distinguished painter (seascapes and naval battles). He ran away from home and went to sea at age thirteen; served as a privateer under the great Surcouf; lived through countless extraordinary adventures—battles, mutinies, shipwrecks—before eventually being captured by the English (age twenty-three) and spending nine years on the notorious and barbaric prison-ships of Portsmouth. Finally freed in 1814, he wrote of his early adventures at sea (
Voyages, aventures et combats
) and of his ordeal in captivity (
Mes pontons
). Garneray, as a memorialist and story-teller, is simply fabulous!
2
. Alain Gerbault (originally a tennis champion), Bernard Moitessier (yachtsman of genius) and Éric Tabarly (originally a navy officer) all became famous for their solitary voyages under sail. Alain Bombard is a medical doctor who, in 1952, crossed the Atlantic Ocean on an inflatable raft, without any supplies of water or food, to demonstrate scientifically the possibility of survival at sea. The author of
Naufragé volontaire
, his visionary daring decisively modified traditional practices
which, for centuries, had needlessly condemned countless shipwreck victims to death.
3
. Joseph Conrad, for instance; one of his letters is featured. Interesting, though not exactly his greatest literary work, it was originally written in French (like a significant part of his correspondence) and it provided me with a good pretext to include his irreplaceable presence in the anthology.
4
. I am thinking first and foremost of Jonathan Raban,
The Oxford Book of the Sea
(Oxford University Press, 1992).
5
. “This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and the sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of breadwinning.” Thus begins
Youth
, one of Conrad’s most perfect sea narratives. Before him, R.L. Stevenson developed the same notion, in a different mode: “If an Englishman wishes to have such a patriotic feeling, it must be about the sea . . . The sea is our approach and bulwark; it has been the scene of our greatest triumphs and dangers, and we are accustomed in lyrical strains to claim it as our own. The prostrating experiences of foreigners between Calais and Dover have always an agreeable side to English prepossessions. A man from Bedfordshire who does not know one end of the ship from the other until she begins to move, swaggers among such persons with a sense of hereditary nautical experience . . . We should consider ourselves unworthy of our descent if we did not share the arrogance of our progenitors, and please ourselves with the pretension that the sea is English. Even where it is looked upon by the guns and battlements of another nation, we regard it as a kind of English cemetery, where the bones of our seafaring fathers take their rest until the last trumpet; for I suppose no other nation has lost as many ships or sent as many brave fellows to the bottom.” (
The English Admirals
, 1881, quoted by J. Raban,
op. cit.
p. 284.)
6
. “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep,” in
A Further Range
(New York: Holt, 1936).
7
. “Things I Consider Overrated,” in
From the Uncollected Edmund Wilson
(Ohio University Press, 1995), pp. 120–21. Wilson ends his diatribe with the observation that sea literature is unreadable. Well before him,
Théophile Gautier made the same point, with much more wit (see my anthology, Vol. 1, pp. 501–3). Americans often consider Wilson as a prince of modern criticism; he seems to me a rather vulgar mind.
8
. Boswell,
Life of Johnson
(entry of March 1759). And again: “A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger. When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land” (Boswell,
Life of Johnson
, entry of 19 March 1776). And this conversation between Johnson, Boswell and William Scott (entry of 10 April 1778):
Johnson
: As to the sailor, when you look down from the quarter deck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity in human misery; such crowding, such filth, such stench!
Boswell
: Yet sailors are happy.
Johnson
: They are happy as brutes are happy, with a piece of fresh meat,—with the grossest sensuality . . .
Scott
: We find people fond of being sailors.
Johnson
: I cannot account for that, any more than I can account for other strange perversions of the imagination.
9
. Johnson was a landlubber to an almost Continental degree. He was from Lichfield, one of the very few English cities that are located more than 100 miles from the nearest shore. Though he became a Londoner quite early in his career, it is only at age fifty-nine that he saw the sea for the first time in his life—during an excursion to Plymouth, on which he had been dragged by his old friend, the painter Joshua Reynolds.
10
. Letter to Sidney Colvin, written from Tahiti, 16 October 1888. See
Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson
(Yale University Press, 1997), p. 382.
11
. Éric Tabarly,
Mémoires du large
(Paris: Editions de Fallois, 1997), p. 126. Also in the same book, these lines of equally refreshing sincerity: “One often asks lone sailors what they think about when out at sea, and their answers are nearly always awkward. As for myself, I don’t think at all. Or rather, I only think of the boat; my ears are attuned to its every sound; my only concern is to make it sail as fast as possible. All the time, I only think of the boat, because on board the tasks are absorbing. Contrary to what most people believe, a boat is not synonymous with freedom.
To sail means to accept constraints one has freely chosen. It is a privilege: most people must bear with the constraints which life is imposing on them.” (
Ibid.
, p. 122.)
12
. “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by / And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking / And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking. / I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide / Is a wild call and a clear call that cannot be denied; / And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, / And the flung spray and the blown spume and the seagulls crying. / I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, / To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; / And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, / And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.”
13
. Quoted in David Hays and Daniel Hays,
My Old Man and the Sea
(New York: Anchor Books, 1996), p. 197.
14
. Joseph Conrad, “The
Torrens
: A Personal Tribute,” in
Last Essays
(London & Toronto: Dent & Sons, 1926).
15
. Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer,” in
’Twixt Land and Sea
(London & Toronto: Dent & Sons, 1912). Conrad repeatedly evoked this paradoxical feeling of security: “The peace of the sea . . . a sailor finds a deep feeling of security in the exercise of his calling. The exacting life of the sea has this advantage over the life of the earth, that its claims are simple and cannot be evaded.” Joseph Conrad,
Chance
(London: Methuen & Co., 1914), Chap. 1.
16
. Hilaire Belloc,
The Cruise of the “Nona”
(London: Century Publishing, 1983), new edition with an introduction by Jonathan Raban. The original edition was published in 1925.
IN THE WAKE OF MAGELLAN
1
.
Deus escreve direto por linhas tortas
.
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Abetz (Otto)
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Adorno (T.W.)
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Alain (E.A. Chartier)
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Allégret (Yves)
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Allston (W.)
454
Amiel (H.F.)
500
An Lushan
289
Archilochus
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Arendt (Hannah)
235
Arrant (R.)
414
Asselineau (Charles)
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Auden (W.H.)
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Austen (Jane)
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Bernard (Claude)
45
Bernard (Tristan)
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Bertelé, René
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48
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497–99
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