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January 23, 2016
These sea creatures looked at the telegraph wire. “What is that thing?” they asked, “and what isn’t it?”
“Good for nothing!” said all the creatures in the sea, and held fast to the sea-cow’s opinion, so as to have an opinion.
The little fish had its own thoughts. “That exceedingly long, thin serpent is perhaps the most wonderful fish in the ocean. I have a feeling it is.” “The very most wonderful,” say we human folks, and say it with knowledge and assurance. It is the great sea-serpent, long ago the theme of song and story. It was born and nourished and sprang forth from men’s cunning and was laid upon the bottom of the sea, stretching from the Eastern to the Western land, bearing messages, quick as light flashes to our earth. It grows in might and in length, grows year by year through all seas, round the world, beneath the stormy waves and the lucid waters, where the skipper looks down as if he sailed through the transparent air, and sees the swarming fish, brilliant fireworks of color. Down, far down, stretches the serpent, Midgard’s snake, that bites its own tail as it encircles the earth. Fish and shell beat upon it with their heads—they understand not the thing—it is from above. Men’s thoughts in all languages course through it noiselessly. “The serpent of science for good and evil, Midgard’s snake, the most wonderful of all the ocean’s wonders, our—GREAT SEA-SERPENT!” Hans Christian Andersen: The Great Sea-Serpent
Posted by gerardvanderleun at January 23, 2016 5:34 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.