Octobyss

The deep-sea octopus Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis, which lives around hydrothermal vents on the floor of the Pacific (image from Octolab)


Elsewhere Other-Engageable

Guise and Molls — review of Front cover of Octopus: The Ocean’s Intelligent Invertebrate: A Natural History (2010)
Magna Mater Marina — review of The Illustrated World Encyclopedia of Marine Fish and Sea Creatures (2007)

Multitudinous Marriment

• …ποντίων τε κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα… — Αἰσχύλος, Προμηθεὺς δεσμώτης (c. 479-24 B.C.)

• …of ocean-waves the multitudinous laughter… Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus* at Perseus

• …ever-glittering laughter of the far-thrown waves… (my translation)

See also:

γέλασμα, a laugh, κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα, Keble’s “the many-twinkling smile of Ocean, ” Aesch. — Liddell and Scott

Keble was not a sacred but, in the best sense of the word, a secular poet. It is not David only, but the Sibyl, whose accents we catch in his inspirations. The “sword in myrtle drest” of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, “the many-twinkling smile of ocean” from Æschylus, are images as familiar to him as “Bethlehem’s glade” or “Carmel’s haunted strand.” Not George Herbert, or Cowper, but Wordsworth, Scott, and perhaps more than all, Southey, are the English poets that kindled his flame, and coloured his diction. — John Keble at Penny’s Poetry Pages

One day Mr Gordon had accidentally come in, and found no one there but Upton and Eric; they were standing very harmlessly by the window, with Upton’s arm resting kindly on Eric’s shoulder, as they watched with admiration the network of rippled sunbeams that flashed over the sea. Upton had just been telling Eric the splendid phrase, “anerhithmon gelasma pontou”, which he had stumbled upon in an Aeschylus lesson that morning, and they were trying which would hit on the best rendering of it. Eric stuck up for the literal sublimity of “the innumerable laughter of the sea,” while Upton was trying to win him over to “the many-twinkling smile of ocean.” They were enjoying the discussion, and each stoutly maintaining his own rendering, when Mr Gordon entered. — quote from Frederic W. Farrar’s Eric, or Little by Little (1858) at Sententiae Antiquae


*Or possibly his son Euphorion.

Distal Disdain, Proximal Pusillanimity

When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and Sharks are around,
His voice has a timid & tremulous sound. — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865)

Performativizing Papyrocentricity #63

Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:

Bullets and ButterfliesMad Dog Killers: The Story of a Congo Mercenary, Ivan Smith (Helion / 30° South Publishers 2012)

Jaundiced on GeorgeGeorge Orwell: English Rebel, Robert Colls (Oxford University Press 2013)

Crabsody in ViewRSPB Handbook of the Seashore, Maya Plass (Bloomsbury 2013)


Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR