The Sea Rhapsody

It was an infinite blue, and in the distance huge silver stripes colored it white, up to the extreme horizons. The light rose from the sea, came down from the sky, glowed in the air. The sea was quiet and secure, only a trembling bit of foam on the shore betrayed his love of life. The blue and the light soared above the Earth. The sea and the sky breathed light and heat, flooding the Earth with it.

My eyes welled up with tender tears.

I leaned on the edge of a wall. I was in the shadow, the shadow of the wall, which fell down up to a few steps from me, stamped black and straight on the shining sand: and over that line the sand continued in the light for a vast space up to the edge of a reef, at the end of the Earth.

For I thus stood in that shadow of the wall, that's why the sea had not seen me yet.

And so I moved away from the wall and stepped into the open, amid all the light, in front of the sea.

And then all of a sudden, shuddering, the sea became dark and a tremble shook the world, like a big earthquake in the air; in no time at all, it was gray and stormy all around me, and dreadfully sore was the face of the sea. A huge wrinkle had crossed it, all at once, from the shore to the horizon like a turbid chasm, and then another hundred or thousand wrinkles crumbled it; caves were dug and mountains emerged: the sea was all astir with the raging surge of immersed waters that scattered it up foaming with great anger, in every direction. The waves, high in the sky, mixed with the clouds and filled the air with terrible cries, while noisily rushing, ever more cavernous and choleric, shoreward: the air was gelid and blown about by the winds. Even the sky was swelled with clouds and furious and dark, because the sky is nothing but the expressive forehead of the sea.

There and then I was very happy that the sea treated me like that. If he had received me with indifference, or with a cold and courtly manner the way he does with some people, or - and now I confess that this was, since the beginning of my trip, my secret fear - had he even feigned not to know me, I think I would have died of displeasure and humiliation. Instead, the sea, as soon as he saw me became angry and harassed me with shouts and menacing insults, because he still liked me, the way he knows how when he finds someone he likes.

That's why my heart swelled up with joy at that wrathful welcome. I didn't stretch out my arms toward him, because of an old shame of mine for making gestures; nor did I say anything to him: not even a word. I think I smiled at him.

Massimo Bontempelli, 1925