Alas! The Marquesas!
Shun the beckoning land!
Choose the open sea instead
To whatever end!
Took down to wondrous depths
Sullen we did go
Where shapes of unwarped primal
Gliding to and fro
Father! Willst thou pity
If dry’re freshest cuts
If eyelids crack — mummified
Without trace of blood
Lord, why would thou leave us so misled?
How many warm hearts would cease to beat
In the consequence of it?
Because of the emotional gravity of this song, I researched this event. Holy shit....gruesome, morbid, tragic and despair are the words that come to mind. This piece by AHAB sums it up ideally. You can "feel" the anxiety, the estranged and despairing nature of what those who may have felt on that fucking raft.
yet the song is not about the events in the painting. It pertains to the waleship Wessex catastrophe which happened 2 years later, and was very similar
About 3 weeks ago I was on a ferry from Calais to Dover. I stood on deck at 3am, you could still see the lights of Calais beckoning. And I put this fucking song on. Best decision ever!
I did a bit of research on Capt. Pollard and the whaleship Essex after seeing this for the first time. After finishing the reading yesterday, I came here, listened to this again...and cried. I just sobbed, and couldn't stop. The tragedy and the horror and the awe of what humans do in their most desperate times and the terrible things that can come from one well-intentioned decision overwhelmed me.
Have been listening to the hunt over and over, thought they were pretty good, but listening to this song i just realized that they are quite brilliant :D. Defineately need to buy this album.
from wikipedia...... "it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on July 5, 1816. At least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced cannibalism. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain perceived to be acting under the authority of the recently restored French monarchy. In reality, King Louis XVIII had no say in the captain's appointment, since monarchs were not directly involved in appointments made to vessels like a naval frigate. The appointment of the vicomte de Chaumareys as captain of the Méduse would have been a routine naval appointment, made within the Ministry of the Navy."
