At Night on the High Seas
At Night on the High Seas
At night, when the sea cradles me
And the pale star gleam
Lies down on its broad waves,
Then I free myself wholly
From all activity and all the love
And stand silent and breathe purely,
Alone, alone cradled by the sea
That lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.
Then I have to think of my friends
And my gaze sinks into their gazes
And I ask each one, silent, alone:
"Are you still mine?
Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?
Do you feel from my love, my grief,
Just a breath, just an echo?"
And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,
And smiles: no.
And no greeting and no answer comes from anywhere.
- Hermann Hesse
These works are inspired by Hermann Hesse's poem At Night on the High Seas, published in 1911. In the poem, Hesse, while alone at sea in the Malaysian archipelago, contemplates his friends and his friendships and attempts to quantify their level of connectedness. Always a fan of Hesse's writing, I am particularly drawn to this poem because of its simplicity and its universal appeal; each of us, at times - if not every day-, has wished to measure our selves, our lives, against those we know and love, with them, by them. Each of us wants to know what the sum of our existence is; each of us wants to know and understand how much we matter, to what degree we are loved and are irreplaceable. I love Hesse's metaphor of being alone - a single being - at night on the high seas, floating on a dark mass reflecting the innumerable stars, because it helps reinforce the only conclusion that makes any sense: that we are all ultimately alone, that our relationships, our friendships, our loves, do not completely connect us to one another. Each of us has an individual self, an individual mind, an individual heart, an individual life and an individual death. But notice that the sea smiles; for Hesse, his (and our) solitude is not a source of sadness, it is simply the way it is, and there he finds some peace, some solidarity: we are joined together in our solitude.
There is a personal subtext to each work, but it is not necessary to divulge that subtext completely; after all, as the subtext is mine, the viewer could never entirely grasp my experience. Each work, then, stands for a specific friend, relationship, or experience in my life and, both individually and collectively, as a symbol for the universal experience of the human quest for synchronicity.
At night, when the sea cradles me
And the pale star gleam
Lies down on its broad waves,
Then I free myself wholly
From all activity and all the love
And stand silent and breathe purely,
Alone, alone cradled by the sea
That lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.
Then I have to think of my friends
And my gaze sinks into their gazes
And I ask each one, silent, alone:
"Are you still mine?
Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?
Do you feel from my love, my grief,
Just a breath, just an echo?"
And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,
And smiles: no.
And no greeting and no answer comes from anywhere.
- Hermann Hesse
These works are inspired by Hermann Hesse's poem At Night on the High Seas, published in 1911. In the poem, Hesse, while alone at sea in the Malaysian archipelago, contemplates his friends and his friendships and attempts to quantify their level of connectedness. Always a fan of Hesse's writing, I am particularly drawn to this poem because of its simplicity and its universal appeal; each of us, at times - if not every day-, has wished to measure our selves, our lives, against those we know and love, with them, by them. Each of us wants to know what the sum of our existence is; each of us wants to know and understand how much we matter, to what degree we are loved and are irreplaceable. I love Hesse's metaphor of being alone - a single being - at night on the high seas, floating on a dark mass reflecting the innumerable stars, because it helps reinforce the only conclusion that makes any sense: that we are all ultimately alone, that our relationships, our friendships, our loves, do not completely connect us to one another. Each of us has an individual self, an individual mind, an individual heart, an individual life and an individual death. But notice that the sea smiles; for Hesse, his (and our) solitude is not a source of sadness, it is simply the way it is, and there he finds some peace, some solidarity: we are joined together in our solitude.
There is a personal subtext to each work, but it is not necessary to divulge that subtext completely; after all, as the subtext is mine, the viewer could never entirely grasp my experience. Each work, then, stands for a specific friend, relationship, or experience in my life and, both individually and collectively, as a symbol for the universal experience of the human quest for synchronicity.
