![]() ![]() The “green night of extravagant snow” meant marine debris-a constant, gauzy fall of organic iotas, spawn, dust, and soot. Beneath the waves, refracted light and billowy particulate conspired to impair a diver’s apprehension of color, distance, and form. If the underwater environment eluded conventional depiction, it was in part because divers like Tailliez experienced the sea as a powerful sense distorter. “The poet,” Diolé wrote, “is the precursor even of the expert in the exploration of the sea.” 1 Stirred saps, ineffable humours whirled away Īnd phosphorus singers, a blue and gold alarm. Kiss of the ocean, unhurried, climbing the eyes, I dreamed the green night of extravagant snow ![]() ![]() Speaking to his fellow divemaster Philippe Diolé-as Diolé recounts in his memoir The Undersea Adventure (1951)-Tailliez then asked for a volume of verse by Rimbaud, leafed to “The Drunken Boat,” and pointed to this passage: You can’t describe it,” said Philippe Tailliez, a pioneer of oceanic exploration and a leader, with Jacques-Yves Cousteau, of the French navy’s underwater research group in the 1940s. The first generation of divers freed by the Aqua-Lung to rummage in coral reefs and plumb the dimmer depths of the sea found themselves at a loss for words when asked to talk about what they saw. ![]()
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