Reading
No.3
Reader
Samuel West
Actor + director
Recorded in Islington, London
Artwork
Ackroyd + Harvey
Luminescent paint on card.
Created on the schooner,
Noorderlicht by rolling a ball
in a storm.
Cape Farewell Expedition.
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
March 22. The darkness had materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water thrown back from the white curtain before us. Many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew continuously now from beyond the veil, and their scream was the eternal Tekeli-li! as they retreated from our vision... But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.
Edgar Allan Poe
The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym, 1838
It was the whiteness of the
whale that above all things
appalled me.
Herman Melville Moby-Dick, 1851