It opens at the top of a mountain in Lofoten, a small Norwegian archipelago in the high north Atlantic. The old man recounts his ordeal that in less than a single day changed his hairs from a jetty black to white, weakened his limbs, and t unstrung his nerves. In Scandinavia, there is a phenomenon known as the Moskstraumen or Moskenstraumen, a system of tidal whirlpools found in the Lofoten archipelago in Nordland county (in Norway) between the Norwegian Sea and the Vestfjorden. When I could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus got my head clear. We might analyse the maelstrom as a symbol representing the force of time as well as nature. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied convulsion -- heaving, boiling, hissing -- gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents. The white-haired man managed to prevent his own descent into the Maelstrom by observing how the various objects from the boat were sucked into the whirlpool and eventually grabbing onto a water cask, and escaping the force of the Maelstrom. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. Each moment added to its speed -- to its headlong impetuosity. But while we were up I had thrown a quick glance around -- and that one glance was all sufficient. All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. Poe really turned a natural phenomenon into something terrifying: really great example of a man-vs-nature story. descent meaning: 1. the state or fact of being related to a particular person or group of people who lived in the. The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. The story of how he was caught during a storm in a maelstrom three years earlier with his brothers and how he survived. No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. With Kiki Bosch, Stefan Andrews, Mikael Koski, Wim Hof. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the southward. A Descent into the Maelstrom By Edgar Allan Poe noise being heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes, the frag- The sense of falling had ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these places are preferred. I woke up this morning eager to do nothing but to celebrate the birthday of a man who loved with a love that was more than love. "I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered 'on the grounds' -- it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather -- but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-strm itself without accident ;although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before the slack. This story speaks to an American mythos, especially with the maelstrom likened to the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie. DESCENTE website uses cookies to give you a better service. I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. He explained to me -- although I have forgotten the explanation -- how what I observed was, in fact, the natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments -- and showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky body, of any form whatever. Beautiful prose and chilling imagery. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. 2. a downward inclination or slope. From 1,200 metres up Helseggen, the exhausted old man who guided the group to the top points out the ocean view and specifically its surface. the cask of amontillado. It was the hour of the slack but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. It's a tale of fear and terror. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of it. We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Strm was in full fury! I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind. Joseph Glanville. It may look like boasting but what I tell you is truth I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of Gods power. We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. His experience and brush with death, however, made his black hair turn white in the course of one day. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety. You really see and hear the fellows drawn into the eye of the storm and you feel the rage of the elements. What great skill! 2. "By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. I took courage, and looked once again upon the scene. However, I didn't I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-strm. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea it being constantly high and low water every six hours. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance. "The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. Thank you very much for reminding me, Poe. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. The attempts to account for the phenomenon -- some of which, I remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal -- now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. And very memorable. "The three of us -- my two brothers and myself -- had crossed over to the islands about two o'clock P. M., and had soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had ever known them. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky -- as clear as I ever saw -- and of a deep bright blue -- and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. timeline | At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek -- such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way -- so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters -- but then I distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. The story Poe weaves out I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. And how they unfortunately didn't. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation, than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we revolved. The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. The story Poe weaves out of this natural phenomenon is highly suggestive, leaving itself open to numerous interpretations. The sense of falling had ceased ;and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act although I knew he was a madman when he did it a raving maniac through sheer fright. {js=d.createElement(s); The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I saw. Refresh and try again. Inspired by the Moskstraumen, tidal eddies and whirlpools in northern Norway which are real, the story is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb. The old fisherman once he calms his fear uses his observations and logic to save his own life. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make ;and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. He describes a whirlpool a mile wide, a descent, and an escape. She was quite upon an even keel -- that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water -- but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends. A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poes Hop-Frog Interesting Literature. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. In 1841, "Graham's Magazine" was the first to publish "Maelstrom." forum, gallery | by Edgar Allan Poe (published 1845) Print Version The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways ; nor are the models that we Artist: DEFEATED SANITY. Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose up up as if into the sky. The Descent 2005 R 1 h 39 m IMDb RATING 7.2 /10 228K YOUR RATING Rate POPULARITY 812 812 Play trailer 2:04 1 Video 99+ Photos Adventure Horror Thriller A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak. Dutch ice freediver Kiki Bosch swims in the world's coldest waters without a wetsuit as therapy for a trauma she experienced, and to inspire others. I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered on the grounds it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-strm itself without accident; although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minuteor so behind or before the slack. This Moskstraumen was the inspiration for Poes tale. I'm reading in order so, what the heck! A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRM. I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded. An old looking man tells the story of how he survived when the fishing boat he was in with his brother enters the maelstrom. js.id=id; See also Trivia | Goofs | Crazy Credits | Alternate Versions | Connections | Soundtracks Did You Know? Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. "Between Lofoden and Moskoe," he says, "the depth of the water is between thirty-six and forty fathoms ;but on the other side, toward Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. "A Descent into the Maelstrm" is an 1841 short story by Edgar Allan Poe. In the tale, a man recounts how he survived a shipwreck and a whirlpool. "You perceive that in crossing the Strm channel, we always went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack -- but now we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this ! The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray ;but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. [ C] [ [n]] The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus. "It could not have been more than two minutes afterward until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The storm comes The first was, that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and Quotes submission guide. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. Do you see any change in the water ?" I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. 5. any passing from higher to lower in degree or state; decline. What does the maelstrom represent? Each moment added to its speed to its headlong impetuosity. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Strm, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?. In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The old man recounts his ordeal that in less than a single day changed his hairs from a jetty black to white, weakened his limbs, and t unstrung his nerves. These would have been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well as afterward in fishing -- but, somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger -- for, after all is said and done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the truth. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. It was until today's afternoon that I found out that I do not only own a copy of Poe's most tales, but that I also already have started reading one of his less appreciated not-so-short-stories. The depth in the centre of the Moskoe-strm must be immeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. It was not going. descent noun (RELATION) [ U ] the state or fact of being related to a particular person or group of people who lived in the past: She's a woman of mixed / French descent. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. Do you hear any thing? The one midway is Moskoe. You suppose me a very old man -- but I am not. wordlist | site map | This book is in near mint condition with a bump on the side of the back cover. von kempelen and his discovery: mesmeric revelation: the facts in the case of m. valdemar: the black cat. descent n (slope) descente nf : pente nf : Harry ran down the descent to the lake. I told them my story -- they did not believe it. descent noun (ARRIVAL) [ C usually sing ] the arrival of something or someone, esp. My hair which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. By degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. Be the first to contribute! Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents here to-day and gone to-morrow which drove us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up. The narrator, seeing the power of the whirlpool in the ocean visible from the mountain top, is then told of the man's fishing trip with his two brothers a few years ago in which they encountered the whirlpool. The Moskoe-strm whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead but no more like the every-day Moskoe-strm, than the whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. I now began towatch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. "For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. I saw our exact position in an instant. Suddenly very suddenly this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. 3. a passage or stairway leading down. fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs); Britannica Dictionary definition of DESCENT formal 1 [count] : the act or process of descending: such as a : the act or process of going from a higher to a lower place or level usually singular The climbers were faced with a dangerous descent in bad weather. He is also the author of the New York Time's bestselling novel DESCENT (2015, Algonquin), the story collection IRISH GIRL (2009, UNT Press), and the YA novel NEVER SO GREEN (2002, Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Poe learnt about the maelstrom from several sources, which included an 1834 story in Frasers Magazine titled The Maelstrom: A Fragment. The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm. I really dug (yeah, I'm using that word) Poe's inclusion of physics near the end of the story. It likewise happens frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. A Descent into the Maelstrom: plot summary, (NB: the storys epigraph, from a seventeenth-century essay by Joseph Glanvill, references the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, who though truth could be found at the bottom of a well. Descent (mathematics), an idea extending the notion of "gluing" in topology Hadamard's method of descent, a technique for solving partial differential equations Gradient descent, a first-order optimization algorithm going back to Newton Descents in permutations, a classical permutation statistic in combinatorics Other uses [ edit] We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Strm was in full fury! descent noun 1 as in drop the act or process of going to a lower level or altitude the airplane began its gradual descent to the landing field Synonyms & Similar Words Relevance drop dip plunge dive down fall decline nosedive downfall plummeting comedown sinking downgrade Antonyms & Near Antonyms ascent climb rise progress soaring advance The Maelstrom is a vortex of water off the coast of Norway that whirls and drags objects to the rocky bottom of the sea. The description is absolutely brilliant. When I find a Poe Im not crazy about, I find my judgement is rather harsh. gallery As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. if(!d.getElementById(id)) [ [n]] [ [v]] The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent.
Calgary Herald Vacation Stop,
Articles A