The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages
The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages by Christopher Pinney
English | July 15, 2018 | ISBN: 1780239327 | True EPUB | 184 pages | 13.8 MB
English | July 15, 2018 | ISBN: 1780239327 | True EPUB | 184 pages | 13.8 MB
Mirages have long astonished travelers of the sea and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers.
Traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry and art depict the above-horizon, superior mirage, or fata morgana, as exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources relate mirages to the “thirst of gazelles,” a metaphor for the futility of desire. Starting in the late eighteenth century, mirages became a symbol in the West of Oriental despotism—a negative, but also enchanted, emblem. But the mirage motif is rarely simply condemnatory. More often, our obsession with mirages conveys a sense of escape, of fascination, of a desire to be deceived.
The Waterless Sea is the first book devoted to the theories and history of mirages. Christopher Pinney navigates a sinuous pathway through a mysterious and evanescent terrain, showing how mirages have impacted politics, culture, science, and religion—and how we can continue to learn from their sublimity.