Thus through an imperceptible transition that defies narration, after the splendid shores and sunlit gardens, we were finally to pass through a morose climate and frozen seas and come to arid polar shores.

And imperceptibly also, languishing from her sickness, each day Ellis grew paler, giddier and more blond; she was becoming less and less real, and seemed to be fading away.

“Ellis,” I said to her finally, by way of preparing her for what was to come, “you are an obstacle to my union with God, and I can love you only if you too are fused in God himself.” *

And when the felucca reached a boreal region where wisps of smoke rose from the huts of the Eskimos, when we left her on the shore and immediately set sail for the Pole, she had already lost almost every vestige of reality.

And we also left there Yvon, Hélain, Aguisel and Lambègue—who were sick with boredom and seemed about to die from drowsiness—and sailed calmly on toward the Pole.

* The grotesque figure of Ellis recalls Gide’s inability to fuse in a normal manner the physical and the spiritual. Ellis appears in his Journals as Em, and elsewhere as Alissa, Emmanuèle or Madeleine. “All purity, love, and tenderness” in his other works, she is really his cousin (later his wife) Madeleine Rondeaux.

* We learn from his Journals that Gide frequently suffered embarrassment over his inability to say the right words at the right time.

* * Up to this point the narrator has used the familiar pronoun tu in addressing Ellis. Here he uses the polite form vous.

* Urien continues to use the polite form vous in addressing Ellis. Gide revealed the ambivalent nature of his love for Madeleine, and her patient suffering because of it, in Et nunc manet in te, written in 1947 and issued publicly in 1951.

VOYAGE TO A FROZEN SEA

A rather dilatory auroral sky; purple flashes on the sea where pale blue sheets of ice became iridescent. A rather chilling awakening because the limpid air was no longer pursued by warm breezes. The boreal region where we had left wan Ellis and our four sick companions the day before, though still visible in the distance, was on the verge of disappearing; a delicate buoy far out on the horizon linked the sky to the last waves and seemed to lift and lull the vanishing land. All eight of us assembled on the deck for a morning prayer, serious but not sad; then we raised our solemn voices and felt once more the tide of seraphic joy that had surged through us on the day when we drank crystalline spring water. Then aware of our joyous wills and wishing to seize them and sense them rather than to allow them to vanish, I said to them:

“The hard trials are over. Far from us now are the morose banks where we thought we would die of boredom, farther still the shores with their forbidden pleasures; let us acknowledge that we are happy to have known them. For one can reach this point only through them; the loftiest cities are reached by the most perilous routes; we are going toward the divine city. Yesterday’s tarnished sun is tinged with rose. Resistance first quickened our wills; nor was our idleness on the gray swards futile, for when the landscape disappeared, we were left with our wills completely free; because of our boredom, our indeterminate souls managed in those regions to become sincere. And when we act, now, it will surely be in keeping with our aims.” *

The sun was rising as we began our prayers; the sea radiated with reflected splendors; rays shot across the waves, and the illuminated sheets of ice, vibrant and responsive, shuddered.

Toward midday some whales appeared; they were swimming in a flock; they would dive under the sheets of ice and reappear farther away; but they stayed at a distance from the ship.

It was now necessary to steer clear of mountains of ice; as their bases were slowly melted away by waters still not very cold, they would suddenly capsize; their prismatic peaks crumbled and disappeared in the agitated sea, churned the water like a tempest, shot up again with cascades all around them, and kept oscillating for a long time in the tumultuous waters, uncertain of their posture. The majestic impact of their fall echoed across the sonorous waves. Sometimes walls of ice fell into the spouts of foam, and all these moving mountains were incessantly transformed.

Toward evening we saw one so large that it was no longer transparent; at first we mistook it for a new territory covered with immense glaciers. Rivulets plummeted from its summits; white bears ran along its edges. The ship came so close to it that its main yard brushed against a snag and shattered some delicate icicles.

We saw some in which were imbedded huge stones torn from the natal glacier and which therefore carried over the waves fragments of alien rock.

We saw others which had imprisoned whales when drawn together by some mysterious force; above the level of the ocean, they seemed to be swimming in the air. Leaning over the bridge, we watched the moving icebergs.

Evening fell. At sunset the mountains were opalescent. New ones appeared; they trailed laminated algae, which, long and fine as hair, appeared first as captive sirens, then as a vast reticulation; the moon shone through as a jellyfish in a net, as nacreous holothurian; then moving freely through the open sky, the moon turned azure-colored. Pensive stars went astray, whirled, plunged into the sea.

Toward midnight appeared a gigantic vessel; the moon illuminated it mysteriously; its rigging stood motionless; the bridge was dark. It passed close beside us; there was no sound of oars, no noise from the crew. We finally realized that it was caught in the ice, between two icebergs that had closed in on it. It passed on by, silently, and disappeared.

Toward morning, a little while before dawn, a cool breeze brought alongside us an islet of purest ice; in the middle, like a globed fruit, like a magic egg, gleamed an immortal jewel. It was a morning star on the waves, and we could not tire of gazing at it. It was as pure as a ray from Lyra; it vibrated at dawn like a melody; but as soon as the sun rose, the ice that had encased it melted and allowed it to fall into the sea.

That day we fished for whales.

This marks the end of my memories and the beginning of my undated journal.

*   *   *

Into the abyss transplendent with tempest-tossed spume, where no man had ever intruded upon the savage feasts of the albatrosses and eiders, Eric descended, swinging like a diver from a thick elastic cord and brandishing at the end of his naked arm a wide swan-slaying knife. A humid current rises from the depths where the green waves writhe and the wind drives the spume. The great frightened birds wheel and deafen him with the beating of their wings. Bending over and gripping the rock to which the cord is attached, we watch: Eric is above their nests; he descends into the heart of the turmoil; in snow-colored feathers and exquisite down sleep the young eiders; Eric the bird-killer puts his hand on the covey; terrified, the little ones awaken and struggle, trying to escape; but Eric buries the knife in their feathers and laughs when he feels their warm blood on his hands.