FLOWERS
OF FLESH
From La Mer by Jules Michelet, 1861 Translated by Matthew Redman
Across the belly of the globe, in the amniotic waters of the Line and along its volcanic floor, the Sea teems such a superabundance of life that she cannot, it would seem, equalise her creations. Life supersedes the vegetal by dint of sheer vivacity. Her offspring emerge already on the rung of animal completeness. But these animals boast queer botanical curlicues, bear the splendid trappings of a glossy and exuberant flora. Survey the vast seascape and you will declare it a tangle of plants, flowers and shrubs – from familiar shapes and colours such words spring to mind. And yet the plants move; the shrubs are saturnine; the flowers shiver with a nascent sensitivity, as they grope towards a substantial Will. Charming oscillation! Graceful ambivalence! Astride the frontier-line that separates the kingdoms of plant and animal, the soul, as if in the midst of a fantastic féerie, witnesses its own primordial awakening. It is the pale dawn glow and the sudden roseate genesis. Bursts of colour, vitreous and nacreous by turns, herald the night’s dream and the ripening day of thought. Thought! Dare we speak its name? No. A dream this remains, a vision. But it is of the sort which brightens imperceptibly, like the waking dreams of morning […] Darwin observes that “our earthly fields and forests are empty and barren as deserts compared to those which line the seabed.” And indeed, all who traverse the glassy waters of the 28
