There are other things that explain things. And when I sometimes find myself wondering what pushed me down here, five thousand miles from my dear father, my family and friends, away from the smell of hay, rustling leaves, fresh from the cypress damp ditches, by the sound of the dialect, and from the bow of a boat that beats the wave, the wind that flows across the canvas of the sails, the moorings by the industrious hands, eyes to scan the bottom and then the sky , then, here, alone, theoretically in this desert, where virtually no one (except for one woman in the world) could reach even if it wanted to, then here is something I happen to read, written many years ago, which explains many things. And everything is clear to me and I do not need to ADD anything.
"Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence For my old father, nor 'the due affection Which joyous should have made Penelope, Could overcome within me the desire I' had to gain experience of the world and de vices and human worth, but I put forth on the high open sea With one sole ship, and that small company By which I never had deserted been.
The one shore and the other I saw, as far as Spain since as Morocco and the island of the Sardinians and the other which that sea bathes round about. Me and 'companions were old and slow when we came to that narrow dov'Ercule marked them about him in order that the man no farther forth. On the right hand behind me left I Seville, And on the other already had left Ceuta. "O brothers," I said, "that for a hundred thousand perils have come to the West, To this so inconsiderable vigil of our senses which is the remaining, please do not deny the experience back to the sun in the world without people.
C ith the your seed from which you were not made to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge. "Li eager did I render my companions nails with this little speech to the path which a penalty could have held them afterwards, and having turned our stern unto the morning of 'rowing made wings for our mad flight, Evermore gaining on the larboard side.
Already all the stars from the other pole The night beheld, and 'ours so low that did not rise above the ocean floor. Five times rekindled and as many of the lumen was underneath the moon, then that 'ntrati were we step up when it appeared to us a mountain dim distance, and it seemed to me so high As he had not seen any. Joyful were we, and soon it turned into tears because of the new land a whirlwind rose, And smote upon the fore part. Three times it made her whirl with all the water in the fourth lifted the stern uplift, And the prow downward com'altrui pleased. Finally, that 'the sea above us closed again. "
(Ulysses, in Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 26)
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