from eugene o’neill’s pulitzer prize-winning play, a long day’s journey into night
EDMUND
*Then with alcoholic talkativeness
You’ve just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear
mine? They’re all connected with the sea. Here’s one. When I was on
the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the
Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit,
facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts
with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I
became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a
moment I lost myself — actually lost my life. I was set free! I
dssolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became
beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high
dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and
unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or
the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that
way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on
the crow’s nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy
ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep
and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring
from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking,
feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a
painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the
moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the
last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men’s lousy,
pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in
my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I
have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green
seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint’s vision
of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an
unseen hand. For a second you see — and seeing the secret, are the
secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil
fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on
toward nowhere, for no good reason!
*He grins wryly.
It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much
more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a
stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not
really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in
love with death!
TYRONE
*Stares at him — impressed.
Yes, there’s the makings of a poet in you all right.
*Then protesting uneasily.
But that’s morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death.
EDMUND
*Sardonically
The *makings of a poet. No, I’m afraid I’m like the guy who is always
panhandling for a smoke. He hasn’t even got the makings. He’s got only
the habit. I couldn’t touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just
stammered. That’s the best I’ll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it
will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence
of us fog people.”
