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Seneca
2. Sunless sea, lifeless ocean
Seneca speculates that there may be a vast sea far underground, from which
rivers like the Nile and Alpheus ascend, in fountains.
Such an ocean would be uninhabited, and
therefore lifeless, and unmeasured by men.
Lowes suggests that Seneca's lifeless sea
inspired the sunless seas in Kubla Khan. Seneca suggests that we are too
fact-bound if we cannot imagine such a thing, an appeal that would
probably have appealed to the man who liked to dispute the differences
between imagination and fancy.
Text
Now surely a man trusts too much to the sight of the eyes and cannot launch
out his imagination beyond, if he does not believe that the depths of earth
contain a vast sea with winding shores.
I see nothing to prevent or oppose
the existence of a beach down there in the obscurity, or a sea finding its
way through the hidden entrances to its appointed place.
There, too, …the
hidden regions being desert give freer scope to the waves
of the nether ocean. |
 Other sources
William Bartram |