The bottom of the ocean: three abysses

• Published in: Terra Nova
• Main Author: Nievo, Stanislao
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1995
• Subjects: Indian; Blue whale
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3121.1995.tb00705.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1365-3121.1995.tb00705.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-3121.1995.tb00705.x

ABSTRACT This testimony is the result – better, the tale – of some sea and ocean descents made by a novelist to gather information for writing two of his books. The first one is The meadow under the sea published by Mondadori, 1974, and thereafter in various other editions, in Italian and other languages. The second is The Blue Whale , Mondadori, 1988, which went through several Italian editions. The present piece concerns impressions and events of contacts with the marine and oceanic floor in the Mediterranean sea, along Atlantic beaches and the Indian Ocean, off Tromelin, Madagascar. The last voyage takes the novelist to a peculiar situation, where water's darkness overturns the image, comes through the bathysphere port‐hole and the observer looks inside himself, a view that corresponds to a mythical history of the ocean floor.