98
C. Ronzani and A. Freytet
The peaceful silence and kinetic effect of the spectacle “streaming” past are like a
travel shot in slow motion. Landscape and movement, movement and emotion appear
as one, magically attesting to the etymology and the very nature of emotion: since
Aristotle
20 , being moved has meant a movement of the soul; it is here a real movement
in the landscape. In this situation worthy of Captain Nemo’s motto (“mobilis in
mobile”, moving in a moving thing
21 ), only one thing is missing. There are no points
of reference. To find out where we are, we must endeavour to read the landscape.
7.3.3 Alone and Speechless, in the Sonorous, Tactile Landscape
of the Body, the Horizon Tilts and Disappears
Reference points do lack when in movement under water, and yet our five senses
are disoriented in relation to land. Our eyesight is not alone. There is perceptive
synaesthesia
22 with the smell and taste of plastic of the mouthpiece or diving mask and
salt. The sound of our own breathing prevails over all other
23 , turning our attention
to ourselves much more than in free air. As spoken language is not possible, and sign
language limited, the underwater world becomes a solitary experience, silence being
imposed on words. While generally unnoticed, it finds expression here in what we
see: the bubbles we make rise to the surface in strings. The attraction of floatation
acts in the same but opposite way to gravity on earth, indicating verticality, the point
of reference in space. Our balance, on which our sense of direction depends, is upset.
The horizontal swimmer is like the upright walker, but finds his bearings in relation to
the vertical gradient of depth. In the landscape, the horizon is usually our main point
of reference
24 . Underwater, not only is the horizon blurred by the water’s turbidity;
it is twofold: sea bed and the mirror surface merge in the blue of water, and nothing
about them is definite. Verticality is therefore the horizon and reference axis of the
underwater landscape, and this alone would almost suffice to explain the radical
disorientation it creates in people now accustomed to a world of transport where
the horizon is a hackneyed frontier
25 . In addition, kicking and swimming demand
intense effort: we become active spectators, far removed from the amateur painter
20 See the treatise by Aristotle, On the soul. It is a discussion of the outer and inner movement
of beings. The Latin translation of the text “De Anima”—also meaning “from movement”—also
conveys this notion.
21 Jules Vernes, Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, Captain Nemo’s motto.
22 The best definition of synaesthesia is summed up in the words of Baudelaire: “all colours, scents
and sounds meet as one” (C. Baudelaire, “Correspondences”, in Les Fleurs du Mal.
23 A whole analysis of the underwater landscape as an invisible (or only potentially visible), but
sonorous landscape, with both a topology and a topography that are directly or indirectly perceptible,
could be developed but does not come within the framework of this article.
24 Cf. Michel Corajoud: “I willingly associate the idea of horizon with the particular status of the
limits that make landscape”. Op cit.
25 Should we see the underwater landscape as a current form of the imagination’s migration to “the
incommensurable vertical”, akin to the starry sky and lunar landscapes, which B. Lassus calls the
C. Ronzani and A. Freytet
The peaceful silence and kinetic effect of the spectacle “streaming” past are like a
travel shot in slow motion. Landscape and movement, movement and emotion appear
as one, magically attesting to the etymology and the very nature of emotion: since
Aristotle
20 , being moved has meant a movement of the soul; it is here a real movement
in the landscape. In this situation worthy of Captain Nemo’s motto (“mobilis in
mobile”, moving in a moving thing
21 ), only one thing is missing. There are no points
of reference. To find out where we are, we must endeavour to read the landscape.
7.3.3 Alone and Speechless, in the Sonorous, Tactile Landscape
of the Body, the Horizon Tilts and Disappears
Reference points do lack when in movement under water, and yet our five senses
are disoriented in relation to land. Our eyesight is not alone. There is perceptive
synaesthesia
22 with the smell and taste of plastic of the mouthpiece or diving mask and
salt. The sound of our own breathing prevails over all other
23 , turning our attention
to ourselves much more than in free air. As spoken language is not possible, and sign
language limited, the underwater world becomes a solitary experience, silence being
imposed on words. While generally unnoticed, it finds expression here in what we
see: the bubbles we make rise to the surface in strings. The attraction of floatation
acts in the same but opposite way to gravity on earth, indicating verticality, the point
of reference in space. Our balance, on which our sense of direction depends, is upset.
The horizontal swimmer is like the upright walker, but finds his bearings in relation to
the vertical gradient of depth. In the landscape, the horizon is usually our main point
of reference
24 . Underwater, not only is the horizon blurred by the water’s turbidity;
it is twofold: sea bed and the mirror surface merge in the blue of water, and nothing
about them is definite. Verticality is therefore the horizon and reference axis of the
underwater landscape, and this alone would almost suffice to explain the radical
disorientation it creates in people now accustomed to a world of transport where
the horizon is a hackneyed frontier
25 . In addition, kicking and swimming demand
intense effort: we become active spectators, far removed from the amateur painter
20 See the treatise by Aristotle, On the soul. It is a discussion of the outer and inner movement
of beings. The Latin translation of the text “De Anima”—also meaning “from movement”—also
conveys this notion.
21 Jules Vernes, Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, Captain Nemo’s motto.
22 The best definition of synaesthesia is summed up in the words of Baudelaire: “all colours, scents
and sounds meet as one” (C. Baudelaire, “Correspondences”, in Les Fleurs du Mal.
23 A whole analysis of the underwater landscape as an invisible (or only potentially visible), but
sonorous landscape, with both a topology and a topography that are directly or indirectly perceptible,
could be developed but does not come within the framework of this article.
24 Cf. Michel Corajoud: “I willingly associate the idea of horizon with the particular status of the
limits that make landscape”. Op cit.
25 Should we see the underwater landscape as a current form of the imagination’s migration to “the
incommensurable vertical”, akin to the starry sky and lunar landscapes, which B. Lassus calls the