Status Updates From Le territoire du vide : L'O...

The Romantic generation was obsessed by shipwrecks. (242)

It spread the more effectively in France and England because it accorded with political symbolism and found its place in the protocol of the classical storm. In the 1740s, however, its grip became stronger, and the emotional strategy which it made possible became more complex. It also gained the rhetoric of pity (234)

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the shipwreck
became the second most evocative figure of catastrophe after the
earthquake, and sensitive souls were moved by any mention of it.
Of course the theme had already been worked over during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spanish and Portuguese
literature. (234)

Between 1810 and 1 840, as this literature fascinated with
beaches, grottoes, and wet sand was developing, sea-shore painting
went through its brief golden age. (231)

prevladava obala i špilje na obali

The Romantic literary figures of the corsair and the pirate also play a role in their own way in this extolling of shoreline humanity. In paintings that include them, there is a juxtaposition of group ferocity with the seductive mystery of sublime individuality that stands out from it. (228)

The fragile life of the imperiled sailor, anonymous and pious,
aroused compassion. The wave of Romanticism and, in France,
the atmosphere of the Restoration, combined to reactivate the
Christian symbolism of the sea at the same time as the animal
or barbarous face of the seaside communities. (227)

In this way their pleasure mounted before
evocations that emphasized the extent of time and peopled the
so1itary shores with a succession of dreamy characters who gave
an intermittent meaning to the ruins, the mossy rocks, or the
sea-gull's cry. (220)

Romantic travellers delighted in imagining all the intermediate
scenes that stood like a series of screens between present times
and long ago. Their dreams centred on the ages revived by
historical anecdotes. (220)

The way that the Romantics interpreted the populations of
the shores was based on nostalgia. More strongly than ever
before', this interpretation was stimulated and guided by an
awareness of how fragile speech, rituals, customs, fairy-tales, and
legends were. This discovery of their precariousness and of the
meaning that was being lost engendered the suffering necessary
to enjoy the place. (219)

The radical difference between the historical paths followed
caused a similar distinction in the way of viewing 'heirs' and
'outsiders'. Between two worlds of poverty, and indeed misery,
the traveller's system of appreciation created an unbridgeable
gap: the distance separating admiration from spite and disgust. (217)

The radical difference between the historical paths followed
caused a similar distinction in the way of viewing 'heirs' and
'outsiders'. Between two worlds of poverty, and indeed misery,
the traveller's system of appreciation created an unbridgeable
gap: the distance separating admiration from spite and disgust. (217)

By staging a confrontation between palaces and humble cabins, between Roman baths and the rotten straw on which Dalmatian women slept, the shores of ]stria and Dalmatia made the penetration of time and the intensity of the sacrilege painfully manifest (216-217)

pogled na Dalmaciju kao egzotika, ljudi u Dalmatinci se gledaju gotovo kao neka druga vrsta, nešto strano i daleko, sasvim u skladu s romantičarskim sklonostima (216)

It was important for travellers to identify the two parties clearly.
Lavallee, who in 1801 presented Cassas's journey along the coasts
of Dalmatia,. asserted that there, philosophers could study 'peoples
who breathe in the proximity of ruins' and analyse 'the impression
made on their souls by the pompous debris which they
trod upon every day'. (216)

The most common interpretation,
except within territories still under Ottoman domination,
nevertheless remained faithful to the classical image. The populations
of antique shores continued to engrave the mark of their
customs and practices on the seaside, where travellers lingered
who, like Swinburne, hungered for a continuity of traits. (216)

The quest undertaken by travellers as a result generated profoundly
different procedures along the northern coasts and the
shores of the Mediterranean. Near the beaches of antiquity,
a cognitive system that had been less completely overhauled
operated between the two competing (and sometimes blurred)
figures of the heir and the outsider. (216)

As the way of viewing shore-dwelling populations evolved,
so did the traveller's vision of the landscape. The images,
schemes, and practices they inspired overlapped, alternated, or
became combined. (214)

Half a century after this encyclopaedia of the shores was pioneered
by Le Masson du Pare, and then by Duhamel du Monceau,
plans for a more specific portrait began to emerge that went
beyond the mere description of techniques and clothing. (207) Inače, ove enciklopedije potaknute željom Luja XVI (ja mislim) da zna više o svome kraljevstvu

lt was simultaneously a limes whose safety must be
protected, a haven from which majestic fleets sailed forth, a
scene of the pathos of shipwrecks and defeats, and a receptacle
for treasures in which a colourful parade of diverse peoples
could be seen: this full territory both compensated for, and accentuated,
the surrounding void on beaches and rocky coasts. (187)

As the intersection
between a fashion popularized by seascape painting and several
forms of curiosity that led people to go down to the quay in
order to watch the veritable plates from an anin1ated encyclopaedia,
this didactic place also sought to be a symbol of royal
splendour. (187)

The practice of walking along wharfs and stone piers, which
continued in new forms, expressed the fascination exerted by
a stage on which spectators could observe particularly manifest
displays of energy, activity, heroism, and misfortune. It fitted
logically into the classical journey. Here nature had retreated
before the labour of man, who had cut stones and reshaped the
boundaries that God had set to the ocean(187

The sight of the boundless sea's emptiness creates a sensation
without an object that encourages the imagination to plunge
into the waters. The marine monotony is conducive to sleep,
and it creates a temptation to let oneself be swallowed up. What
paved the way for this dream, then very pregnant, was the unreality
of the Ossianic landscape and the undetermined character
of the 'Celtic twilight'. (167)

The Romantics made t.he sea-shore the favourite spot for self-knowledge. (164)