Sailor, you will always love the sea,
mirror in whose fathomless roll
you contemplate your surging soul,
itself a gulf of contingency.
Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n’est pas un gouffre moins amer.
(< Baudelaire)
Photo de Tanguy De Lamotte, Initiatives coeur
Since early November I’ve been following the daily reports of the Vendée Globe solo yacht race around the globe.
Why, I have asked myself repeatedly, are these videos and short prose descriptions of the race and the course so packed with emotion for me? There is surely more here than some residual boyish fascination with the sea and adventure and travel. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Here is a tentative first answer: there is something utterly anti-modern about the code these men and women live by (yes, there are numerous women in the ranks of solo off-shore sailors). This “chivalric” code turns around a sense of individual honour, self-sufficiency and solidarity among equals who face the same challenges, and are willing to perish for them.
There is no going back to that code, and there was much wrong with it. You don’t have to be a Marxist to understand what “feudalism” was all about. And for the record, this is far from a Western thing. It was rife in Asia too, probably why I am so attracted to aikido and the “high” samurai Japanese tradition.
Perhaps better now not to theorize this emotion. For another month, I’ll be following these Knights of the Sea as they fight their way back up the Atlantic to their home port in Sables d’Olonne on the west coast of France.
Ces skippers sont les anti-héros de l’époque moderne dans laquelle nous vivons, où nous sommes dans une ère de communication à outrance, de fast-food et où nous consommons tout très vite. Nous nous lassons des choses, nous sommes en quête d’émotion et de repères. Et ces marins sont de formidables repères. Nous avons toujours des petits signaux, des petits voyants qui nous permettent de nous raccrocher à des vraies valeurs et celles-ci en font partie. (Emmanuel Petit, tiré du site)