What Good Is Poetry? ‘Sea Fever’: Our Adventurous Call to Infinity

What Good Is Poetry? ‘Sea Fever’: Our Adventurous Call to Infinity
“Ships in a Turbulent Sea,” 1826, by Johannes Christiaan Schotel. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum. Public Domain
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There is a seasickness that is more like a spell than a sickness. It is a yearning, a calling, a burning whereby people seek to break free of the finite and sail out into the boundless by the illimitable analogy that the sea is.

“Ships in a Turbulent Sea,” 1826, by Johannes Christiaan Schotel. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum. (Public Domain)
“Ships in a Turbulent Sea,” 1826, by Johannes Christiaan Schotel. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum. Public Domain
Sean Fitzpatrick
Sean Fitzpatrick
Author
Sean Fitzpatrick serves on the faculty of Gregory the Great Academy, a boarding school in Elmhurst, Pa., where he teaches humanities. His writings on education, literature, and culture have appeared in a number of journals, including Crisis Magazine, Catholic Exchange, and the Imaginative Conservative.
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