text-ural luminosity

"it's not quite the right word he wants, but it has some of the quality he wants, and it is certainly the right word to describe the outermost reaches of this perfumed gulf that is like a real sea: a sea that is already present on the winds and on the lips before the eye has discovered it. but here there is not that livelier and more vibrant luminosity, at once more definite and more definable, that enlivens the regions of the sea itself. that particular radiance is missing here. instead there is only a nocturnal opacity; the glaucous opacity of undersea depths, not just a tranquil bay or a smooth sea. it is like that at first, it is like that at first sight. but then it becomes a mysteriously agitated sea, full of mysterious commotions; an ocean with its own currents and its secret tributaries, an ocean that nourishes its hidden life with the breath of flowers and the exhalations of the fermenting earth. yes, it is like a ferment! a fermentation and an insistent calling, and eternal rising of sap and that most irresistible of all appealing invitations, the appeal of flower-pollen!

under cover, everything is shifting and moving, yet nothing moves; nothing gives itself to the great wind that does not exist, yet everything is abandoning itself, everything is moving slowly, everything is proceeding towards some center of attraction, with all the torpid slow motion of a sleepwanderer."

camara laye "the radiance of the king" 1954

(i have been a quote gatherer for a very long time, thus these things too will enter as found...)