Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
It resembled less even the thickest gloom of a night in
the open air than the close and blind darkness of some
narrow room.
Then, the fire:
But in proportion as the blackness gathered, did the
lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and
scorching glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined
to the usual hues of fire; no rainbow ever rivalled their
varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly blue as the most
azure depth of a southern sky; now a livid and snake-like
green, darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of an
enormous serpent.
Then, the receding waters:
The sea had retired from the shore and they that had fled
to it had been so terrified by the agitation and preternatural
shrinking of the element, [and] the gasping forms of the
uncouth sea things which the waves had left upon the sand.²¹
Then finally, the aftermath:
to the eyes and fancies of the affrighted wanderers, the
unsubstantial vapours were as the bodily forms of gigantic
foes - the agents of terror and of death.²²
Despite the long gap in time between the two accounts,
Bulwer Lytton follows Pliny carefully, as if there had been no
scientific illumination in the preceding centuries. Not only does
Bulwer Lytton give us Pliny's pine tree, but for good measure he
includes what he describes as 'an enormous serpent' and 'gigantic
foes'. The language of Bulwer Lytton emerges from the classical
myth and allusion of Pliny's age in which he was well versed, rather
than the language of science of his own. This was probably beyond
him. Thus a literary perspective based on sensational fiction and
