18 March 2010

Behemoth



The tale goes (according to Borges) that the earth has its foundation on the fathomless sea, the sea on the rock, the rock on a band of sand, and the sand on Behemoth.
Here is Behemoth, my creature as thou art... (Job, XL).
The creature Behemoth sits on a stifling wind. The wind sits atop a mist, and what lies under the mist is unknown. It is whispered that beneath the mist there is a chasm of air, and beneath the air fire, and beneath the fire a serpent named Falak in whose mouth are the six hells. Albeit men and angels were forbidden to draw a map of hell, we know that the most vile and loathsome hells lie to the west.
So immense and dazzling is Behemoth that the eyes of man cannot bear its sight...
Sometimes, the being is too immense to be concretely imagined or imaginable. We attribute only an abstract shape to it. We worship it. We write dissertations about it. We fight wars over its existence. And all the while we walk on it, we build on it, we ride on it, we feed off it and we die into it.
The video excerpt is from Guliver, an intriguing short animation film by Zdenko Bašić about the tiny Lilliputians who, upon finding Gulliver, build their city on and around him (2009).

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