Page 58
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Animal's ascent into the sun-cone turns bodily motion into ecstatic, almost annihilating revelation.
The scene is visionary in a literal sense: cone, rays, spinning, and yellow light all become the architecture of a mystical transport. The joy is edged with danger, which keeps the flight from becoming merely triumphant. The swirled dervish image sharpens the page's sense that his body has become both ritual motion and a fragile vessel.
Life shoots back through his spine and he 'caresses the sun,' which shines 'within the shape of a cone' with him as 'the bottom point,' spinning 'up along the walled rays of fiber.' The ascent is 'suicideal joy ... like the laughter of an insane child,' 'blazing blinding yellow' yet without heat, his body a 'swirled dervish figure, like an excellent top' needing no 'controled balance.' He rises by surrendering 'the gift of his will to the high executing force of the coned sun,' fearing only that if it were real 'his mind would eventually have to burn out.'