The Daily Volcano Quote: on the summit of Etna 12 March 2012

Smoke was belching out continuously as if from a furnace and, where the surface of the mountain had been split by a long line of fires, under pressure from the winds inside (which on that day were raging quite violently), it also forced an exit for itself in many places; sometimes it even broke out beneath our very feet and would not let us stay still. It also happened that we might be watching some place particularly closely because it was encrusted with stones which had only just been poured out and were still smoking and sulphurous, when it would crack open somewhere, and a stream of fire would flood it, while the stones shot out with this would scorch our feet.

Pietro Bembo, De Aetna (1496), xxvii; from Pietro Bembo: Lyric Poetry, Etna, edited & translated by Mary P. Chatfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 223.

The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.

The Daily Volcano Quote: the power of Etna’s lava 23 June 2011

Among the many eruptions of this volcano, the one in the year 1669, deserves to be recorded. In that year the summit was observed to send forth great quantities of smoke and flame; the top had fallen in, so that the mountain was much lowered; the islands of Vulcan and Stromboli, two volcanoes to the westward of Sicily, were observed to rage more than usual. Eighteen days before the eruption the sky was very thick and dark, with thunder, lightning, frequent concussions of the earth, and dreadful subterraneous bellowings. On the 11th of March, sometime before the lava got vent, a rent was opened in the mountain twelve miles in length, into which, when stones were thrown down they could not be heard to strike the bottom. Burning rocks, 60 palms (15 of our feet) in length, were thrown to the distance of a mile; others of a lesser size were carried three miles off; the internal noises of the mountain were exceedingly dreadful, and the thunder and lightning from the smoke scarce less terrible than they. When the lava get vent, it burst out 20 miles from the crater, and sprung up into the air to a considerable height. Here it formed a mountain of stones and ashes, not less than half a mile perpendicular in height, and three miles in circumference. For 54 days neither sun nor stars had appeared: but soon after the lava got vent, the mountain became very quiet. The terrible effects of this fiery stream may be imagined from its amazing extent; being no less than fourteen miles long and in many places six in breadth. In its course it destroyed the habitations of 30,000 persons; and meeting with a lake four miles in compass, it not only filled it up, though several fathom deep, but made a mountain in place of it. Having reached Catania, it destroyed part of its walls, and ran for a considerable way into the sea, forming a safe and beautiful harbour; which, however, was soon filled up by a fresh torrent of the same inflamed matter.

William Kirk, The Fiery Museum, or the Burning Moutains; Containing Authentic Accounts of those dreadful Eruptions which have so frequently broke out at Mounts Vesuvius and Ætna (Lewes: J. Baxter, 1808), pp. 30-32.

The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.

The Daily Volcano Quote: Etna, volcano of our dreams 7 June 2011

Etna is the volcano of our fantasies, of our torrid slumbers, of our explosive-packed revolts with their warning signs, black rain, fog, fumes and loquacious smoke, familiar all their lives to the people of Etna: four craters, four mouths that speak the language of the gods for the closed lips of men. The volcano is the passageway for the nightmares that emerge from Tartarus. Tumultuous murmurs that rise from the earth, gripping the erect flanks of this fantastic defiance, follies of the imagination reaching into the starry spheres, to force out, violently, their words of desire, whose birth is denied by the feeble reasons of a too-polite culture. Is not a volcano for understanding the whys and wherefores of our dreams?

Christine Escarmant, ‘Un volcan pour mémoire’, in Dominique Bertrand (ed.), Mythologies de l’Etna (Clermont-Ferrand : Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2004), p. 18.

The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.

The Daily Volcano Quote: use a hot water bottle, dream of Etna 14 September 2010

Thus, with reference to dreams occasioned by corporeal sensation, Dugald Steward mentions the case of a friend, who, having found it necessary to apply a bottle of hot water to his feet, when he went to bed, dreamed that he was making a journey to the top of Mount Etna, and that he found the heat of the ground insupportable. This dream was evidently the result of the mind, or imagination, which, between waking and sleeping, had associated the sensation excited by the bottle of hot water with that which might be excited by the hot cinders that surround a volcano.

‘Dreams, and visions of the night’, La Belle Assemblée; or, Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, 1 October 1823, p. 154.

La Belle Assemblée, a British magazine ‘Addressed Particularly to the Ladies’, was founded by John Bell in 1806 and ran until 1868. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) was a Scottish philosopher, ‘the pride and ornament of Scotland’.

The Daily Volcano Quote: from Monday to Friday, a new eruption of volcanic verbiage each day.