Abstract

Mirages have long astonished travelers of the sea and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry and art depict the above-horizon, superior mirage, or fata morgana, as exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources relate mirages to the “thirst of gazelles,” a metaphor for the futility of desire. Starting in the late eighteenth century, mirages became a symbol in the West of Oriental despotism—a negative, but also enchanted, emblem. But the mirage motif is rarely simply condemnatory. More often, our obsession with mirages conveys a sense of escape, of fascination, of a desire to be deceived. The Waterless Sea is the first book devoted to the theories and history of mirages. Christopher Pinney navigates a sinuous pathway through a mysterious and evanescent terrain, showing how mirages have impacted politics, culture, science, and religion—and how we can continue to learn from their sublimity.
“Under the rubric of ‘real but not true,’ Pinney explores the enchanting enigma of fata morgana, or mirages, visions of cities in the sky or stately mansions floating on fantastic oceans in deserts and polar wastes. . . . Through accounts such as the sfumato of Japanese representations of the fabulous island of Horai, bathed in the breath of a giant clam, Pinney provides an extraordinary tour of the union of refraction and the imagination.” — Jonathan Lamb, Vanderbilt University
“This is both a study of the mirage as a subject of scholarship and a profound meditation on its paradoxical form as a true illusion. . . . Itself written as if in the style of a mirage, this is a beautifully conceived work that philosophizes the visible.” — Faisal Devji, University of Oxford
"Pinney’s erudite and highly readable account of the mirage is a scintillating journey through more than just an ephemeral intangibility. It is a substantial history of the sublime as it is refracted on the surface of what remains enchanted, mysterious, and strange." — Omar W. Nasim, University of Regensburg
“[A] highbrow meditation. . . . Pinney examines mirages as cause of frustration and disappointment, as religious metaphor for falsehood or a society on the brink, and as depiction of mythological places. . . . Readers curious about the natural world will find this rumination of interest.” — Publishers Weekly
“Alluring. . . . Pinney ranges from the old Japanese belief that these ‘phantom paradises’ were exhaled by clam monsters, to an 1898 Nature report detailing mirage effects on flagstone pavements. A paean to a sublime apparition, ‘real, but not true.’” — Barbara Kiser, Nature
"Pinney has emerged with perhaps the finest homage to evanescence yet written. . . . Ultimately The Waterless Sea reveals its author to be as spiritually refracted as the ­ elusive and translucent occlusion he seeks to own; the richness of his sensibility is every bit as compelling as his subject. As Pinney shows, the mirage is primarily a phenomenon of spiritual resonance, ungovernable and in that, unimaginably potent. Fueled by the tangible in its creation of the fantastic, the mirage exists to turn the human eye inward." — Australian
"Pinney's fascinating new book . . . traces the illusions of mirages through many eras and cultures and environments. . . . Throughout history, from China to Persia to India, . . . he's a shrewd reader of the patterns underlying all such visions." — Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor
“Through the words of generations of desert travelers, Pinney paints the shimmering heat, the dazzling sand, and the strange visions hanging in the sky. He reproduces fascinating postcards, engravings, and photos of floating ships and castles, palm trees and palaces that ‘possess every possible stability,’ including one alleged photograph of a skyscraper city emerging from the Muir Glacier in Alaska. For ice, too, makes mirages, as light refracts through the different temperatures and densities of air. . . . Pinney concludes with Plato’s thought that nothing made or seen on this Earth can be more than a poor representation of the beautiful Ideal. Might a mirage be that elusive original?” — Economist
"Anyone who has driven down a hot asphalt country road will have seen in the distance what appears to be a pool of standing water that remains perpetually out of reach. In The Waterless Sea, anthropologist Pinney delves into the many accounts of fantastic mirages that have been reported over the centuries. No mere optical illusions, he says, mirages are real and are produced by atmospheric optics. Their interpretations, however, have been shaped by culture, politics, religion, and science. Their illusory qualities drive Pinney’s philosophical discussion, which touches on a number of topics, such as their use as metaphor and moral lesson. Historical photos, prints, lithographs, and paintings illustrate Pinney’s erudite narrative." — Physics Today
Christopher Pinney is professor of anthropology and visual culture at University College London. His books include Camera Indica, "Photos of the Gods", and Photography and Anthropology, the latter two also published by Reaktion Books.