Pearl divers at Enoshima

‘Soshu Enoshima..ya no zu’ (Pearl divers at Enoshima), Kitigawa Tsukimaro (c.1804-1818). Reproduced from Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council’s Cotton Town digitisation project: www.cottontown.org.

The print shows Japanese women pearl divers, and comes from the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery collection. Kitagawa Tsukimaro (active 1794-1836), born Kitagawa Kikumaro, was a pupil of the better-known Utamaro.

Endymion

The visions of the earth were gone and fled -
He saw the giant sea above his head …

… the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps
Within its pearly house. – The mighty deeps,
The monstrous sea is thine – the myriad sea!

… On gold sand impearl’d
With lilly shells, and pebbles milky white,
Poor Cynthia greeted him …

… Then there was pictur’d the regality
Of Neptune; and the sea nymphs round his state,
In beauteous vassalage, look up and wait.
Beside this old man lay a pearly wand …

… Cold, O cold indeed
Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed
The sea-swell took her hair. Dead as she was
I clung about her waist, nor ceas’d to pass
Fleet as an arrow through unfathom’d brine,
Until there shone a fabric crystalline,
Ribb’d and inlaid with coral, pebble, and pearl …

… Dost thou not mark a gleaming through the tide,
Of diverse brilliances? ’tis the edifice
I told thee of, where lovely Scylla lies …

… Here is a shell; ’tis pearly blank to me …

… All were mute
To gaze on Amphitrite, queen of pearls,
And Thetis pearly too …

John Keats, Endymion (1818), book three.

Endymion (the story is based on Greek myth) is a shepherd-prince who falls in love with Cynthia, the Moon, and descends to the underworld to find her. The pearl-themed passages here come from Book Three.