Fire stronger than water.

I love this description of lava meeting water in Jules Verne’s classic The Mysterious Island.* Originally published in 1874, his dramatic description beautfully pictures my fascination with lava and water as artistic subjects, especially for sculptures like Surf and Turf. Enjoy!

None too soon had they finished their work, for moments later the liquified stone encountered the base of their embankment. The lava surged up like a swollen river about to overflow its banks, threatening to submerge the last remaining obstacle protecting the Far West… But no, the dike held back the flow. For a few chilling moments the lava seems to hesitate, but then it began to pour into Lake Grant in a cascade twenty feet high.

Breathless, motionless, silent, the colonists looked on as the two elements battled it out.

What a spectacle was this combat between water and fire! What pen could depict the marvelous horror of the scene, and what brush could paint it? A sharp hiss filled the air as the water evaporated on contact with the boiling lava. Vast clouds of steam poured high into the heavens, as if the valves of a colossal boiler had been abruptly thrown open. Nevertheless, however great the volume of water, it could not fail to be absorbed in the end, for no steam now replenished the lake, whereas an inexhaustible source fed the flow of lava with continuous floods of fresh incandescent stone.

The first streams of lava instantly solidified on falling into the lake, and soon a pile of hardened rock arose from the waters. A new stream of lava poured onto this surface, glowing red for a few moments more, then gradually turning to stone. Little by little a sort of jetty was formed, spreading over the surface of the lake, replacing the vaporized water with stone. The air was filled with sharp cracks and a deafening hiss. Swept offshore by the wind, the huge clouds of steam condensed in the cool air, and rain began to fall over the sea. The jetty grew longer and broader as each drop of lava solidified upon the last. What had once been a tranquil expanse of water now appeared as a vast sheet of smoking rocks, as if some geological upheaval has thrust thousands of buried boulders to the surface. Imagine a body or water whipped up by a hurricane, then suddenly frozen by a blast of twenty-degree air; such was the look of the lake three hours after the coming of the lava.

This time, fire would prove stronger than water.

Surf & Turf 16, 21x9x1

*The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne, The Modern Library, New York, 2002. Originally published in 1874. pp. 618-619.