Cormack McCarthy and Waler De Maria: the cryptic epiloge of Blood Meridian and the legendary Lighting Field

We have to be honest, there is no evidence that the epilogue of Blood meridian, by Cormack McCarthy (1985), was directly inspired by the legendary Lightning field by Walter De Maria (1977), and we think that reading this passage to search for similarities may cause a loss, more than giving you a better understanding of the book. But as Christopher D. Campbell scrupulously pointed out in his ultimate research about this matter (Walter De Maria’s Lighting Field and McCarthy’s Enigmatic Epilogue: “Y qué clase de lugar es éste”, published by The Cormack McCarthy Journal) the relation between the two masterpieces is obviously more than motivated. Same chords and mode, similar melodies, different voices, as you will notice by reading the famous passage, here below:

 

In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which Gos has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle , a validation of sequence and casuality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Them they all move again.

July 17, 2015