Nesciene (Tartarus)
Thirty mentions:
Then in a fatal and stupendous hour
Something that sprang from the stark Inconscient’s sleep
Unwillingly begotten by the mute Void,
Lifted its ominous head against the stars;
Overshadowing earth with its huge body of Doom
It chilled the heavens with the menace of a face.
A nameless Power, a shadowy Will arose
Immense and alien to our universe.
In the inconceivable Purpose none can gauge
A vast Non-Being robed itself with shape,
The boundless Nescience of the unconscious depths
Covered eternity with nothingness.
— Book 2 Canto 8
Something that sprang from the stark Inconscient’s sleep
Unwillingly begotten by the mute Void,
Lifted its ominous head against the stars;
Overshadowing earth with its huge body of Doom
It chilled the heavens with the menace of a face.
A nameless Power, a shadowy Will arose
Immense and alien to our universe.
In the inconceivable Purpose none can gauge
A vast Non-Being robed itself with shape,
The boundless Nescience of the unconscious depths
Covered eternity with nothingness.
— Book 2 Canto 8
A great Negation was the Real’s face
— Book 10 Canto 1
— Book 10 Canto 1
Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,
— Book 7 Canto 4
— Book 7 Canto 4
A tenebrous awakened Nescience, Her wide blank eyes wondering at Time and Form, Stared at the inventions of the living Void And the Abyss whence our beginnings rose. (Book 2, Canto 7)
In Greek mythology, this primordial Non-Being is called Tartarus. In Hesiod, it appears third, after Chaos, the symbol of the Absolute concentrated in Himself, and Gaia, the Being, just before the divine Ananda, Eros.
Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, (…), and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (…)”.