An Object Lesson in Naming Novels: Iris Murdoch’s
The Sea, The Sea

First, there’s the obvious: the incantatory effect of the repetition, the rush of sibilance, the plain punch of those four syllables. It just sounds good, and any great title should sound good. It is alluring, an obvious spell (ah, the famous “buy this book” spell), or perhaps simply a swoon. It is also a mystery—why the double? Why not simply The Sea if that’s what it’s about? “The anaphora,” writes Rebecca Hazelton, “demands more, more, more, and is a never-ending question for [us] to answer.” The spell worked on me the first time I saw the spine in a store; I bought it. It may still be my favorite title of any novel, on pure feeling.

Next, the provenance. According to Peter J. Conradi in his biography of Murdoch, the title of her Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea (1978) comes from “the Greeks’ cry during the Persian wars when they finally sight salt-water” (i.e. the Black Sea) as reported in Xenophon’s Anabasis. In the original Greek, it is Θάλαττα! θάλαττα! or Thálatta! thálatta!

The moment is also referenced in Jules Verne’s The Journey to the Center of the Earth:

A vast sheet of water, the commencement of a lake or an ocean, spread far away beyond the range of the eye, reminding me forcibly of that open sea which drew from Xenophon’s ten thousand Greeks, after their long retreat, the simultaneous cry, “Thalatta! thalatta!” the sea! the sea!

It’s also, not for nothing, a band name.

Even without this classical association (which I, no scholar of ancient Greek, alas, would not have made on my own; reader, I Googled it) it’s a clear yawp, a cry plainly articulated without punctuation of any kind; it can be read as sorrowful or exultant, depending on the mood of the reader. This being another fine quality for a title: functionality as mirror.

Speaking of punctuation, Murdoch, given her source, might well have retained the exclamation point, but she did not, which I consider to be an example of legendary restraint. It would have been clever, to have that exclamation; it would have been impish, even funny, and this is, to no little degree, an impish and funny book.

But the title is better exclamation-less, better for Murdoch’s restraint. I’d even say the exclamation is half-implied, whether you know the word thalatta or nay, but only half: in fact, its absence creates room for some wistfulness, a little bit of danger—who knows what the sea, the sea is doing at any given moment, say this very one; it might be calm and languorous or raging and rough.

Most importantly, the title is suited to the novel in question. The Sea, The Sea is presented as the personal diary of Charles Arrowby, a man who has lived “a life of egoism” in the world of the theatre, but has recently retired to a large house in a small town by the sea—the “blessed northern sea, a real sea with clean merciful tides, not like the stinking soupy Mediterranean!” The sea will quickly become a symbol—unbeknownst to our narrator—of many things, including Arrowby’s own self-delusion (he is “a skillful fearless swimmer,” he tells us, and has “sported like a dolphin” in “antipodean oceans,” but also cannot climb back up on the slippery rocks after he goes for a naked dip, and nearly drowns himself.) Murdoch lets herself go with the pomposity, in keeping with her character, but you can feel her delight.

Arrowby is, you might say, dramatic. The sort of man who, even in retirement, might fling open the shutters and declaim the novel’s title to the sky. The novel, being his diary, is dramatic too, and you can feel him (and Murdoch) ginning up twists and turns for the audience. The sea is a mirror for his anxieties, perhaps for his soul. It functions sometimes too symbolically, if I’m honest, but it also pulls the fine trick of becoming the only character that might rival Arrowby for the central role. Perhaps with the title, Murdoch is telling us as much. Who is our hero? The sea, the sea! Arrowby would surely weep.

The whole novel is outsize, an exaggeration. It is also a novel about obsession, which alone justifies the doubling. In a coincidence worthy of only the campiest theater, the aging Arrowby finds his long-lost love, the only girl whom he ever wanted to marry (“but,” he tells us, “she fled”—beep beep beep), living in the small town he has chosen. He proceeds to try to “rescue” her, despite the fact that she has no interest in being rescued. He more or less stalks her, to the point of disaster. Hers, obviously.

There is also a third “the sea” implied in the title: the one that begins the novel, our door into Arrowby’s mind. “The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine.” I’ll go on, just for your pleasure and mine:

With the tide turning, it leans quietly against the land, almost unflecked by ripples or by foam. Near to the horizon it is a luxurious purple, spotted with regular lines of emerald green. At the horizon it is indigo. Near to the shore, where my view is framed by rising heaps of humpy yellow rock, there is a band of lighter green, icy and pure, less radiant, opaque however, not transparent. We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot penetrate the sea. Where the gentle water taps the rocks there is still a surface skin of color. The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon which it lightly pencils in with silver. Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there. But the sky looks cold, even the sun looks cold.

Not for nothing, but: the audacity of starting a 500+ page novel with a paragraph describing, in detail, the varied colors of the sea. I find this paragraph thrilling enough, honestly, but I think I may be in the minority, but as if to cover her bases, this is what we get next:

I had written the above, destined to be the opening paragraph of my memoirs, when something happened which was so extraordinary and so horrible that I cannot bring myself to describe it even now after an interval of time and although a possible, though not totally reassuring, explanation has occurred to me. Perhaps I shall feel calmer and more clear-headed after yet another interval.

Consider the spell in question cast. More, more.