When, at the beginning of August, I saw the waxing crescent moon set over the Atlantic Ocean, near the city where I live, the well-known Matthew Arnold poem “Dover Beach” came to my mind: “The sea is calm tonight. / The tide is full, the moon lies fair / Upon the straits; on the French coast the light / Gleams and is gone; sweet is the night air!”.

I was not observing the Atlantic Ocean in the English Channel and seeing France in front, but rather seeing the full immensity of this ocean (naturally without seeing the American continent, which is a few thousand kilometres away).

The pessimistic tone of the poem, then considered in terms of the religion and faith of his country’s people, can easily be evoked today in other contexts, such as the political and military situation in Europe: “...the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certainty, nor peace, nor help for pain; darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”. The use of a prolonged exposure resulted in a beautiful silkiness’ appearance of the sea.