“The symbolism of terror is universal. Otherwise, Death would not ride a pale horse in Scripture, and the Ancient Mariner would never have been bedeviled by an albatross. The glitter of Antartic snow and ice . . . was the single mystery that Poe had left unresolved. . . . One effect of taking mescaline, Henri Michaux has recently testified, is an impression of “absolute white, white beyond all whiteness.” Truly, Melville seems justified in characterizing such an impression as ‘a dumb blankness, full of meaning, . . . a colorless all-color of atheism from which we shrink.’”

—Narry Levin, from The Power of Blackness, 1958.