III. The source
20.000 leagues under copyright
Liever in het Nederlands lezen? De vertaalde versie vind je hier →
✦ Part III. of a rippling triptych: on remember-things, enchantment and disillusionment. On connection, humanity and our shared memory, and the (in)accessibility of what we seek, yet sometimes (just not) manage to find.
The source
20.000 leagues under copyright
I'm partial to seemingly endless musings and philosophising about any given subject. I have a soft spot for analysis. My mind is constantly overflowing with questions: many of which I have no answer to. Our memory is limited, readily available knowledge even more so. And then, inevitably, there comes that call, the lure of that infinite archive of everything: the internet.
For me an online search almost always starts the same way — no surprise there — with a search engine. There are many, but we all know the most (in)famous one, which has by now grown into much more than a search engine. Yes, it starts with a capital G.
In search of the explanation for the shell-murmur sound I ended up, via my favourite search engine (not the one with the capital G), on a Wikipedia page dedicated to the phenomenon. The Dutch page is called, literally and poetically: Ruisen (schelp) — Murmur (shell). Its English counterpart: Seashell resonance.
I found a beautiful image, an explanatory (but to me incomprehensible) formula relating to the volume of the resonance and the size of the shell, and a year: 1835.
“The acoustic explanation of the phenomenon dates back to 1835 or even earlier, but the story that the sea can be heard in the shell is still told, because the illusion is so strong." a
That sentence and that year, they stayed with me and began to resonate in my mind. As did this unintentional wiki-poem.
Murmur
(shell).
Why I love Wikipedia: the sources. The sentence contained a reference — a small footnote after the year — I followed this source and ended up in a beautiful anthropological article Seashell Sound by Stefan Helmreich in Cabinet Magazine.
This story felt like a refreshing dive into history: poems, theories and images. A rich collection of human endeavours; wonder and creativity. That side of being human makes me feel like a human — I sometimes question it. The need to understand, to learn, to imagine. And… after reading, scrolling and searching I also found what I was looking for. The source, or at least the title of a book and the correct page number.
“Dension Olmsted, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy: Designed as a Textbook for the Use of the Students in Yale College, vol. 2, second edition (New Haven: Hezekiah Howe & Company, 1835), p. 78.” b
I know (read: I hope) that I am not the only one who becomes mildly obsessed during the search for very specific information. I wanted to hold the book, leaf through it, discover the right page, read the text and fathom it. Absorb what others before me had absorbed. But that holding had to be let go of very quickly. So I did, although perhaps obsessive at times, I am rarely unrealistic.
If, if, if…
The book still exists, but is not for sale. The knowledge is outdated, supplemented and although valuable as part of history, no longer useful as study material. If I had been a scientist, or a student… Then perhaps I might have been able to obtain the book, borrow it I mean. Borrow it, and then hold it with gloved hands, leaf through it and return it neatly.
In an ideal world all knowledge is always accessible to everyone, right? Fortunately there are organisations that archive this kind of books as cultural or scientific heritage, nowadays also online. I will not describe all the side paths, dead-end searches and disappointing rabbit holes.
The wonderful thing about this story is: I found the book.
On HathiTrust. There was a different pagination, and so it kind of felt like leafing through. But not as rustling and cozy, that old booky smell was missing… Actually, I was just searching with a search engine again. Slightly less romantic, but still.
An image of a page you can almost smell; that old booky scent, everything about it breathes age. Wood-pulp paper discolours, it yellows. This page too, though I would call the colour more beige, or a very light brown. Dark edges and spots, mostly along the sides. The result of hands and fingers that leafed, searched and found. Skin on paper, the passing of time. The page seems to be missing a corner at the lower left, which makes me suspect it was a left-hand page. I cannot tell from the page number, I lost count a long time ago.
Just below the middle of the page the text I was looking for begins, preceded by a number: paragraph 767.
“The concave, undulating, and perfectly polished surface of many sea shells, fits them to catch, to concentrate, and to return the pulses of all sounds that happen to be trembling about them, so as to produce that curious resonance from within, which resembles the distant murmur of the ocean.” c
Unfortunately I cannot share the scanned page here; although the information and even the book are free from copyright, the scans are not. And that is why I did my best to describe in words what I found. Who holds the rights to those scans, of that book, which as a layperson you could impossibly get your hands on? Three guesses. Yes, it starts with a capital G.
Are you more into visuals, did I manage to make you curious, or do you think that I have hopelessly fallen short with my words?
You can look up the page here yourself:
the source for the explanation of the shell-murmur-sound →
⁂
Afterword. How a triptych sometimes spontaneously emerges, begins below the image.
I, II, II, afterword
How a triptych sometimes spontaneously emerges
While digging deep into my own foggy memory, that of my family, among the many objects that once belonged to my grandparents, and in various online archives, I asked myself: how did I end up here again?
Such a question, such a situation, for me more the rule than the exception. An idea readily becomes a deep interest, which then develops into an often brief obsession.
During the writing of this story I found myself on two different quests. At first it felt like calmly strolling, taking two pleasant side paths. Nice, very nice, interesting even, with the chance of beautiful imagery. But along the way the search brought me not only closer to my sources, but also deeper into my own thoughts, towards new insights.
Those new reflections found their way into the original story. I dedicated a few sentences to them, but the quests themselves would have interrupted the narrative too much.
And then I thought: why not make it a triology? I love triptychs, small series. And keeping this to myself… no.
Why would I?
⁂
Full source references and footnotes for this trilogy can be found under the afterword.
✶ Series:
Shellter – On sheltering, shell murmur, and the body as a temporary home.
✶ This story unfolds as a shell-serial in three parts:
I. The sealophone - A kind of tiny time machine
II. De shell - Where might it be now?
III. The source - 20.000 leagues under copyright
✶ Thanks, thanks and thanks again: my family of collectors, preservers and fellow researchers. In memories, drawers, dusty forgotten corners, the past and the present. No stone — or in this case shell — is ever left unturned.
The existence of (online) archives, and the people who maintain them, fills me with almost endless gratitude and joy, nearly every day.
Bronnen
✦ Image 1. is from Wikimedia Commons: an open, digital media archive that collects and shares millions of royalty-free photos, illustrations, and historical documents, contributed by museums, archives, and volunteers worldwide.
→ Oil on canvas by William Bouguereau, Le Coquillage (1871).¹
✦ Image 2. and 5. and 6. are from The Public Domain Review’s Public Domain Image Archive: a carefully curated collection of historic, royalty-free images spanning over 2,000 years of visual culture.
→ Illustration by Anna Atkins; for John Children’s English translation of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s Genera of Shells, published in Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and Art, Volume 16 (1823).²
→ Illustration by James Bell Pettigrew, plate XIX from the first volume of Design in Nature (1908).5
→ Illustration, by Martin Frobenius Ledermüller, from Mikroskopische Gemüths- und Augen-Ergötzung (1764).6
✦ Images 3. and 4. are from the precious matters personal collection: now part of this growing archive. A lifetime of small moments, gathered with care: fragments of a soft universe in the making.
✦ a. Wikipedia: Seashell resonance.
Last accessed on 1 November 2025.
✦ b. Cabinet Magazine: “Seashell Sound”, by Stefan Helmreich.
Last accessed on 1 November 2025.
✦ c. HathiTrust: An Introduction to Natural Philosophy: designed as a textbook for the use of the students in Yale College. Compiled from various authorities. By Denison Olmsted, v.2, p.96. / 78
Lijst op HathiTrust.
Last accessed on 1 November 2025.
✧ Originally written in Dutch by Merel Slootheer. Translated with care and intuition by Blackbird Ditchlord.
Everything here grows slowly,
with care, in my own rhythm.
𓆑 𓂃 ˖ ݁.