To the Moon
- Apr 12
- 3 min read
Like so many others, I was transfixed this past week by the awe-inspiring Artemis II mission to circle the moon, and by the perilous re-entry and dramatic splashdown that brought our astronauts safely back to Earth.
Even before Artemis blasted off, I had been thinking about how the moon is emblematic of so many things: madness, danger, melancholy, longing, romance and more. I had just finished reading a book with "moon" in the title, though I'm saving that discussion for another week since it deserves its own post.
Is there any other symbol that hovers over literature, music and art quite the way the moon does? It has inspired some of the most heartfelt pieces of music — from the classical ("Clair de Lune" and "Moonlight Sonata") to contemporary songs including "Blue Moon," "Pink Moon," "Harvest Moon," "Fly Me to the Moon" and, for the Israeli music fans out there, "Yareach." If you're not familiar with this beautiful song by the great Shlomo Artzi, here's a clip. (Be sure to check out the audience members: Bill Clinton is sandwiched between Shimon Peres and Barbra Streisand.)
Out of curiosity, I just thumbed through an electronic version of The Great Gatsby, one of my favorite books, and searched for every reference to the moon. I found 15, all evocative and gorgeously rendered sentences. Numerous scenes take place under the moon's glow, starting with the moment the narrator, Nick Carraway, first lays eyes on his mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby.
The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
Fitzgerald uses simple yet striking imagery in describing the moon: "the premature moon," "a wafer of a moon," and "a silver curve of the moon." At one point, referencing Gatsby's gaudiness, Nick is almost blinded by "the luminosity of his pink suit under the moon." That's quite an image.
Last year, I re-read Jane Eyre, another one of my favorite books, and a small moon-related scene jumped out at me. It comes just after Jane accepts Mr. Rochester's marriage proposal. Mr. Rochester giddily declares that he wants to spirit Jane away to the moon, where they can be forever alone. "I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys," he says, and when Jane is cold, he will "carry her up to a peak and lay her down on the edge of a crater."
It's a dreamy, somewhat silly vignette and not at all pivotal to the plot. But it shows how the moon has orbited our imaginations for as long as people have been staring up at it.
It's hard to comprehend the engineering marvels that allowed the Artemis moonfarers to catapult so far into space. Astrophysics is not my specialty, but I did enjoy learning some NASA jargon from the TV coverage, from "lunar flyby" (orbiting the moon without landing) to "translunar injection burn" (the engine firing that propelled the Orion capsule out of Earth's orbit and toward the moon) and "fluid reloading" (drinking a lot of water before re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere to help readjust to gravity).
What struck me most, though, were the human stories of the astronauts and their diverse life journeys. I was especially moved when I learned that the mission commander had lost his wife to cancer in 2020, and that, despite the risks, his two daughters encouraged him to go on the voyage. His fellow crew members asked NASA during the mission if they could name a lunar crater — which, on certain nights, can be viewed from Earth — in his wife's memory. It will now be known as Carroll, hopefully forever.
It was a lovely gesture. Somehow, I think Mr. Rochester would approve.
