XXVI/4 The sea of the preceding image is here twice present. In the original lithograph the general background derives from a combination of xeroxed positives and negatives upon which is superimposed a spiralled cut-up of the original positive for the preceding image. The circular form suggests the churn of waters that swallow the ship of Ulysses as well as the water-covered hemisphere that the mediaeval mind imagined. Out of this arises, as if in a dream inset, a glimpse of Mount Purgatory (the positive extrusion of Hell's negative drilling as explained later by Virgil). The inset vision is once again made from the sea and mountain fragments from the Boy's Own Paper: it appears framed and set apart, for it represents somehow an anomalous interpolation in the Matter of Hell, a sight forbidden to living man and unimaginable to the infernal damned. The interior text here appears in negative for the first time as such texts will do increasingly as the reversal of human values exemplified in Hell's lower reaches is explored. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.