Man is born with a demand for justice, as he understands it. Since his demand remains unfulfilled, a broad understanding of the arbitrary course of events gradually begins to develop in him. He makes the decisions of others his own. He hardens his thoughts to inflexible ideas and consoles his inner powers with a later or a beyond.

Experience, given the capricious and incomprehensible forces of the universe, can only lead to the subordination of certainties and logic to an unremitting irrational unknown. Or so seems to one of the themes of terribly under-known (and under-translated) German expressionist writer Hans Henny Jahnn. The Ship, actually prologue and first volume to an incomplete trilogy, is a kind of metaphysical horror story on an inscrutable mystery ship. It is fantastic.

The lights were on in the great sky dome, flickering in infinite space. Their cold glow, uplifting the heart or destroying it, conveyed the deceptive marvel of edifying ideas. Millions of human beings—and who knows if the animals don’t do the same thing—look up at the night with uncomprehending eyes and turn inward to a forlorn or frightened breast, their own. They see themselves as chosen or rejected. Or what is far away is as far away for them as it pretends to be. It does not penetrate the miasma of their martyred blood. And then again storms spread their noise across the vapors of the earth. Now it was the gleaming dew of loneliness that trickled down upon it.

Besides just the sheer tension and beauty of Jahnn's writing, he makes use of a terribly interesting inter-cutting technique, where, as in experimental film, non-narrative images intrude upon the story to heighten mood or impressionistically explain a state of mind. In a virtuouso passage, a character comes to a long-sought realization, then immediately regrets knowledge as less desirable to his prior uncertainty. But instead of saying that outright, Jahnn gives us this:

The next few seconds brought with them the cruel end of a long uncertainty. A human being feels his way through a dark tunnel. Here and there, his hands grasp the uneven stones, his feet stumble over rocks, he bends low because he is afraid he will hit his head. The darkness of granite differs not at all from the darkness of an unlighted room, so a wanderer can feel hemmed in even in a vast cavern. The wreckage of a petrified night towers over him. But suddenly, far away, light penetrates through a crack. He who was blind a moment ago hurries towards it, his heart pounding with jubilation in his breast. Freedom, the visibility of things, is beckoning to him. Breathless, he steps out into a landscape. And it is as if he were enjoying the sun for the first time. The earth smells spicy of grass and wood, of acrid smoke, of minerals, because a ball of fire is bestowing its warmth. Animals at the wanderer’s feet, farther away—insets, field mice, two hopping rabbits. Near a hill—two horses harnessed to a plow, all coaxed out of a warm oven, all born of a living mother, nothing that can offend the eye or frighten him. Then, suddenly, like a single flash of lightning, the firmament is torn to shreds. Blackness screams out of the breach. Outer space, with its infinite cold, comes rolling in relentlessly. The sea of light dries up. The soul falls off the earth and sees death.

Because of this sort of thing, The Ship tends to require attentive reading to avoid disorientation (except where the utter dislocation seems intended), but is all the richer and more rewarding for it. And though the philosophical passages can meander a bit, they also help to coil the story with forces on the verge of explosion. Forces that must, of course, find a way out before the finish. This even finds a way to elegantly preclude The Vanishing in a single scene.

I transcribed many more passages here, which actually was quite useful in digesting them.