You see one huge bugle, sparks running in it and all this burns with such a bright light that you hardly have to see in another of the wonderful spectacles of a wonderful nature, except for the northern lights, live at least thirty, fifty years. So I thought at that time and involuntarily went to memory unconsciously learned in childhood, now with a visual comparison, the striking poems of Lomonosov, who was familiar with the beauty of the phenomena of the polar sky in early youth:
«His face hides the day,
Fields covered dark night
A black shadow ascended the mountains,
The rays bent away from us
An abyss has opened, the stars are full:
There is no number to the stars, the bottom to the abyss.
Dawn is raising from the midnight countries:
Doesn’t the sun put his throne there?
Does not the ice float the sea fire?
This cold flame has covered us
Xie entered into the night upon earth!
Oh you fast sight
Piercing the book of eternal rights,
Say you are so troubled
What a bright night ray will fall:
What is the thin flame in the firmament smashed?
Like lightning without formidable clouds
Seeks from the earth to the zenith?
How can it be that frozen steam
In the middle of winter a fire started?
There argues greasy haze with water
Or the sun’s rays shine
Leaning through the air towards us is thick;
Or the fat mountains the tops burn
Ile in the sea blowing marshmallow
And smooth waves hit the air?»
Surprisingly close are these descriptions, separated by millennia, especially if we recall that the ode to M. V. Lomonosov is called «Evening Reflection on God’s Majesty in the Case of the Great Northern Lights» and ends with the words:
«Doubt is full of your answer
The fact that the nearest places
Tell me, if the light is wide?
What are the smallest stars further?
Ignorant creatures end you?
Tell me, since the Creator is great?»
S. V. Maksimov gives the story of his guide – a simple Pomors who says: «On Matka (Novaya Zemlya Island), our old people say, they play terribly flurries, and even then the villages are strong. In another winter, the whole sky burns the pillars walk and collide among themselves, as if the soldiers are fighting, and they will fall so beautifully! More often! …The worst in the big cold live and then, like a light show, and we’re familiar, but we’re very scared. On Matka, it’s as if old men are saying, even a rush bursts, as if from a gun clicks scary, really scary!»