The Lobster Knows the Deep

Gérard de Nerval, the French Romantic poet, once walked the streets of Paris with a lobster on a pale blue ribbon. That is not a metaphor. It was a living lobster, clicking gently alongside him on cobblestone lanes. When curious passersby asked why, Nerval replied, “He doesn’t bark. He doesn’t bite. He never argues—and he knows the secrets of the deep.”

It sounds like a fable, or a page from Lewis Carroll. But the account, strange as it seems, is widely attested. Nerval was eccentric, yes—but he was also making a point. The world is full of noise, ego, and argument. In the end, wisdom may walk quietly beside us, saying nothing at all.

The Apostle Paul once wrote:

“No eye has seen, no ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

In other words, the most profound truths—the “secrets of the deep”—are not the possession of philosophers or kings. They are not…