It's a scientific fact that anyone entering the distance will grow smaller. Eventually becoming so small he might only be found with a telescope, or, for more intimacy, with a microscope....
But there's a vanishing point, where anyone having penetrated the distance must disappear entirely without hope of his ever returning, leaving only a memory of his ever having been.
But then there is fiction, so that one is never really sure if it was someone who vanished into the end of seeing, or someone made of paper and ink....
A trope for death? 
 Edson himself died on April 29, 2014 at the age of 79. RIP. 

Of Memory and Distance