Bill’s Comments (group member since Oct 08, 2011)

Bill’s comments from the Moby-Dick group.

And repairing the sails, cleaning the whales, etc.

Grossman's translation is a work of genius.

I might be up for Cervantes or Dante next year.

Most immediately I'm leading a discussion on Brain Pain on Eliot's "The Waste Land" starting March 5 and following it with The Great Gatsby in the context of "The Waste Land" and to a lesser extent Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

I didn't say the "Christian God" nor that Melville was conventionally pious. But the question of the existence of God was one Melville struggled with, unable to make a decision and unable to leave the question alone, at least according to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Ishamael does not remark that cannibals are better than Christians -- but cannibals consistently come off the better although Melville does have some fun with Queequeg. But the cannibals are never guilty in the book of anything as brutal as deciding to pass Pip by -- which gets Ishmael's blackly ironic comment that we shouldn't be too hard on Stubbs because man is a "money-making animal."

On the other hand, this is Melville on the whale:

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes see it—glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. For, d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Melville, Herman; Tanner, Tony (1998-03-05). Moby Dick (Oxford World's Classics) (p. 335). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

It is, I think, the closest we have in the book to Melville's intuition of the divine -- which is probably why he used the word "wicked" -- because the book if read carefully, does suggest the farther we get from civilized man, the closer we get to God. That is, if there is a god at all. :-)

I think Melville called the book "wicked" because, as I've written elsewhere, is that cannibals come off better than Christians, and whales perhaps best of all, and it is through the rainbow in the whale's spout which Melville treats as a kind sign of the divine, at least expressed through the creation of the whale, rather than man as "a man-making animal" when he suggests, dripping with irony, we shouldn't be to critical of Stubbs for passing Pip by.

I don't think Moby-Dick is an image of God but more of a spectacular bit of God's creation.

I'm here. Back from New Bedford to celebrate -- although, as I posted elsewhere, I was in New Bedford on the single worst day of the year, a snowstorm so bad even the whaling museum was closed. Did get to see it and at least the outside of Father Mapple's chapel -- Seamen's Bethel -- which was a bit grander than I expected.

At the end, after carefully focusing attention on the whale and Melville's discursions, I found myself disappointed to return to the people and terribly sympathetic to the whale, despite wanting Starbuck, Stubbs and Ishmael (who HAD to make it) to survive and knowing they wouldn't.

It was like rereading King Lear and hoping Cordelia would survive.

In retrospect, for a reread, I'd be really interesting in just how the extensive detail and poetry about whales and whaling, the attitudes influenced by Sartor Resartus (the mock philosophical-expert voice,) function to create the ultimate effect of Moby-Dick -- because they seem to be a very large part (most) of the story.

How this functions, whole and parts, seems of enormous interest.

I finished, a little disappointed to be through it. I went to New Bedford to celebrate, perhaps have coffee with Moby-Dick himself, and see a nephew and his fiancée.

I arrived in New Bedford the evening before the worst snow storm of the year. Everything was shut including the whaling museum. I did have lunch with the nephew who was only twenty minutes away -- still it was a brave drive and it took him a lot more than twenty-minutes -- but his fiancée whom I had hoped to get to know a little couldn't make it from Boston.

I ate both meals at the seafood restaurant across the street, which was as far as I was going to get. (Fortunately, it opened.) The next day was better, the museum open, and I could see the outside anyway of the Seamen's Bethel Church (inside open in the summer) where the character on whom Father Mapple was based preached. There was a Moby-Dick exhibit at the museum but mostly on things inspired by Moby-Dick. Did see a whale skeleton, though. Sundays in the winter almost everything is shut down. I'd had it, went off to Boston Sunday evening where the weather was fine, the streets were clean, saw a bunch of friends in the ensuing days, and did some research. :-)

And now back home.

Bill

I found that very careful structuring.

Actually, Sarah, an instant classic is an oxymoron. The whole point of a classic is that it's not instant.

I finished a few hours ago. Now I'm off to New Bedford to celebrate and have dinner with some friends nearby. And then to Boston and then back home next week.

I managed to read the book slowly and carefully. I found it one of most profound literary experiences of my life -- and I've had a few.

I feel pretty comfortable with the themes, but it would be interesting to go through it again, perhaps in a year or two, much more slowly, much, much more slowly, looking at it is as a work of literature, examining its structure and how the pieces create a whole -- and what kind of a whole it is. It feels as much lyric as narrative to me, and I know no novel of this size and cetacean proportions that has left me feeling like I'd read a fabulously complex poem.

I'm rereading The Iliad at the moment, a poem explicitly about anger (the anger of Achilles) and I've been thinking to some extent of Moby-Dick in those terms. It begins with an angry Ishmael in the mood to knock the hats off people in the street and moves to a far angrier Ahab, revenging himself on reality for the loss of his leg. He is in a kind of fabulous mourning for his limb -- and grief and mourning may lead to fury.

Interestingly, he's less on stage than Achilles, although man, "the money-making animal" is in part his alter-ego. Opposed to it is the glory of the whale, whom I found myself rooting for, although I was sorry to see the crew drown as well. I'd grown fond of Starbuck, Stubbs and Queequeg. Flash is as close to a non-entity as possible, a "mediocrity" in Melville's terms. I'd formed no love for either the carpenter or the blacksmith.

And it does make me realize it's been almost a year since I last read Shakespeare.

I also not only find it amazing that Melville thought this novel would make him money. It is so complex, so demanding -- what was our lad thinking?

Gone for a week.

And mine is Ishamel in his many voices.

I don't know madness is "naive." Of course, it's not rational, but Ahab is mad and barely keeps his communications with the officers on the Pequod normal. Th scene where he thinks about Starbucks advice and then takes it is indicative of a mind close to gone -- but not entirely

I want to be able to finish in New Bedford -- or I could reread the New Bedford chapters there.

I took a break. I've been reading slowly. I'm up to Chapter 116 -- and I booked a room in New Bedford next weekend to finish the book there. (I'm also having dinner with friends nearby and going to Boston -- but hey...) :-)

For me, Melville's comment about Stubbs, which was not to be too hard on him because man is "a money-making animal" was among the most devastating comments in the novel, and it is a piece of Melville's vision

I didn't read, but saw the film, "A Perfect Storm" and one of the things that struck was just how dangerous fishing was. I always had the image of a Huck Finn like character fishing in a pond. But the fact that commercial fishing, today, with much better boats pursuing much less dangerous game, is surprisingly dangerous highlights the dangers the 19th century whalers faced.

Yes, but it's not just about it. Melville has a particular perspective.

I think, Sarah, that Moby-Dick, is not about Ahab's chase for the whale but Melville's use of the that to explore the nature of existence, to understand man and God. And to do it using a rich extraordinary Shakespearian at times -- or at least poetic -- prose.

What follows is not the best writing -- although it's not without its points -- "his vast mild head overhung by a vapours" is excellent -- but it reveals I think WHY there's been so much space devoted to the whale, both in fact and poetry, and why it's part of the book and why it's so terribly important to read, carefully and slowly, to let it seep in.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea, his vast mild head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapour -- as you will sometimes see it -- as if Heaven itself had put his seal upon its thoughts. For d'ye see rainbows don't inhabit the clear air, they only irradiate vapour. And so through all the dim doubts in the thick mists of my mind divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for I thank God: for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials; few among them have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly; and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but a man who regards all things with equal eye.

What all this detail, scientific, practical, poetic, etc., these descriptions are the build up of Melville's only vision of heaven, through the whale as a heavenly creature.

For in looking at Christians and cannibals, Christians come out the worse, and while still better, cannibals and certainly humans in general don't come out well when compared to whales, which reflect heaven in their enormous majesty -- and of course here a rainbow in the spouting.

A long time ago (that is, in these posts) NE talked of being of not knowing where Melville came out, and I think in the passage above it's clear where he comes out. This is where we learn unequivocally he's with the whales -- and not with man, the money-making animal.

But it's not just that.

He's certainly in his ironic humorous self with the Twain of "the better I know people, the more I like my dog".

But he's really after something deeper. Yes he lets us see our good Christian businessman, Peleg and Bildad paying as little as possible for life-risking labour, the brutality of flogging on the Town-Ho, the frequent comparisons of Christians and cannibals where the cannibals always come out better, the constant mortal danger the crew is put in while just cleaning the whale, Queegueg's saving of Tashtego, the incident shortly to come up with Pip.

But Melville is also the man caught between being Christian and infidel, who sees both, and having vouchsafed us voyagers with him a vision of man which might be considered hellish, he also offers a vision -- and intuition -- of Heaven, an intuition for which he is grateful.

And he does it through the detailed verbal pictures of the whale -- and this part of Moby-Dick that isn't about the "story", about the chase of the whale or Ahab's madness -- is about this balancing vision of heaven. The vision of heaven is as much what this book is about it as a potential alternative, of what me might learn of heaven in the whale.

It is perhaps this vision that is redemptive in the book, that redeems the Ishmael who follows funerals and stares at coffin warehouses, who finds himself in the seaman's chapel listening to preacher, a former seaman, who like Jonah must go and preach the word of God.

And this is Melville's contribution, I think, his sermon, even if one by an only half-convinced penitent, it's the carefully, and methodically built up vision of the whale.

This is Melville on his knees in his own church.

I think Melville underlines how dangerous it is to go whaling and how human life is inconsequential next to the money to be made by selling luxury lamp oil.

I think Melville's underling one of his major points. For this luxury good we're very free with risking the lives of real people.

Tiger's are more orange and white than yellow and white. By saying "tiger-yellow" he may be suggesting more of a Arabic or Indian color.

Fedallah is apparently a made up name -- the only references I can find to it are all either from Moby-Dick or they look to be a fake name taken from Moby-Dick .

The interesting thing about Fedallah is that it ends in "allah", the simple word for "God" in Arabic. (If you were praying to God in a Christian church in Arabic, you would be praying to "Allah".)

ha ha, maybe a " mea culpa ". :-)

And I think the question of being canonical has to do with authenticity -- there may not be a Hebrew source despite the Hebrew story. Or I may be making it up.

It's all part of the general question of the Apocrypha.

New York is wonderfully ecumenical. I was in a story today run by Muslims selling Christmas and Hannukah decorations made in Taiwan.

But I don't know that kosher was what Melville was thinking about. It wouldn't quite work with stretching the idea of eating whale meat to be cannibalistic. But -- who know?