Surfacing
I took a few days off to go to my niece's third birthday party. She lives in NY (like our buddy H.M. once did) so on the trip there and back, I had a lot of airport hours to enjoy M-D...here are some of the notes I scribbled as I drank Starbucks coffee, listened to my ipod, and read my favorite book... I omitted some of the quotes that Scott also highlighted, but I also love the Town-Ho story and the comment about the story of M-D being too long a story...
What is meaning, and what do we know?
Yeah, yeah, I know that Descartes covered this, and The Matrix made it popular, but that doesn't mean we have a good answer, or that Melville's questions aren't relevant. The whale lives below the surface, below the world we can see and comprehend, and therefore is all the more mysterious and alluring to us. But as Ishmael explains, the world above the surface alludes us as well.
From The Fountain "...in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely."
Cannibals and Caretakers, all
I love the constant reminders that we humans are very much part of the natural world, and the natural world is very much us. We are all cannibals. The whaling business is a cannibalistic enterprise. We are also caretakers. In The Grand Armada, when they encounter the pod of nursing and pregnant whales, Queequeg pats the baby whale on the head. Starbuck scratches their backs with his lance. The objects of death are the same objects of affection. The person who wants to kill you might also be your buddy. There is no inherent meaning...only context and contrast. "...there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself."
"It is also very curiously displayed in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering."
"I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him." Woo hoo!
More from The Grand Armada "...and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;--even so did the young of these whales seem looking uptowards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign parts."
My favorite title of a chapter: "Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars"
A few of my favorite quotes that I revisit like old friends each time I read this:
From Brit: "that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulnessof the sea which aboriginally belongs to it."
Also from Brit: "For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life."
From The Prairie: "I try all things; I achieve what I can."
From The Honour and Glory of Whaling: "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is thetrue method."
And, possibly my favorite quote from the whole book.... from The Tail: "Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic."
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
What is meaning, and what do we know?
Yeah, yeah, I know that Descartes covered this, and The Matrix made it popular, but that doesn't mean we have a good answer, or that Melville's questions aren't relevant. The whale lives below the surface, below the world we can see and comprehend, and therefore is all the more mysterious and alluring to us. But as Ishmael explains, the world above the surface alludes us as well.
From The Fountain "...in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely."
Cannibals and Caretakers, all
I love the constant reminders that we humans are very much part of the natural world, and the natural world is very much us. We are all cannibals. The whaling business is a cannibalistic enterprise. We are also caretakers. In The Grand Armada, when they encounter the pod of nursing and pregnant whales, Queequeg pats the baby whale on the head. Starbuck scratches their backs with his lance. The objects of death are the same objects of affection. The person who wants to kill you might also be your buddy. There is no inherent meaning...only context and contrast. "...there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself."
"It is also very curiously displayed in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering."
"I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him." Woo hoo!
More from The Grand Armada "...and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;--even so did the young of these whales seem looking uptowards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign parts."
My favorite title of a chapter: "Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars"
A few of my favorite quotes that I revisit like old friends each time I read this:
From Brit: "that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulnessof the sea which aboriginally belongs to it."
Also from Brit: "For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life."
From The Prairie: "I try all things; I achieve what I can."
From The Honour and Glory of Whaling: "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is thetrue method."
And, possibly my favorite quote from the whole book.... from The Tail: "Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic."
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
posted by Erica at 7:17 AM
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