Jam-eaters-llc - Faithless Bacchant

Today is the second day of the climactic whale chase in Moby Dick, and I am so strongly on the side of the whale, it's hard to believe anyone ever wasn't.

Up to this point, we can side with the whale in a general sense, mostly on the basis of our modern sensibilities about endangered species and industrial exploitation of the environment, which no one expects either Melville or the average contemporary reader to have. The omens, Ishmael/Melville's dropped hints about the fates of the crew, and Starbuck's common sense awareness that Ahab needs to get over this stupid revenge fantasy and do his capitalist duty to hunt whales for oil instead of personal satisfaction are all enough to make everyone aware of the need to turn back and let the damn whale go, but we can grasp how a 19th century audience, primed to Conquer Nature, can succumb - like the sailors - to the thrill of the hunt and prospect of symbolic destruction of Nemesis.

But now that Moby Dick is actually on stage, his behavior is that of an animal trying to get on with its own business and acting in self-defense. Indeed, his self-defense is reasonable and measured. Smashing up four boats with only one fatality? He had a man in his mouth! He may or may not recognize Ahab, but he is familiar with humans in whaleboats, their vulnerabilities, and their aggressive tendencies. He could probably kill the whole lot of them, and from his point of view it would serve them right!

But he's a predator, humans are not his prey, and if he stays to kill them there's a chance their nasty pointy things will damage him severely. Also he knows that the amount of damage he's dealing out is enough to make whalers back off, like sensible predators, and look for easier prey. So he smashes the boats and keeps swimming, encumbered by those stupid ropes. Whales can't unwind ropes; he'll have to find a place to scrape it off or wait till it rots and falls away.

(We all know the meaning of Fedallah's prophecy here, don't we?)

Nothing this whale does is savage, vicious, cruel, malicious, or vindictive.

What happens tomorrow is all on Ahab.

Out of Touch

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year’s scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths—Starbuck!”

I love everything about this passage but line about the judge – God – being dragged to the bar

7.8.24

does anyone have that unsettling oil painting of a dark window with a sheet leading out into the darkness? it did the rounds on tumblr a while ago and i need itttt