But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught -- nay but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience. (157)
I think the most daunting thing about writing is completion. Perhaps this is a hint... I do not have to finish. Maybe I should try writing again sometime.
"He lived in the world , as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!" (166)
Yes, depression is like that.
"Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naughts an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!" (183)
Yes, being stubborn is like that. I'm slightly concerned that I seem to be relating to Ahab so well.
"I plainly see my miserable office, -- to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with a touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole clock's run down; my heart the all controlling weight, I have no key to lift again." (Starbuck, on Ahab, 184)
Argh, Starbuck, argh.
"Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable ideas..." (202)
uh huh, have those kind of ideas often.
"Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a clor as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snow -- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues -- every stately or lovely emblazoning -- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits, not actual inherent in substances, but only laid from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic that produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge -- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travelers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?" (on the whiteness of Moby Dick 212)
Whew, long quote, but an important one, I think. Beautiful language, though it might have something to do with racism... for the purposes here though, I'm just going to bask in the beautiful language and think of the way that sometimes it feels like a smooth white stone overcaps my mind, blanking out everything in it. That's what this passage makes me think of.
"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs,and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints." (247)
Still reminding me of Douglas Adams.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick, or The Whale. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
This series of posts is dedicated to Dr. Richards
No comments:
Post a Comment