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Tag Archives: mast-heads

MOBY-DICK: Thoughts on chapter LVIII “Brit”

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by essaybee2012 in azure sky, black rocks, Elephantine, elephants, Herman Melville, Ishmael, island, land, leviathans, Moby-Dick, soul, Van Gogh, whales, yellow brit, yellow sea

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aesthetic of purpose, azure sky, black rocks, Egypt, Elephantine, elephants, God, Herman Melville, horrors, India, Ishmael, island, joy, land, leviathans, mast-heads, Moby-Dick, Nile, peace, soul, Tahiti, Van Gogh, whales, yellow brit, yellow sea


“. . . consider them both, the sea and the land, and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?  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.  God keep thee!  Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return.”  [Chapter LVIII “Brit”]

In the above noted chapter, I couldn’t help but think of the tortured genius of Vincent Van Gogh as Melville captured my attention with his description of the yellow brit and azure sky:

“these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea. . . . Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure.”

As I read, baited and hooked, I warmly remembered a past trip to Egypt when I and my wife (much younger and adventurous then) sailed on the Nile to the island of Elephantine, surrounded by massive rocks that resemble elephants in the blue river water.

“Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more like lifeless black masses of rock than anything else.  And as in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea.”

Ishmael inquires of us:  “. . . consider them both, the sea and the land, and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”  He answers: “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.  God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return.”

I believe that Ishmael (Melville) proposes that the souls of men, like an “appalling ocean . . . encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life,” surround man’s yearning for a “verdant land . . . full of peace and joy.”  He warns:  “Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return.”

Perhaps if Van Gogh had not pushed off from that isle of yearning, he would not have lived such a tortured life.  If I had not experienced the mystical, Egyptian isle of Elephantine, surrounded by elephant-like mounds of rock, I would not have been as engaged, now, to Melville’s answer to his own question as well as to his dire warning.  Mystical azure water and skies surround the yellow land of brit, as Ishmael philosophizes, and the souls of the seamen surround their eternal, and necessary, yearning for an aesthetic of purpose.

photo: https://en.wikipedia.or /…/Wheat_Fields_%28Van_Gogh_series%…

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MOBY-DICK: Chapters XXIV-XLI

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by essaybee2012 in courage, cowards, democratic dignity, divine equality, fearlessness, fleshly tabernacle, floating-island democracy, God, idiots, imbeciles, inferiors, intellectuals, mast-heads, Moby-Dick, mystic ocean, practical, practical, soul, terrors, trade winds, tranced ship, watch-coat

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bankrupt securities, bills of fare, Colossus of Rhodes, commonplaces, courage, cowards, crew, democracy, democratic dignity, divine equality, Divine Inert, domestic afflictions, fearlessness, fleshly tabernacle, floating-island democracy, gazettes, God, Herman Melville, hierarchy of duties, idiots, imbeciles, inferiors, intellectuals, Ishmael, mast-heads, meals, Moby-Dick, monsters of the sea, mystic ocean, nature, news, omnipresence, potency, practical, soul, stocks, superiority, supernatural, supremacy, terrors, trade winds, tranced ship, uneventfulness, watch-coat, waves

Ishmael places God at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of crew and terrors that they face—”what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!” he exclaims.  [Chapter XXIV]

Of true courage, he declares that one who is fearless of terrors, whether of nature or of the supernatural, is no different than a coward:  “the most reliable and useful courage [is] that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril . . . an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.”  [Chapter XXVI]

On the equality of dignity, Ishmael states:  “Thou shall see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God, Himself!  The great God absolute!  The centre and circumference of all democracy!  His omnipresence, our divine equality!”  What powerful words from Melville!  The crew, even though separated by hierarchy of duties is equal in the eyes of God.  [Chapter XXVI]

Ishmael expands that even those perceived as inferior or even imbecilic at times rise above intellectuals:  “be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men . . . those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass . . . in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency.”  Again, what powerful words!  [Chapter XXXIII]

Ishmael once more peers upward to beautifully describe those who man the mast-heads:  “to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.  There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, string along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes.  There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves.  The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor . . . a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable . . . as the soul is glued inside of its fleshly tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even more out of it, without running great risk of perishing . . . so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you.”  [Chapter XXXV]

Melville creates vivid pictures of this floating-island democracy of men, tossed about on his “mystic ocean” that surrounds them and keeps them on the watch at all times.

[illustration from: https://uk.pinterest.com/lakoutrine/illustrations-moby-dick/V%5D

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