Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2 Portrait of Thomas Carlyle by James Albert McNeill Whistler
This week: Chapters 69-74, “The Funeral” through “The Sperm Whale’s Head.”
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
Chapter 69
The final sentence, “There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them,” makes me think of William Blake’s line,
“May God us keep
From Single vision & Newtons sleep”
Wikipedia says, “The Cock Lane ghost was a purported haunting that attracted mass public attention in 1762.”
Chapter 71
I don’t know what to make of “A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut ting,” worn by the man who calls himself the angel Gabriel. It makes me think of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (“The Retailored Tailor”) which shows up repeatedly in Finnegans Wake. The Wake itself features a sailor who becomes a tailor, an s-t transformation suggesting Einstein’s space-time transformation. It also makes me think of Oscar Wilde’s essay “The Truth of Masks” which on the surface talks about costumes in Shakespeare, but Bob Wilson saw it as an essay about the masks oppressed people wear: gay people in Wilde’s London, colonized people, etc., and about the masks we all wear metaphorically. Living through the Covid-19 pandemic, I also think of literal masks. This brings us back to Melville’s “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.” (I read that line in a beatnik voice, man.) I find it an interesting coincidence that this chapter deals with an epidemic.
Gabriel’s refusing “to work except when he pleased” makes me think of Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.”
Chapter 73
"So when on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant’s and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! Throw all these thunder-heads overboard, then you will float light and right."
This rejection of Enlightenment thinkers Locke and Kant seems to go along with the rejection of Dr. Johnson a few chapters earlier. I find it interesting that the TV series Lost included characters based on Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, David Hume, and Rousseau, as well as Richard Alpert and Mikhail Bakunin. The series also had an acknowledged Robert Anton Wilson influence.
Chapter 74
“Why then do you try to ‘enlarge your mind? Subtilize it.” I find it interesting that the second quoted sentence does not end with an exclamation point.
Next week: Please read Chapters 75-81, “The Right Whale’s Head” through “The Pequod Meets the Virgin.”
8 comments:
I've been fascinated by the mentions in the novel about letters going out to whale boats, so I was pleased Melville explains what's going on: "Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed, depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans. Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received after attaining an age of two or three years or more."
Aaron Gwyn, the college professor I wrote about Jan. 7, has launched a new podcast, and the first episode is about Moby Dick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsdw9WnWb88
Great post! Thank-you for the Wake info. The "cabalistically cut-coat" reminds me of photos I've seen of Ornette Coleman dressed in his harmolodic clothes, a fashion design based his harmolodic music theory. It was multi-colored and asymmetrical, the sleeves were different colors, etc. I don't know why Melville chose that phrase to describe the coat of a religious fanatic, unless in Joycean fashion, he suggests a pun with "cut" ? When my client comes over tomorrow, there will be two people here named Gabriel.
Deleuze has an essay on Bartelby the Scrivner where he goes pretty deep with the linguistic and philosophical analysis of Bartelby's formula, "I would prefer not to." Deleuze also rejects the model of Kant's transcendental categorical imperatives.
Man, I love Ornette. Anthony Braxton used to quote "Moby Dick".
In ‘The Monkey-rope’ chapter, Stubb goes ape because instead of alcohol, he finds some ginger-based drink. “Is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-Boy, to kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!-what the devil is ginger?” I actually find ginger to be pretty efficient when it comes to kindle the inner fire. Ginger infusions are great to boost the immune system, and it does wonder to soothe a sore throat. I often add it cooked in my dishes as well.
“Doctor Johnson” makes me think of Michael Johnson.
Eric Wagner, do you recall what was the connection between RAW and Lost? Was there any actual reference, or did the showrunners just name-dropped him in some interview? I loved this series back then, but never went back to it since.
I like to entertain the idea that the Jeroboam is still sailing the seas, with Gabriel still onboard, forever ranting and raving, with “a deep, settled, fanatic delirium in his eyes.” Kind of like Klaus Kinski at the end of Aguirre.
Perhaps with "cabalistically cut-coat", Melville just wants to suggest Cabala to the readers. The coat is worn by a religious fanatic, which could be misdirection or could be suggesting skepticism regarding Cabala. It reminds me of the patchwork quilt in Ishmael and Queequeg's room in chapter 4, "The Counterpane." A counterpane is a decorative bedspread. "The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-colored squares and triangles." This design blends in with Queequeg's tattoos: "I could hardly tell it (his tattoos) from the quilt, they so blended their hues together."
In the Bartleby piece fromEssays Critical and Clinical Deleuze also comments on Moby-Dick along with a variety of Melville's other works and literature in general. He writes about literary masterpieces forming a foreign language within the language they are writing in.
"Is this not the schizophrenic vocation of American literature: to make the English language, by means of driftings, deviations, de-taxes or sur-taxes ( as opposed to the standard syntax) slip in this manner? To introduce a bit of psychosis into English neurosis? To invent a new universality? If need be, other languages will be summoned into English in order to make it echo this divine language of storm and thunder. Melville invents a foreign language that runs beneath English and carries it off: it is the OUTLANDISH or Deterritorialized, the language of the Whale. Whence the interest of studies of Moby-Dick that are based on Numbers and Letters, and their cryptic meaning, to set free at least a skeleton of the inhuman or super-human originary language." Then Deleuze cites a book, la contre-Bible de Melville by Viola Sachs.
David Lindelof, one of the producers of "Lost", said that his dad loved Robert Anton Wilson's books, and that for that reason they included 23 as one of the magic numbers on "Lost".
I watched and greatly enjoyed the first 5 seasons of "Lost"; only saw a couple of episodes from the 6th and final season. From various references you could sense some familiarity with esoteric intelligence in the writing. I don't know why I didn't finish it.
I like this sentence and the gory scene that precedes it in chapter 69, "The Funeral": "Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives."
Perhaps somewhat resonant with the TV show "Lost" - "lost in infinite perspectives." I always love getting wafted by joyous breezes. The end of chapter 70, "The Sphynx" has Ahab asking St. Paul for a breeze. The dj I live with uses "Brisa" as a nom de plume for her show, "Stereo Cosmic Jellyfish." Brisa is Spanish for breeze.
More from Deleuze on great writers from the same piece:
"What counts for a great novelist – Melville, Dostoyefsky, , Kafka, or Musil – is that things remain engimatic yet nonarbitrary: in short, a new logic, definitely a logic, but one that grasps the innermost depths of life and death without leading us back to reason. The novelist has the eye of a prophet, not the gaze of a psychologist."
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