The Heidelberg Tun. (Public domain photo).
Chapters 75-81, “The Right Whale’s Head” through “The Pequod Meets the Virgin.”
I've actually seen the Great Heidelberg Tun, a huge wine cask in Heidelberg Castle in Heidelberg, Germany; I visited the castle when I was young in trips to what was then "West Germany" when I was young. My parents were married in Heidelberg, on July 23. The Heidelberg Tun at the castle now dates to 1751, so it would be the one Melville is referring to (more information here.)
There are chapters of Moby Dick in which Melville gives lectures on various aspects of whaling, and chapters in which action occurs. As much as I enjoyed Chapter 60, "The Line," I have to admit I mostly prefer the action chapters.
In Chapter 78, "Cisterns and Buckets," Queequeeg performs another daring rescue, jumping into the sea, sword in hand, to perform another daring rescue when Tashtego is about the drown after he falls inside the sinking whate head. The text refers to "the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequegg, which is a pun -- Queequeeg essentially performs a Caesarian by slashing into the head and pulling Tashtego out, and also in a sense Tashtego is born again when he is rescue from what seems to be certain death.
"How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?" Is Melville warning against being captured by belief systems?
In "The Pequod Meets The Virgin," the other "action" chapter in this section of of the novel, Melville uncorks a couple of zingers. When we encounter The Jungfrau, it has no whale oil, it "is technically called a clean one (that is an empty one), well deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin."
And the Jungfrau's crew, captained by a man, Derick, who is foolish as well as ungrateful, chases after a Finback whale it has no chance of catching: "Oh! many are the Finbacks and many are the Dericks, my friend."
The description of the unfortunate old whale with the damaged fin, trying to escape her tormentors, seemed to me one of the most affecting passages in the novel:
"It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied."
The passage in the chapter that begins, "“Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?” is quoting from the Book of Job in the King James Bible,
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