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.
Next week: Please read Chapters 82-87, “The Honor and the Glory of Whaling” through “The Grand Armada.” Forgot to say that in an earlier version of this post, thank you, Oz.
5 comments:
Always cool when something in the book crosses over into reality like visiting the great Heidelberg Tun. Thanks for pointing out the death/rebirth sequence Queequeg makes happen. It seems kind of genius to suggest a literal birth with the word "obstetrics" to emphasize the metaphorical rebirth of Tashtego out of the jaws (or head in this case) of death.
I think Melville rejects Plato's belief system of transcendental Ideal Forms. In the paper "Melville's White Whale - Pragmatism's Role in Moby Dick" Lauren Becker calls Melville, along with Emerson, a proto-Pragmatist. Pragmatism prefers to deal with problems in the most practical way rather than following theories or abstract concepts like Ideal Forms. I saw another allusion to the rejection of Plato's forms in chapter 35 "The Mast-Head".
Melville read Emerson and attended a lecture by him shortly before writing Moby-Dick According to Becker, Melville liked some of Emerson's ideas, but disagreed with others. Her theory, one way to read it she says, holds that Melville put what he liked about Emerson into Ishmael and what he disliked about him into Ahab. She calls them "proto-Pragmatists" because Pragmatism didn't become a thing until William James popularized it around the end of the 19th Century. James go the basic ideas from Emerson whom he'd been reading since he was a teen-ager having been introduced to him by his father who was friends with Emerson's father.
Emerson strongly influenced Nietzsche who also hoped to overturn Plato's forms. Deleuze inherited this project and made it a subject of his books Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense
At the end of chapter 76 Melville gives some advice for anyone on an initiatory path. He also, once more, demonstrates knowledge of the Egyptian mysteries.
"For unless you own the whale you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for provincials then? What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil at Sais?
The last line refers to a poem by Friedrich von Schiller, “The Veiled Image at Sais” inspired by the Greek historian Plutarch who wrote of an inscription at the base of a temple statue in the Egyptian town Sais. The statue portrayed a Goddess thought to be Isis. The inscription said something to the effect that no one can lift the veil but Isis. Schiller's poem tells the story of a youth impatient for the Truth who didn't listen to his Hierophant's advice and snuck in at night to lift the veil. The goddess told him not to, that no mortal eyes could see the Truth she had. The youth basically said, screw that, lifted the veil and got blasted. They found him the next day, alive but seriously messed up. It's said he never experienced happiness again and went to an early grave. The moral, as I see it, don't be impatient to experience the Truth, i.e. higher states of consciousness, until ready.
Rudolf Steiner was a fan of this poem and commented upon it, though after Melville's time. His take focused on not being able to see the Truth with mortal eyes, one needs to develop spiritual vision. This seems to be what Melville means with the phrase "salamander giants." Salamanders correspond to the element fire which I believe originated with Paracelsus. So his phrase could indicate someone very experienced with esoteric work, someone with a developed subtle vision.
Ishmael discussed a man who drowning in the sweetness of honey. I think he suggests that one could drown in the sweetness of Plato's philosophy.
My edition of the book has this annotation regarding “Plato’s honey head”:
“Platonic idealism is seen as dangerous because unrealistic.”
In a preceding chapter (The Right Whale’s Head), we also read that “this Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.”
Make of that what you will.
I like that “[the Sperm Whale’s] great genius is...moreover declared in his pyramidical silence”, followed by mention of the Egyptians who “deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless.” Moby Dick as a marine iteration of Hoor-pa-kraat?
Tom Jackson, you forgot to say up to which chapter next week’s assignment should be.
For next week it's chapters 82 -87.
Spookah, the editor who annotated your edition seems quite perceptive. Deleuze saw Spinoza as one alternative to Plato. The sperm whale who starts out with Plato and ends with Spinoza seems another metaphor for overturning Plato. I can see your second comment as a possible reference to Hoor Pa Kraat.
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