Moby Dick online reading group, chapters 101-104

 

Pompey's Pillar, referenced in the text, Creative Commons photo. source. 

This week: Chapter 101, "The Decanter," to  Chapter 104, "The Fossil Whale."

I have written that, for my money, the best passages in Moby Dick are in the chapters in which action takes place. In this section, we get (1) A discussion of the food aboard well-stocked whaleships; (2) A discussion of the bones of the whale; (3) Measurements of a whale's skeleton; and (4) a discussion of fossil whales. Not a lot of drama!  Nonetheless, I have a few notes. (After I read this section, I went out to eat in a local Cambodian restaurant. I'm struck by how well people can eat in the modern United States, as compared to Melville's time). 

A couple of annotations:

"I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far beneath the skin of an adult whale." (Chapter 102, "A Bower in the Arsacids"). A kayaker recently was briefly swallowed by a whale. 

[After Melville imagines the spine of the whale being piled up vertically] "But now it's done it looks much like Pompey's Pillar." (Chapter 103, "Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton"). Pompey's Pillar is an ancient monument of the city of Alexandria in Egypt, it still stands, see this article (it was set up by Diocletian, not Pompey). 

"And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous lexicographer’s uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author like me." (Chapter 104). This references Samuel Johnson. 

In the Dec. 30 episode of this chronicle, Oz wrote, "Encountering strange beings in literature inevitably brings comparisons with H. P. Lovecraft and his unique talent for otherworldly moods, atmospheres and gnarly life forms that can seem terrifying. I don’t know if Lovecraft read Moby Dick. He was encouraged to read classics of literature at an early age, but Moby Dick didn’t really start to get on anyone’s radar until the 1920s." (Note that in the comments I point out evidence that Lovecraft did read Moby Dick.) Anyway, I thought of Oz' comments when I read this passage  from Chapter 104, "The Fossil Whale,"

"When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebræ, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an inhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the whale’s; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh’s. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors."

This bit, from the same chapter, seems self-referential:

"One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

Next week: Please read Chapter 105, "Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? == Will He Perish?" to Chapter 109, "Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin?"