Breaking Up the Icebound Stream of Time.

 Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched....

 A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It's a blasted heath.—It's a Hyperborean winter scene.—It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. M.D.

Just imagine Ishmael in the Spouter Inn trying to puzzle out this painting. We of the 21st century have long since grown accustomed to, and often weary of, abstract expressionism. In Melville's day, it was still science fiction, though he anticipates it so well that we can easily imagine him as a 20th century art critic first stumbling across the works of Kandinsky or Pollack, a sudden shudder running up his back - shocked, disturbed, yet somehow exhilarated - recognizing something brand new: the "breaking up of the icebound stream of Time" or "chaos bewitched" indeed. Unlike his colleagues, he wouldn't have thought the artist merely a mad fool, as many critics considered Melville himself. Instead, for better or worse, something inside him would have shifted and new worlds would have emerged from the chaos.

Blue (Moby Dick) 

by Jackson Pollack

On Friendly Terms With All the Inmates

I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.- M.D.

I think there are few lines in the early chapters more Melvillean than these. The mix of bravado, humor and genuine curiosity about the "horrors" of the world strikes me as so damned American. He's tongue-in-cheek, of course, parodying others' ideas of what a horror actually is. Ishmael is, after all, literally prepared to sleep with cannibals, as we'll soon see.

But Melville is also in earnest about the horrors of the world, a heritage he has long since passed on to his literary descendants. Faulkner, Heller, Vonnegut, Pynchon, DeLillo and McCarthy, to name a few. Where would they be without this freaking, freaky New York genius?

Oh, I know, Those writers owe plenty of other debts, as did Melville himself. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Defoe, Dickens, to name a few. But there are so many things utterly unique about Moby Dick, an artistic ambition that gave other American writers the chutzpah to take on their English betters. In the field of literature, Melville was as much a revolutionary as Washington, Adams, or Madison.

The result helped transform American lit, as many scholars have already proven. But Moby-Dick did more than that. Allow me to make an extraordinary and no doubt absurd-seeming supposition: I contest that Melville makes us all better, braver human beings. I don't just mean writers or Americans. I mean any global citizen with real experience of the planet. He has, through some miracle of literary homeopathy, changed the ocean of humanity with his particle.

We are, as a result, not just less bigoted (though American bigotry retains a faithful following) but better able to meet the actual horrors of the world with a brave face. Take our fellow inmate Death, for example.  I've seen people salute Death on the street during their morning constitutionals. I've even witnessed some joshing with their dark neighbor, as if they were were throwing an arm up over his bony shoulders and pretending to grab his nose. Of course, Death himself has a grim sense of humor. Maybe he asks us to pull his finger and we dare it, knowing full well it could be our extinction.

We need a philosophical mind for such dark shenanigans, overlaying a deeper but not unalloyed belief in human redemption. Melville has played a role in forging the macabre hilarity of the modern mind. It is one of many inheritances from The Whale.

Portentousness of Unconscious Power

I'd like to interrupt our scheduled program on behalf of those seeking more conventional annotations to Moby-Dick. Although I'm sure there are many fine sources of information, I've particularly enjoyed browsing Powering Moby-Dick. It's for the readers who wants to know, for example, where Corlears Hook is located or how far a league really is. These kinds of annotations can be a great help to the reader seeking to make sense of the many references in the novel. No, such notes are not necessary to the enjoyment of the text, in my opinion, but they are lovely in their way, a kind of color-coded poetry intended to help chart the Melvillean seas. 

Atmosphere at Second Hand

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. M.D.

I work as a manager, which many people see as a sucker's job. I can't say they're wrong. As a manager, your life is not your own.You are prey to the vicissitudes of fickle clients, temperamental workers, sociopath executives, bumbling vendors, and cutthroat competitors. Now, call yourself a "leader" (or, better yet, get someone else to call you one), and your pedigree improves by several levels on the instant. Alas, that distinction is mostly a conceit, as are the titles that often come with it (director, VP, SVP, COO, CEO). Whatever the epaulets they bear, leaders must keep in mind they tend to get their "atmosphere at second hand," as Melville says of the Commodore. Yes, sometimes they're the first to learn and decide critical things, but they're also sometimes the last to know, getting wind of them second or third hand (or however many hands you have on deck.)

The word "scuttlebutt" is still used in countless offices throughout the world, but most don't realize the term was invented on sailing ships. That is, potable water was stored in a cask, also called a butt, on deck for the crew. They put a hole in the cask so people could more easily draw water from it. You probably already know that "to scuttle" something means to "cut a hole into," usually for the purpose of sinking a boat or ship. The crew would spend idle moments around the scuttled butt having a drink, chatting, regaling and gossiping about others.  So, even today rumor-mongers spread scuttlebutt around the office. In my experience, these stories are sometimes true, often false, and most often some sort of unholy trinity of truth, error and spiteful or wishful conjecture.

But we digress. The point is that the captain often finds out things well after the sailors on the forecastle know. The wise leader does not "little suspect" this, as Melville says. He or she knows this fact right down to the toes and tries to get the best atmosphere he or she can. An occasional jaunt to the forecastle can't hurt. Let's call this Leadership Lesson 1 from The Whale.

Were Niagara But a Cataract of Sand

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? - MD

 ***

I was born in the city of Niagara Falls, on the U.S. side, and like to think of Melville standing on the unfenced precipice of the great cataract, caught up in the roar of it. He would have seen it back in the pure days before much of the flood was siphoned off by engineers bent on "preserving" the natural wonder and, more to the point, powering one of the great hydroelectric plants in the world. I envy that bastard Melville. Because he was right. The water's the thing.

Though I live 1,200 miles away, that Niagara River of my childhood still pervades my dreams. I dream the river is somehow sweeping me down Center Street toward the precipice of the falls. Or I dream of swan diving from the tops of tall chestnuts growing along the banks into the silver gray waters. Or of swimming under the surface of the river for a long, long way, trying to reach the Canadian shore from the U.S. side unseen, desperately trying to escape those who would spot, capture and imprison me. Though it's been decades since I lived there, I couldn't shake the Niagara if I wanted, anymore than I could drain my veins and expect to live.

I believe this is not a literary convention, symbol or archetype. Or, rather, it's not just those things. It's somehow baked in at a primal, visceral level. We shouldn't forget that. Whatever the scholars think, Melville did not write only on a symbolic, abstract plane. The water was far too real within him.

The Streets Take You Waterward

If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. 

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward...Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. 

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon...What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? - M.D.

Despite my previous posts about ornery exiles who take to ship, Ishmael is more than that. He is also the most medieval of protagonists: Everyman. Typical Melvillean paradox there. And deftly done. We know it with the very first paragraph, though he beautifully plays it out in the second and third.

First, he brings all of Manhattoes into the same family frame, and then pulls in the rest of humanity through our global attraction to water. Sure, water is the symbol of life and birth, and Ishmael is getting a fresh start of sorts, a rebirth on the ocean. But this is more than some cool Jungian archetyping. Water is the universal solvent, melting distinctions between Ishmael and ourselves. The ocean is in all our bloods, rather literally. We're sea creatures on fleshy stilts carrying the living oceans within us. We are drawn not only to that thing we need (a human lives just 3 days without water, it is said) but that thing we are.

So, Ishmael's madness and mysteries are ours as well. To discover his secrets and our own, we all must voyage.

Photo used with permission

Drizzly November In My Soul

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.- MD

You have to love a line like "drizzly November in my soul." Who hasn't felt like this at times? Depressed, hostile, generally pissed off. Melville has fun with it here, but you recognize an authenticity of emotion. Seldom has despondency been so entertainingly, succinctly portrayed.

It made me think of how we're awash in TV ads hawking remedies for depression or anxiety in the shadow of the Great Recession. How many ill-tempered, job-hungry Ishmaels out there even now holding cardboard signs on street corners, or holed up in cheap rentals or sleeping on the cramped, musty couches of family or friends? And then there are those not exiled from the workforce still afraid, stressed, alienated in mostly empty offices, suffering an internalized exile of the soul.

Me, I think of the Badlands of the insomnia, going interminable stretches of getting two to four hours of sleep each night. At times I've taken half a blue pill to cope yet wondered if I wouldn't be better served seeking to ship elsewhere, facing treacherous gray swells instead. 

My world seems so narrow by comparison with Ishmael's that I wonder if it's me or if we have, as a global tribe, lost certain critical competencies in the 21st century. Perhaps whole continents would still lay wild and undiscovered had our ancestors only had Prozac and been succored by screens and tubes.

Illustration from a 19th century book on Physiognomy: on left is "Utter despair" and on right is "Rage mixed with fear" 

And He Will Be a Wild Man

Ever wonder how "Call me Ishmael" got to be the most famous line in American lit? (Sure, there are some other contenders from the likes of Frost or Thoreau, but my money's on ole Herman Melville.)

Perhaps, you say, it's that evocative and fertile Biblical reference. You know, the whole Ishmael-illegitimate-and-exiled-son-of-Abraham-and-Hagar reference from Genesis: "And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren."
But how many Americans really remember who Ishmael was without a footnote? (Of course, there are about a billion and a half Muslims in the world who know perfectly well who Ishmael was, being one of the prophets).

Anyway, my theory is that the Biblical reference plays a minor role in the power of the line. I think people remember that line because they can. It's short, to the point and damn near conversational. And it's also intriguing and mysterious right off the bat.  It isn't someone named Maximillian saying, "Call me Max." This guy is not giving us his nickname so much as he's giving us some meaningful alias. He's acting familiar even as he's holding something back, a secret of some sort. That keeps us interested in this quirky guy. What's he got up his sleeve? Stay tuned.

Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness - Karel Dujardin

By Art Is Created That Great Leviathan

Although the first words of Moby Dick, or, The Whale are among the most famous in all literary history, they aren't actually first words. That is, of course, typical Melvillean paradox. Better get used to it. The novel actually begins with an Etymology ("Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School") and Extracts ("Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian").

Melville is having a bit of fun with us in regard to those subheads (better get used to that as well) but the Extracts are legit and good reading in themselves. Of course, they're not so good that I'm going to excerpt them all here (throughout this blog, you'll be able to link to the Gutenberg.org edition if you want to see the full text of anything). Let's stick to just one Extract that particularly hit home with me:

"By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man." —OPENING SENTENCE OF HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN.  

In college, I had an odd acquaintance, perhaps even a friend of sorts, who would frequently quote Hobbes as saying that life is "nasty, brutish and short." He considered it witty, I think, but no less true for that. He was a haughty little guy, I thought at the time, though now I consider us both to have been just kids looking for toeholds in that vast academic rockface, crumbly in parts, solid in others, littered with liquor, drugs, lust, existential ice and the occasional heavy doses of sheer anarchy. You know, the good ole days. 

Only later did I realize that my comrade had been quoting Hobbes out of context. The old materialist had actually meant that without the Leviathan of governmental power, our lives are "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." That is, the State is a great monster, sure, but one that also protects and even redeems us. And so today, where the Tea Party sees the Leviathan as a Rapacious Blubbery Beast that needs a sharp harpoon to the head, Democrats see a Cetacean of Collectivism, a semi-mystical creature that pools the best of what we are into single redemptive power.

Meanwhile, the rest of us struggle with our ambivalence, both repulsed by and attracted to such Monsters. And it seems to me that's more than okay. Moby Dick was written for the likes of us.

"Destruction of Leviathan"- 1865 engraving by Gustave Doré.