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.