Fuck me with a mincing knife such that I shit banana splits, but is this the most lushly, gorgeously written sea-skein of supernal and scotopic skaldic skill ever set to run before the trade winds for a voyage of six hundred and twenty-five pearlescent pages? Could aught be a more ariose attar of tars in cetological skin, a testimonial to the Old Testament wherein the primal and subcutaneous have pride of place and the canvas of the watery sprawl infinitely spread about the buffeted body shivers the soul unto a pastiche derived from the plasmic furnaces and vermicular warrens of chasms in origin oceanic and earthly; obsessive and repulsive; solar and abyssal?

Melville's great fluke has swept me from my perch amidships and cast me headlong unto a raging sea, what tempestuous, roiling vestments must carry me leagues afar ere a calm be found where I might gather my thoughts and bob in contemplation of both the evermore and nevermore, oblong and overwrought, whilst I await the succor of sails upon the horizon and curse Fedallah, that wizened Parsee flame vizier!

Some thoughts (of which a few, particularly towards the end, contain minor spoilage):

i: Best introductory sentence ever.

ii: Best introductory bromance established ever.

iii: Chapters like n  XXXVII: Sunsetn and n  XCIII: The Castawayn, though brief, build to such a crescendo of sustained and impassioned exhortation that it asphyxiates mentally and physically—I'd actually found myself not breathing for the final stretch—while, in interior quarters, I damn well saw poniard-finned and sail-fluked starbursts and fainted dead away.

iv: For all of Melville's rich and baroque timber to his words, his passionate embrace of the tale, each snippet panel of life is somberly interpreted and summarized, the banes and limits and dread tidal undertows of life assembled as a motte-and-bailey edifice against becoming carried away, whatever the desire attached to such vigorous enterprise. It's a rawboned force Man is up against, and he'd do well to heed the cautionary, well-lived words of the author, though the latter would not fain to rail against the living of life to the fullest—rather, that one must understand it's a thorny hedgerow to be traversed in breathed ways, under desert sun and polar stars, with many ghosts and chimeras set to whisper and cry and generally taunt one with cobwebbed doubloons cast upon the path; and tangled roots upthrust from ink-bound deeps to trip and lame one's progress.

v: Moby Dick is brimming throughout with humor sourced from the full complement of its founts—even when the events of a chapter's active spread are collated and pressed, via the somber rollers of Melville's weighty voice, unto a brew of bitters speaking to eye-agonies of starlight wherein gravity triumphs, that mirthful spirit—sardonic brow arched, comical ears perked, ironic ocular twinkled, jocular lips awry—retains its presence; a cetological oil spilled upon the briny and benighted waters of tide-flowed life, refusing to be subsumed within the whelm of its pathos and pain, its peril and phantasms, portents and apostasies.

vi: While his prophetic voice is timbered of the Platonic, his prognosticative agency blows from empirical quarters—and his sussing of how things would turn in the modern spin is remarkably acute and well-assessed. Even his calculation of the unlikelihood of the Leviathan being hunted unto evaporation from the boundless watery steppes, though erroneous in the end, struck much nearer to the truth than the pessimistic warnings cast about by his contemporary forecasters. There's little in the way of conventional discourse and relation, between Men together, or set opposite Nature and its incorporeal elements, that Melville failed to espy and set down, in glorious fictive exposition, at some point of unfolding within this wondrous book. Outstanding stuff.

vii: Notwithstanding that the author delineates the conjoined operations of a whaling expedition to the most minute detail, as well as digresses, upon whatever subject falls either to hand or his mind, at will and at length; that some characters, immediately upon attaining a favored placement within the pantheon of the reader's estimation, are banished from the narrative flow for an hundred pages or more; that this voice is as apt to launch, in the space of a salty blink, upon speculations of a philosophic, pedagogic, scientific, prophetic, or didactic nature; I was never bored for the space of a second, did not skim one single sentence. As in the best such novels, Melville is concerned with more than the simple telling of an episodic story, progressed in temporal proportionality—he is trying to stretch his authorial hands around, and grasp sufficient to set forth with substantiality, as much of the whole what comprises our existential essence—assemble, in theatrical form, the greater part of the pageant in which we shall be assigned a role—as is humanly possible: and to strain his reach unto the most ineffable, but spiritually enveloping and materially affecting, of all that will stamp itself upon our performance. Much as John Ralston Saul remarked upon the difference between the early form of the novel, in which the author—having garnered a wide experience from trying his hand to many tasks in life—set about informing the public of this myriad, to relate to them all of its collective variety, through the creative tale; as against its modern evolution, in which a solipsistic interiority speaks to one mind's awareness of its existential environs divided between body and spirit, and efforts, at times, to convey that tunneled-vision to the degree it might become universal; so Melville is a transitional performer herein—accomplishing a bounty of the former, while yet garnering sufficient of the latter that the whole becomes a rich melding of styles current at that time and barely gestating in future form. A man for all seasons, then, with a similarly emplaced story to tell...

viii: Death prevails throughout, and encapsulates the end. The first thing that struck me about Melville's style was how much it reminded me of Thomas Carlyle, with Emersonian flavoring—but there's also a direct link between Moby Dick and, say, Blood Meridian, particularly in the depiction of life as a hard and furious and magnetic interlude between the darkness eternal, and of how fates conspire, tragic flaws conflate, inexorable nature confound our efforts to stave off that irremediable end; indeed, hasten its reclamation because we are all—by dint of our awareness of its surceased claim—rendered mad in some way; not the least in that we shed so much blood on our own. Ahab's monomania is merely the most metastasized, in that his rage has warped him to try and make himself one with fate, a divine force of his own—he's a fascinating contrast with the similarly-maimed Captain Boomer, whose limb loss forged him in opposition to Ahab; or the captain of the Bachelor, a ship well-named in that none of its human crew are wed to aught but the pursuit of oil and profit (no White Whale as lethal bride for them—indeed, they believe that latter but a myth to detract from the true game at hand), and that their ship has voyaged immersed within merriment and joy, without any trace of the grim fanaticism that drives the Pequod forth under a permanent storm cloud; Puritans and fanatics are a force to keep the gravedigger well-employed in this world—though the White Whale shows how man's killing pursuit of Leviathan is just a microcosm, a mirror-play, of our own hunting by a world that lays all lifeforms low, and in which God is but a name we impose, with varying personal feeling and projected emotion and delusional imagining and despaired pleading, upon such a raw, unharnessed force that eludes our understanding and deceives us with a pride ere positioning the pair to be humbled. Somewhere (I can't precisely recall) I came across a reviewer discussing Moby Dick as a Gnostic work, which strikes me as a potent interpretation, though it requires an alien god whose light resides beyond our universe, and Melville proves himself quite able at snuffing out whatever hints of illumination send soulful beams from the music of the spheres.

ix: The narrative arc is truly fascinating, in that the tale begins from the solid observational perspective of Ishmael, a flesh-and-blood figure whose thoughts and relations, as he positions himself for cetaceous adventure, are of his immediate awareness—and then slowly progresses such that he abstracts himself while the figure of Ahab emerges as the magnetic focal point, of whose solo thoughts and room-shuttered soliloquies Ishmael would fain need have conjured out of thin air. The charismatic presence of this rage-fueled, iron-willed man—a skipper become absolute tyrant over the superstition-veined decency of Starbuck, the laugh-addled ineffectuality of Stubb, and the common-man ductility of Flask, let alone the pagan otherness of the swarthy harpooner triad—seems of a seaborne Napoleonic type who imperil their dominated collective, whatever system they maneuvered through to attain their preeminence. There are many futilities and fatalities and frailties that Melville delineated through the course of the book, and of which the narrator's curiosity-driven, malleable-formed openness to new experience and being expanded by life—rather than consumed in its ravenous operation, and during which obsessions ever emerge, full-formed, to burn the fuel faster and truer—was the only one that, fortune-kissed, proved able to survive the climactic tempest. I loved how Melville ejected Ishmael from Ahab's doomed boat as a nameless oarsmen set adrift, a nondescript figure seemingly served up as a bobbing meal for the encircling sharks—and it is only once the seas have calmed, and the tragedy been fully laid-bare, that this cipher, in a succinct italicized voice, reclaims the name of Ishmael with which he more forcefully and assuredly greeted the reader in what seemed a lifetime past. A rather ghostly whisper set to close the book upon Ahab's inflationary, captivating madness.

I have to admit to a long-standing curiosity about Moby-Dick (not least of which is why the albino whale’s name is hyphenated in the title but just plain Moby Dick in the text itself). I read and loved a Reader’s Digest condensed version (gasps of dismay echo across the Metaverse at this news) of this book around second grade and have always wondered what the arbiters of taste at Reader’s Digest decided to leave on the cutting room floor. Could it have been an illicit love scene between Ishmael and his cannibal harpooner Queequeg? A scene in which the first mate, Starbuck, purchases some coffee beans from an Islamic trader, thus finally making sense of that brand’s name? Did Ahab put aside his vendetta with Moby in order to form a chorus line of ivory-appendaged amputees?

Sadly, none of those things came to pass. Instead I quickly learned that Moby-Dick is not one book, but two. The first is familiar to all of us: a sailor, let’s call him Ishmael, signs on to crew with the Pequod, a whaling ship from Nantucket (no word on whether the limerick is true) captained by the monomaniacal Captain Ahab. Want to know how I knew he was monomaniacal? Because that’s the only adjective that Melville uses through the course of the book to describe Ahab’s obsession with hunting and killing the whale that bit off his leg. I’m unsure of the timeline here, but I’m pretty positive that Melville was writing before the advent of thesauruses (thesauri?). Regardless, this half of the book is exactly what you would expect from a yarn of its sort. The sailors are a mixed bag of old sea dogs, young cabin boys enchanted by the glittering romance of the sea, and pagan harpooners living solely for the hunt. This segment of the story flies by like an albatross over the azure sea (prolonged exposure to this book has left me unable to make any non-nautical metaphors)- brisk, refreshing and nigh effortless.

Mixed in among Melville’s ruminations of sea life and epic foreshadowing is another book, far more dense and infinitely more difficult of a road. The second is more in line with the Naturalist writings of the 19th Century and is nothing less than a complete history and biology of whales, whale hunting, gutting whales, refining their blubber into oil, and the unique structural adjustments made to ships to allow the processing to take place while at sea. I have to admit, I thrilled at reading the first few of these chapters. Melville writes them well with great description of the inner workings of the sperm whale and I laughed at his chapter on how the placement of their eyes meant that whales were effectively blind- he was obviously writing before the discovery of sonar. Little-old 21st Century me liked the idea of having a piece of knowledge that Melville, for all of his in-depth research (and trust me, it's in-depth), could not possess.

The struggle came when these chapters extended for first twenty, then fifty, then finally a hundred pages. The pacing of the story fell off as I was treated to descriptions of the oxygen:water ratio in a whale's spume, descriptions of all known types of whales hunted by man, the bell tool used for scooping the valuable sperm from it's brain cavity or how the sperm whale possesses a thick and hard battering ram of a head with which it can defend against predators. I understood what Melville was doing- if he's not going to introduce the actual nemesis in this tale until the very end of the book then he's going to make damn sure that the reader knows just what this whale is capable of. It just dragged so slowly that by the time we did finally catch a glimpse of Moby, I greeted it with a sigh of "finally" rather than much excitement.

I think that, in the end, I don't regret taking the time to read this tome. There are some absolutely rapturous descriptions of the ocean, a body I never tire of hearing about, and the hunger that the crew showed for the hunt (especially the antics of Stubb, the second mate, and the harpooners) made for some exciting reading. However, the endless treatises on whale physiology just went on too long for me to be able to rate this over two stars.

There's an old 1950s science fiction story in which aliens have taken over Earth and now wish to learn everything about the human race. But they can't tell what's important and what's trivial, yet. So to be on the safe side, they employ people to read every single book ever published and summarise its main points. And the story is a day in the life of one of these readers. And he's got Moby Dick. And what he writes on the file index card is :

Nineteenth century knowledge about cetaceans, particularly physeter macrocephalus, was inadequate.

Another way of summarising this one is boy meets whale, boy loses whale, boy gets whale back.

And another way would be : brilliant, terminal, essential, outrageous, infuriating.

Video review

I ship Queeshmael.

Ishmael,
as now we finally got to know each other I allowed myself to scribble some words to you. At first, I wanted to thank you for your fascinating report from your voyage. I had heard, always from second hand, many accounts about that what happened to you and your companions. Some claimed that it was stupidity and unbelievable bravado to chase after that Moby Dick. Others maintained that it was manful adventure and none landlubber would ever be able to understand that. Anyway, I’m glad that I eventually could form my own opinion about it.

Man, you really can write. I still hear roaring of the ocean in my ears, my skin is as sunburned and covered with salt. I'm walking with a stagger like on the rocking deck of Pequod and that climbing to the crow's nest ... gosh, it was real challenge to me because, you know, I’m scared of heights. Your attention to even minor detail, your masterly narration, I’m truly impressed. I admire your meticulousness, pedantry even in precise description of each and every wave, each sea creature, all colours and scents of the sea, all the good sides and the bad ones of sailor's life.

I’ve learned quite a lot about whaling now (I’m not saying I needed that but it was very informative, though, now and then, well … a bit fatiguing ?). Like you, I sometimes dangerously fall in too, as I say, autumnal moods or as you put it growing grim about the mouth , I’ll borrow that phrase, hope you don’t mind, so am I supposed to set off to the sea ? Probably not, woman at my age … With all my imagination I can’t visualize myself even as a deckhand not to say a harpooner ( though I can perfectly imagine myself knocking people’s hats off; fortunately, nowadays people, at least in my country, do not often wear hats ).

Of course what interested me the most was your boss, captain Ahab and his motives for all that mad escapade. Did I say mad ? With due respect, but there was something wrong with him. Mind you I’m not saying about his leg now. His bloodlust, his need for revenge, his arrogance, his I’d strike the sun if it insulted me attitude – it was quite out of this world, I think. I can understand his anger, his despair because of lost health, I can feel how his ambition had suffered, how his self-love was harmed but I'm afraid I can not fully comprehend his fixation about that whale. And though the psychological portrait of the captain you painted to me was truly prominent and convincing I still can’t get it why you all let yourself in for it. Moby Dick was Ahab's nemesis, his destiny, his obsession and curse, I see it that way but you … His officer for instance, Starbuck, that one who advised Ahab to beware of Ahab, he seemed to be so reasonable man. And brave, because prudence doesn’t exclude courage, does it ?

To finish this longish letter I wanted to mention your pal, Queequeg. I had such a fun reading about your first encounter and growing friendship. That was really something to see how your attitude developed and how you rooted for this cannibal . I felt truly heartened especially now when people are so negative and disrespectful to each other. It makes me think that everyone needs savage on own side to learn from each other some kindness and respect.

So long, Ishmael or as you sailors say, happy boating .

Yours,
A.

PS.
I would love to know something about Ahab’s wife, you barely mentioned her. Don’t you know, by any chance, how I could contact her ?

Love it or hate it, whenever someone asks if Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is worth reading I always enthusiastically say yes you should, yes it's worth it, yes, yes like some weirdass library Molly Bloom. An epic seafaring quest—one that is a prime example of how a major theme in literature is Don’t Get on Boats (my rant on that here)—to fight the emptiness and meaninglessness of the world symbolized by the white whale. Even if we the reader may be like Cpt. Ahab trying to find our own sense of purpose in our pursuit of the novel, it is a voyage of beautiful prose worth setting out on. C’mon, who doesn’t want to hang out and possibly die horrifically with this complete fucker:
n  n
Sure, I see how you can find the middle sections on whaling facts to be dry, but the ending of this slaps. It’s as hard hitting as a whale ramming a boat like, say, the n  Essexn which inspired this novel (Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is an excellent read on the tragedy). If you don’t end up liking it, you aren’t alone as the reviews upon its release in 1851 are rather harsh (you can read some excerpts here) and at the time of Melville’s death it had sold only a third of what his first novel, Typee, had done, but it has since become a heralded classic with many other “classic” authors spouting praise (William Faulkner wrote ‘I wish I had written [Moby-Dick]’) and had a rise in popularity following WWI with expatriates living in 1920’s Paris describing it as ‘a sort of cunning test by which the genuineness of another man’s response to literature could be proved.’ But also it is because both Moby-Dick the novel and the symbolism of Moby Dick the whale (the title is hyphenated, the whale is not and the reason might be as much a hunt as for the whale himself), have become so analyzed and debated over and over again on the many themes such as the power of nature and the frailty of humans, the dangers of monomania and self-assuredness (some critics cite Ahab as a criticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas of self-reliance or what Melville wrote as his ‘transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish), and more. Perhaps it is partly the way Moby-Dick is interpreted as a map through the soul of the early US and its issues around race, religion and false promises, all told in a powerful prose that flows like the waves on the sea. This book has lasted for a reason and there’s likely nothing new to say about it but I’m gonna ramble at ye.

‘My favorite book is Moby-Dick. No frou-frou symbolism. Just a story of a man who hates an animal. And that's enough.’
-Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation

Greil Marcus has said that Moby Dick has lasted as ‘the sea we swim in.’ It has been a staple of pop culture for a long time, and likely still long to come. In music Moby Dick gave us that epic John Bonham drum solo, that Umphrey’s McGee jam, or even Melville’s great-great-great-musician nephew, Moby, who acted a dick towards Natalie Portman. Bob Dylan went on about the book in his Nobel Lecture and references it in many of his songs.The character’s became code names for The Baader-Meinhof Gang in prison (ironically, Moby Dick was their code for the State which, like in the book, outlived them all) and the doom-fated character Starbuck’s namesake has become a major coffee chain and a character in Battlestar Galactica. It has been many films, and film references, such as the other whaling ship, Rosebud, being a key name in Orson Welle’s n  Citizen Kanen (he would attempt, but never finish a 1971 film adaptation). The coffin surfacing in the flood in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a direct reference, and recently there was a whole scene as a blatant allusion to the book in the second Avatar film. It was also a major source for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), with Khan going to his death quoting the book: ‘From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee… for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee…’
n  n
Gregory Peck as Ahab in John Huston’s 1956 Moby Dick film, with a screenplay written by Ray Bradbury

While pop culture is full of references to Moby-Dick, the novel itself is overflowing with allusions to other great works of literature. Ahab himself is often argued to be a composite reference to Oedipus, Narcissus, Prometheus and his biblical namesake. Ahab—who is temporarily afflicted—comes across the head of a sperm whale hanging from the ship (‘it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert’) and demand of it ‘tell us the secret thing that is in thee,’ a pretty on-the-nose reference to Oedipus (also he frequently uses his spear as a crutch and to murder whales, not unlike Oedipus murdering his own father with his walking stick). Also the whole prophecy thing that occurs to Oedipus and Ahab, because the two chariots that will lead to his death bit is pretty excellent when it comes about. The tale of Narcissus is directly referenced in the first chapter and foreshadows Ahab’s own fate, failing to see that the evil he sees in the whale is a ‘wildly projected’ image of himself (well and the whole drowning aspect). The Prometheus bits are my favorite though, with Ahab often associated with fire such as his flaming spear and, with respect to him symbolizing the white whale as a god of sorts, stealing from the whales the oil for fire (for which he was punished). King Ahab was punished for worshiping false gods (whales as gods again).

But I want to get back to Prometheus for a moment because I have my own Prometheus confession. Silence please. Well…when I was at the university, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would go the the Barnes and Noble and see the literary part of the world. I was interested in Moby-Dick, but like, whew, should I spend my money on a book? Just then there was a big flash of lightning, a store shaking crash, and we were plunged into darkness as the power went out. People screamed, I ran outside to see the storm, to see the powerline that had been struck, “only to realize” I had “accidentally” (emphasizing the air-quotes while scanning the room for who might be a cop) left with Moby-Dick still in hand under the cover of dark. I’M NOT PROUD OF IT, OKAY (im gonna be real with you—not that bad, honestly) but it had pictures and I did read it all rather quickly sitting under a bridge off campus by the river (would recommend reading this in your early 20s when you A. are old enough to get a lot of it, B. have disposable time to read in big chunks and C. an attention span). Anyways, like Prometheus, I would later find myself chained to a rock AKA the customer service desk of a different Barnes and Noble for several years to be pecked at daily by customers and management alike. They didn’t have to bother with my liver, my good friend alcohol was ravishing that enough on its own. SO I GOT MINE, everyone can back off now.

But this book is just teeming with symbolism and themes. When Bob Dylan delivered his Nobel Lecture, he spoke on how this was one of three books that really shaped him ‘and the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs either knowingly or unintentionally.’ One of the themes I frequently discussed with a coworker when she read this last year was the representation of race. She pointed out there are some problematic issues but how it’s interesting to remember this book was pretty progressive at its time. We see racism as a major sin, such as the ship, The Pequod, taking it’s name from an indigenous tribe in Massachusetts that perished under the arrival of Europeans and thus makes the Pequod a symbol of death and doom (*jazz hands* fooooooreshadowinggggg!). Melville has often referred to the novel as an allegory, and one prevailing interpretation with critics is that it functions as an allegory for te racial relations around slavery that would lead to the Civil War. Melville lets us know he’s not down with slavery, such as when Pip realizes the price of a dead whale is significantly more than his own price as a living slave and promptly has a mental breakdown. It should be noted that Ishmael’s close friendship with Queequeg (it could be argued it pushes towards the erotic) is highly subversive and the latter fellow and his skills are a critique on the belief of white superiority.

‘There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man,’ states Ahab, and many interpretations of the novel focus on the whale as an evil. I believe Ahab sees Moby Dick this way (a projection, as previously mentioned), and we can certainly view this story as an expression of the fragility of humans in the face of the awesome power of nature. Don’t fuck with nature, it’s going to win. However, so much of this is wrapped up in an investigation of applying meaning, applying symbols and needing purpose in the terrifying face of meaninglessness. The white whale (based on a similar ship-killer whale named Mocha Dick) is no accident, with white often believed to be an absence of color and calling to mind a cold, apathetic nothingness. It is a lack of good or evil, and Ahab is falsely applying evil here, trying to create a destiny and fight against a perceived villain to be the main character hero of his own invention. We also see this all as humans defenselessness against fate. Whales are big, don’t mess with them. You’ll see…

Okay, I’ve spun quite the yarn here and really, just give this a go. Even if you don’t like it, it’s still pretty cool to say you’ve read it. And there are SO many amazing scenes, I promise. Like, okay, I can’t talk about this book without mentioning when Ahab makes everyone do shots out of the cavities in their spears. And that ending. It’s wild. It’s a big book, it’s full of themes and complex symbolism and tons of literary allusions and it may rock you like a ship upon stormy seas, but it’s worth the voyage. And, hey, at least you can read about whales noshing on sailors, that’s pretty fun.
n  n

If Moby-Dick had a more discernable plot than a tightly crafted short story or novela, I wasn't able to detect it. With that thought in mind, I highly recommend chapters 133 through 135. I suggest readers should feel guilt-free to skip most of this book and read only these final three chapters.

Even given the absence of plot throughout most of this book, I still consider Moby-Dick both an impressive work and an important contribution to the fields of history, anthropology, linguistics, and, perhaps, biology.

I read forty-nine chapters the old-fashioned way, then switched to an audiobook. Frank Muller did a commendable job of narration, although I will admit to briefly falling asleep on one occasion.

OH MY HOLY MOTHER FUCK. This novel, this FUCKING novel. Phenomenal. Astounding. Groundbreaking. One of the greatest novels ever written. Yeah there's like 200 pages of whale anatomy and the history of whales in literature and whales in art and whale classification and I LOVED EVERY SINGLE WORD OF IT. So it's five-stars. Yes, five-stars. A five-star rating here is as rare as seeing the White Whale itself! READ THIS RIGHT FUCKING NOW. NOW. NOW. NOW.

Chi è veramente Moby Dick? Spesso viene interpretata come una forza della natura che l'uomo deve cercar di sottomettere. Personalmente vedo in Moby Dick il simbolo della più grande paura presente in ognuno di noi. C'è chi, come Acab, sceglie di affrontarla direttamente, sino, addirittura, a cercare lo scontro. Chi la fugge come il peggiore degli incubi. Chi, come Ismaele, si trova ad affrontarla suo malgrado: quasi senz'averla nemmeno prevista. Per quanto si possa fuggirle, come la balena bianca nel fondo dell'oceano, le nostre paure attendono nelle profondità del nostro inconscio che si trovi il coraggio d'impugnare l'arpione...

Μεταχρονολογημένες σκέψεις:
Μύρια όσα έχουν ειπωθεί -και θα συνεχίσουν όσο υπάρχουν αναγνώστες που οργώνουν τα "πέλαγα" του γραπτού λόγου- για το "Μόμπι Ντικ". Το έργο αυτό που μαρμαίρει την παγκόσμια λογοτεχνία διακρίνεται, μεταξύ άλλων, για το ότι προσφέρει πολλαπλά επίπεδα ανάγνωσης: Το πρώτο, η θαλασσινή περιπέτεια, άμεσα προσβάσιμο και προσλήψιμο τόσο από τους "παροικούντες" όσο και από τους "περαστικούς". Και μόνο αυτό θα αρκούσε, αν και είναι πάμπολλοι εκείνοι που έχουν εγκαταλείψει το…πλοίο εξαιτίας της ανήριθμου παράθεσης "βαρετών" λεπτομερειών.
Εκείνο όμως που καθιστά το έργο αυτό μνημειώδες, τοποθετώντας τον συγγραφέα του μεταξύ των αείποτε Δημιουργών, είναι η δεύτερη, τρίτη, νιοστή ανάγνωση, έντεχνα κρυμμένη και ενδεδυμένη τη θαλασσινή περιπέτεια.
Σταχυολογώντας: Η λευκή φάλαινα ως θεϊκή παρουσία/απουσία, μοχθηρή όπως ο θεός της Παλαιάς Διαθήκης, εκδικητική και εσαεί απρόσιτη στους κοινούς θνητούς, σέρνει πίσω της και επάνω της την ιστορία των αναρίθμητων θυμάτων της. Αλλά ταυτόχρονα ειδομένη ως η αδιάφορη -προς καθετί ανθρώπινο- Φύση, αδάμαστη, ανοίκεια και αιώνια, σε αντίθεση με το πεπερασμένο του ανθρώπινου βίου που συνεχίζει εμμονικά και ατελέσφορα να κυνηγάει χίμαιρες.
Ο Ahab ως άλλος Βυρωνικός ήρωας, έξω και πάνω από τις ανθρώπινες συνθήκες, περιορισμούς και νόμους, αρνούμενος να υποκύψει σε οιαδήποτε άλλη Δύναμη πλην εκείνης που εκπορεύεται από το Εγώ του, έτοιμος για την υπέρτατη θυσία του Εαυτού και συνεπώς και των έτερων. Και, τέλος, η Κιβωτός, το πλοίο που φέρει την Ανθρωπότητα, το πλήρωμα, εντός της. Έρμαιο στη θέληση εξω-ανθρώπινων δυνάμεων, με τα μέλη της να εξυπηρετούν σκοπούς αλλότριους και ακατανόητους, ως την φυσική τους εξόντωση. Το μέγα λευκό μυστήριο παραμένει απροσπέλαστο, παρασύροντας στα βάθη του αγνώστου όσους τολμηρούς -και μη- προσπαθούν να το κατανοήσουν, να το χειραγωγήσουν, να το εξοντώσουν.
Έτσι ακριβώς όπως και το "Μομπι Ντικ" θα παραμείνει για πάντα απροσπέλαστο σε εκείνους που το προσεγγίζουν έχοντας πιστέψει πως το αντίτιμο της αγοράς τού πολυσέλιδου τόμου, τους εξασφαλίζει αυτόματα και το δικαίωμα στη μέθεξη.

بالاخره تموم شد! باورم نمیشه! بالاخره موبی دیک هم تموم شد! :))
بعد از یک مدت طولانی که شاید اگر همین مدت رو کتاب روان‌تری می‌خوندم می‌تونستم ده دوازده کتاب رو تموم کنم!
موبی دیک به ظاهر یک رمان هشتصد صفحه‌ایه که نهایتا طی مدت دو هفته تموم خواهد شد.
اما نه، ادبیات سخت و ترجمه‌ی به شدت چالش برانگیزش و البته طولانی بودنش، باعث میشه که چهار پنج برابر زمان قانونی، خوندنش وقت ببره!

اگر نخوام داستان کتاب رو لو بدم، هیچ اطلاعاتی هم نمی‌تونم ازش ارایه کنم!
اما بطور کلی، موبی دیک برای من، بعضا سرد و کسالت آور بود! کسالت آور نه از نظر داستان، نه از نظر شیوه بیان، نه از نظر ترجمه و نه از نظر فضاسازی‌ها و شخصیت ها!! بلکه کسالت آور از اون نظر که بیشتر حجم کتاب، نویسنده به شرح چیزهایی پرداخته که شاید به گوش متخصصین رشته‌های خاص (!) شیرین و جذاب بیاد ولی برای خواننده‌ی ساده، چیزی جز ملال و کسالت به همراه نداره!
مثال می‌زنم، من که یک خواننده‌ی معمولی با سطح اطلاعات دریایی و کشتیرانی تقریبا صفر هستم، برای من هیچ جذابیتی نداره هفت هشت فصل در مورد انواع طناب‌ها و آلات کشتی و شکار نهنگ بخونم، اون هم نه یک روخوانی و متن ساده، بلکه چندین فصل توضیحات مفصل با متنی به شدت سخت‌خوان و محتوایی پیچیده و البته با اطلاعاتی ناکارآمد نسبت به خط داستان که هیچ کمکی به درک بهتر خواننده از کتاب نمی‌کنه!
اگر نامردی نکنم، کل خط داستانی کتاب، کمتر از چهل درصد از کل متن رو تشکیل میده و شصت درصد دیگه‌ی کتاب، توضیحات و تفسیرات پیرامون کشتی و وال و دریانوردی هست که واقعا برای من به شخصه هیچ جذابیتی نداشت!
بارها پیش می‌اومد که تشنه‌ی خوندن موبی دیک بودم، کتاب رو برمی‌داشتم و شروع می‌کردم و پیش می‌رفتم و پیش می‌رفتم و پیش می‌رفتم، ولی اصلا به داستان نمی‌رسیدم و کل اون شب، توضیحات دریانوردی می‌خوندم و یا اطلاعاتی پیرامون انواع و اقسام وال و ماهی! که خب خیلی توی ذوقم می‌خورد!
تنها مشکل کتاب همین مساله بود، که البته ظاهرا انتشارات مختلفی هستن که خلاصه‌ی کتاب رو دارن و توصیفات ناکارآمد رو حذف کرده و فقط بخش داستان رو چاپ کردن! اگر مثل من حال خوندن توصیفات اضافی رو ندارین، یکی از اون کتاب‌های خلاصه رو بخونید.

ترجمه‌ی کتاب هم فکر می‌کنم انقدر کامل و بزرگ و شاهکار بود که بهتره من حقیر، با سواد کمم در موردش حرفی نزنم! که خب همه‌مون می‌دونیم انتشارات نیلوفر جزو بهترین‌هاس، اگر بهترین نباشه!

در کل موبی دیک کتاب خوبیه، البته نه برای من که از کلاسیک‌خوانی در فرارم! :)) این کتاب می‌تونه کابوس کسانی باشه که از ادبیات کلاسیک احساس خستگی و بی‌حوصلگی و ملال می‌کنن! :))

امتیاز واقعی من به موبی دیک سه و نیم ستاره هست، که به دلیل کلاسیک بودنش و توضیحات زیادی از صبر من، به سه ستاره روندش می‌کنم!

“And God created great whales.” —Genesis.

And Melville created a great American novel!
What a classic of American literature. I was postponing this review because at the same time there so too much to be said about this complex work and yet I feel it’s quite hard to grasp the core of its brilliance.

First of all, this book was so unevenly written that I was wondering at times a) am I reading the same author b) is this the same book. In its versatility, it is the most unique book I’ve ever read, and Melville made his point - he plays around throughout different literary genres, but proves he can write stupendously in most of them. This book can be characterized as fiction, but also scientific and historical text, with sparks of poetry and some chapters that read like a stage play. This doesn’t even feel like a novel, rather a prose-epic. At times, the constant change in writing styles can be conflicting as you don’t really know what kind of book you are reading. Writing style is somewhat simple yet it gets more convoluted and dense, especially towards the end. Melville can write ironically, humorously, seriously, profoundly, tenderly, violently - as a writer he is insanely talented. Ishmael's voice is particularly appealing, with a charming mix of skepticism and hope, seeing the light and funny side in the darkest of events. I was sad his voice faded through the novel, and through the whole novel he is an odd narrator - sometimes describing events he couldn’t possibly see. At times the writing can be dry, especially in the famous encyclopedic sections about cetology, but I wasn’t bothered with it at all because of both literal and metaphorical meaning of the chapters, and the structure of this book really beautifully describes how the mind of a person that obsesses over the topic work. I was a little bored on, what at times seemed endless, descriptions of ship and whaling. There is a disproportion between the experimental parts and parts focused on plot and characters (it seems there is more plot in the first 100 pages than in the rest of the book) and one could say that this is a poorly constructed novel. But in a way, Moby Dick can get a pass because I got a sense that like Frankenstein's monster, the novel took life for itself, independent of Melville, as it is almost uncontrollable. The novel is insane as Ahab himself!

I have a theory - the book can be read as Ishamel’s internal adventure in the psychic realm - characters can be read as his internal representation of archetypes and the whale as the representation of ultimate invincible nature, inscrutability of the universe, that man can’t understand or conquer. The dichotomy of land and ocean is important here - the ocean is chaotic, undefined, and boundless while the land is solid, material and defined. Land symbolizes the static knowledge, while ocean ever-changing and evolving process of meditation and thinking. And the ocean seems to be superior in significance to the path of our protagonist.
Ishmael's ultimate quest for meaning and Ahab chase for the whale both contain a universal journey for the ungraspable phantom of life. The whale can also be a symbolic representation of what man perceives as cruel God, and Ahab the figure of a disobedient idolatry king that thinks he can defeat the force of God. Still, I think the book would be misinterpreted if read only in an allegorical sense, in the end, I feel Melville wanted to write a book about whales. But he made a strong philosophical point in the process - even a physical creature of a Moby Dick can be endlessly ruminated upon and explored, so how can any philosophy or religion claim to have ultimate truth about something as abstract as the meaning of life.
The book seems to be imaginative protest against monolithic monotheism - there is no right way to draw or describe Moby Dick so the author has to go to all the perspectives he can to grasp particles of truth, and throughout the process broadens the perspective on different cultures, gods and taboos and sets you in the peculiar game of interpretations. And in the end, there is no ultimate meaning or comfort from the interpretations - at the same time, the answer is to reject and accept everything.

'’Indefinite is God’’

That is what I experienced as Melville’s world-view - meaning that could not be found in only one perspective, and you have to be brave enough to explore every possible stance on whatever subject in an attempt to understand it but there is no definite answer. Most men try to find the truth and impose on it its own meaning as Ahab did - his obsession with a personal interpretation of Moby Dick with oblivion to whale’s totality was his fatal flaw of the character. But the narrator, Ishmael, or Melville himself, who is brave enough to go to every possible source of knowledge without any prejudice - is the only one who survives the attack of Moby Dick. Ahab is forcing the universe to an answer, which leads to disaster, while Ishmael is an authentic truth seeker and he confronts the indefinite head-on, and survives. Melville also shows a strong stance on determinism. Fate is already written in the stone, the premonitions announce the destiny of the ship and its passengers, and free will can’t change its course. Characters also seem to be out of control of themselves - Ishmael goes on the sea because he feels like it as he is completely dominated by urges and emotions, and even Ahab who seems strong-willed admits in the end that he is not in the jurisdiction of his actions, he knows he is destructive to himself and everyone around him but still has to pursue the path of destruction. But Melville seems to praise the joyous acceptance of tragic fate as his quote says: "Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing."

This book will have something for every reader - a parable of religious-moralistic character, political allegory, a study on the ethical distinction, American imperialism and colonialism, individualism, democracy, transcendentalism, existentialism, madness, all displayed while describing whale hunting. Whale hunting is described humanely and you really get a grip on violence and sorrow that fill this business, not shying away from its terrible nature. I feel that there is not one field that this book doesn’t touch while writing about whales - myth, science, history, religion, ethics, metaphysics. I don’t think that a similar book was ever written or I will be written in the history of mankind. And I honestly, only Melville can pull this one.

This is the kind of book I want to ruminate upon in my older age, and I feel I will appreciate it much more at a later time. But even now I think it is unforgettable work that will linger in my mind long after first read. It took me some time to read the book, some passages are one’s you have to read several times to fully grasp. And I want to give credit, some of my reflections were influenced by Hubert Dreyfus brilliant lecture on Moby Dick that can be found on youtube. If you’ve read the book I highly recommend it.

The book itself has also the highest recommendation, but only for the brave readers open to the indefinite mysteriousness of the world!