Moby-Dick (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (97 page)

Arab chieftain or prince.

For the German emperor; an elegant occasion.

John Logan, an eighteenth-century Native American chief initially friendly to white settlers, until his family was killed.

Proud tower destroyed by God, who at the same time turned one human language into many; see the Bible, Genesis 11:1-9.

Saint Simeon Stylites (c. 390-459), an ascetic who lived on a pillar, worshipping God.

Promontories at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea; considered the limits of the habitable world.

Huge statue built in the third century B.C.; one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

Platonic dialogue on immortality.

Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), author of the widely used
American Practical Navigator: Being an Epitome of Navigation
(1802).

Pantheism is the belief that God and the universe are one. Thomas Cranmer was burned as a heretic in 1556, but Melville may have confused him with Protestant reformer John Wycliffe (c. 1330-1384), whose remains were exhumed and burned in 1415, the ashes scattered in a stream.

René Descartes (1596-1650) developed a theory that motion is circular and spiral.

Whirlpool near the Loften Islands off the coast of Norway; Edgar Allan Poe used it in his story “Descent into the Maelstrom.” thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.” “Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium
here!
” “He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “what’s that for? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.” “Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.” “Hark ye yet again,—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the others; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn—living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards—the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the

Used at the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors.

English boxers in the 1830s and 1840s.

Demogorgon; an ancient evil deity.

Commissioned by the Danish king, Eggert Olafsson and Bjarni Palsson wrote
Travels in Iceland
(1805).

Baron Georges Léopold Cuvier, French naturalist (1769-1832); however, Melville used another source.

William Scoresby, Jr., author of
An Account of the Arctic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale
(1820); an important source for Melville.

In Sicily.

Gnostic sect at the time of early Christianity that worshipped the serpent as a bringer of knowledge.

In Paris, a late-fifteenth-century structure built over a late-third-century Roman palace.

In classical architecture, a sculptured female figure used as a column.

White blossoms of the camellia bush.

City in Myanmar (Burma); from the fourteenth to the late-fifteenth centuries the center of one of the three chief states.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), in the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798).

Author’s note: With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said, only arises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified terror.

As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish mass for the dead begins with “Requiem eternam” (eternal rest), whence
Requiem
denominating the mass itself, and any other funereal music. Now in allusion to the white, silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness of his habits, the French call him
Requin.
^‡
I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wonderous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king’s ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney! I never had heard that name before; is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s name for albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge’s wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.

Powerful Persian king defeated by the Greeks at Salamis in 480 B.C.

John Froissart (1337-1410?); author of
Chronicles of England, France, and Spain
(c. 1400).

Death, who rides a pale horse in the Bible, Revelation 6:8.

Supposedly named after white baptismal robes.

In Goethe’s
Faust
, I and II.

In Peru; the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro conquered the country in the sixteenth century.

A howdah is a special seat strapped to an elephant.

Author’s note: Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that precisely such a chart is in course of completion; and portions of it are presented in the circular. “This chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude; perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each of which districts are three lines; one to show the number of days that have been spent in each month in every district, and the two others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have been seen.”

The Seychelle Islands are north of Madagascar.

Helpful ocean winds. The Levanter is in the Mediterranean, the Simoom in Arabian lands.

Religious head of a Muslim community.

In Greek myth, a Titan punished by Zeus for bringing fire to humanity; in some legends he made man from clay and water.

King of Persia 529-522 B.C.

Island in Indonesia.

The Maoris, natives of New Zealand often had tattoos.

Author’s note: The following are extracts from Chase’s narrative: “Every fact seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which directed his operations; he made two several attacks upon the ship, at a short interval between them, both of which, according to their direction, were calculated to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the shock; to effect which the exact manœvres which he made were necessary. His aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated resentment and fury. He came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered, and in which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge for their sufferings.” Again: “At all events, the whole circumstances taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at the time, impressions in my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the part of the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now recall), induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion.”

Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a black night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any hospitable shore. “The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment’s thought; the dismal looking wreck, and
the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale
, wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again made its appearance.”

In another place—p. 45,—he speaks of “
the mysterious and mortal attack of the animal.
”

George H. von Langsdorff, author of
Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World
(1813).

Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.

Mediterranean coast of North Africa west of Egypt.

Edible herb that grows in rock clefts; see Shakespeare’s
King Lear
, act 4, scene 6.

Small freshwater fish used as bait.

That is, the third to be described in this scene.

Mongol conqueror (c. 1336-1405); the reference to his soldiers’ concern probably comes from Christopher Marlowe’s play
Tamburlaine the Great
(1587).

Chief aide to Satan in Milton’s
Paradise Lost
.

See the Bible, Genesis 6:2 and 4.

The
Pequod
has sailed roughly an arc east, south, and west.

Author’s note: The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the course of the ship.

People who shrink and thicken wool cloth by moistening, heating, and pressing.

The Cyclades are islands in the Aegean Sea; the Solomon Islands are near New Guinea.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and Noah Webster (1758-1843) compiled important dictionaries.

Author’s note: The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the masthead, still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.

Seaport in Peru, near Lima.

Fortified island in Lake Huron.

Rulers of Mongolian and Turkish tribes.

Native American tribe.

King of the Franks and emperor of Holy Roman Empire, he lived from 742 to 814.

Opened in 1825; economically important, it connected the Hudson River at Albany with Buffalo.