Good morning folks!
I hope all is well with you all. Sorry I haven’t written here in a few days but I was busy working on my article about Arsenal/Ozil over on Arseblog Newds. If you have a few hours, head over there and read what I put together. Warning, it’s longer than Moby Dick!
Speaking of Moby Dick, I read a few more chapters. I’m up to chapter 40 now. I’m not joking when I say that this is a long slog. Melville writes in idioms and while I get the gist of what he’s saying I want to know the deeper context behind his allusions. So, every few sentences requires research on my part.
For example, in the chapter “the Mast Head” I learned of the Stylites. They were hermits who built themselves towers upon which they would sit for years on end, praying to their Christian god. What dauntless lunatics they were! And what lunatics the people of ancient Byzantium were as well that they would bring these people food and water.
But he ends the chapter with this word bomb:
Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
What does this mean? As much as I can work out Rene Descartes believed that God created the universe as a sort of perpetual motion vortex or clockwork imbued with predetermination. Once the Lord set things in motion they were spinning for ever.
And I think that he was arguing in this chapter against the Transcendentalists and their “hippie” beliefs. I can’t quite make it out. I’ve read some additional texts and they seem to be at odds with each other in their conclusions. One said that Melville believed all the universe was in chaos another that he believed in order. Or maybe that he believed in chaos but that mankind imposed order. Please, if anyone out there understands this chapter and why Melville hated the Transcendentalists tell us!
All I know for sure is that if you sit atop that damnable mast-head daydreaming you will almost certainly be lulled to sleep by nature and fall to your death. Also, you’ll never catch any whales.
WAKE UP. Ye Pantheists! Take the phone from out your eyes and put a book in them.
Selah.
Dude! I did not need to know that Arseblog Newds existed. Or that whatever’s there is longer than Moby Dick! 🤣
Tim, here’s a link that will help you sort it out:
https://www.literarymatters.org/1-2-melville-anti-transcendentalism-democracy-moby-dick-as-a-cautionary-tale/
Again, it’s just a lit crit posit but as an English major it rings true.
God damnit that was written by a child who understands this fucking book better than me. I quit.
Fook mi Tim, that thing is almost as long as the Mueller report.
Great work!
I’m sure your findings will settle once and for all the Ozil debate……………………. just as the Mueller report did the whole Trump Russia controversy 🙂
When I was in fifth grade Moby Di#k was on the list of the must read books for the year.
You had to pick one book per semester and write a report.
That was the Polish translation in my case of course ,but later on I did try to read the original and found it way too difficult to handle.
I’m glad to see people with bigger brains than mine are having similar problems, so thanks for that ha ha.
It’s a crazy book.
There’s no real story. It’s just a collection of Melville’s crazy rantings and sometimes interesting observations.
Thanks for the post Tim. I have to admit that I have never had the patience to read Moby Dick much less to try and figure out what Herman Melville was really thinking. The reality is you could probably put 5 literature scholars in a room together and each would believe something different at least partly based on their their own predetermined biases. They could all read the same passage and each would interpret it differently and there no way to definitively prove which if any was correct. I think a similar thing sometimes happens try to analyze football.
I read your column in Arseblog News. Superb analysis as always. The only thing I don’t really agree with is you seem to imply that the reason our passing stats are different is because of the managerial change. I am certainly it trying to suggest that managerial tactics and approach do not matter but during most of this decade Wengers teams had Cazorla, Ozil in his prime, Wilshere, Ramsey, Nacho in his prime, Kos in his prime and Mert. None of those players has been replaced with another player who is as good as they were at passing the ball and I think think that is the biggest reason our passing stats have declined. I suspect our passing stats were starting to decline in the last couple years of the Wenger era and further decline was inevitable no matter who was the manager because of the composition of our squad.
LOL.. back on this I see.
I’m not sure what Melville meant by that paragraph either. Having read a little about those concepts, it seems that Descartes believed that “space” wasn’t empty. at all. In fact, space was actually vortexes consisting of matter, although we were unable to see the matter itself. He formed this idea because to his mind it was impossible for force or power to travel through a vacuum. Therefore, space must be made of matter of some kind, regardless of whether or not it was visible to us.
In this, Descartes was disagreeing with a contemporary named Benedict de Spinoza, one of the first Cartesians, aka Pantheists. Spinoza thought that God was in everything throughout the Universe, something that I refer to as Star Wars Theology. Consequently, Spinoza would’ve thought that God itself would have been space, and therefore the medium through which power/force was transmitted.
One of the main differences between Descartes and Spinoza was that the former believed in a personal God that had created the Universe and all its contents (a sort of Big Bang approach), whereas the latter believed that God was within all of the Universe (rather like a Steady State theory).
Now if I’ve understood the above correctly (some significant trepidation on that), what did Melville mean? Perhaps he’s stating that everything isn’t predetermined (a Descartian view), and that whether or not you fall off the Masthead is a matter of staying awake and aware on your job. It’s your free choice of action (Descartes) vs. a predetermined, unavoidable fate (Spinoza).
If that’s correct, then it’s a true miracle. – a proof of a personal God’s existence!
Wait, I thought Descarte believed that the universe was set in motion by god and that anything and everything that followed was all part of His plan?
Anyway, I really like your explanation. Here are the final two paragraphs of Chapter 35. You can see how what you’re saying is certainly the meat of what Melville is arguing about:
“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.” Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer’s [my version has Wickliff – Tim] sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
I was 9 years old when I read an abridged version of moby d*ck, and about 15 when I read the unabridged. Never thought of the Christian philosophy, let alone understand it. But I loved the book for its sense of adventure.
Which reminds me of an argument that there’s something about religious imagery which appeals to the sense of grandeur in us even if we’re unaware of it (or maybe it’s if we’re unaware of it?)
As an aside, It’s interesting that early Christian hermits sound a lot like Buddhist monks.
I wish I could contribute more to this but I just want to say I enjoyed the book all those years ago, and that this article makes me want to do a ‘deep dive’ into literature.