Moby-Dick - The Greatest Novel Ever Written

[The Mystical Man]

I finished Moby-Dick, and now I understand why the two McKennas, Jed and Terence, love it so much. Melville wrote some of the finest prose I've ever read, surpassed only by Nabokov's Lolita. Many people criticize the chapters that focus on whale biology, but Moby-Dick is not a boring textbook. It's a work of art. Melville's prose is beautifully intricate, so I didn't find the chapters about whale biology boring; In fact, I didn't want it to end. Don't read Moby-Dick, if you want an exciting adventure story, or if you're looking for something profound. Read it, if you love great literature, if you love marvelous prose, if you love the English language. Savor it. 

The word "masterpiece" gets used too liberally these days. I reserve that accolade for flawless and timeless works of art like Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick is an astounding accomplishment, and Melville finished it in only 18 months.

Edited August 8, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[Machine]

What did you gain from it?

[The Mystical Man]

5 hours ago, Machine said:

What did you gain from it?

Nothing. It's the language that I love. I find it difficult to read other classic books now, because the prose is boringly simple compared to Moby-Dick.

Edited August 10, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[Asayake]

3 hours ago, The Mystical Man said:

Nothing. It's the language that I love. I find it difficult to read other classic books now, because the prose is boringly simple compared to Moby-Dick.

It probably did improve your reading skills a bit, at the very least.

[The Mystical Man]

Beautiful editions.

[The Mystical Man]

"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 other; 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." - Chapter 36

Edited November 13, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

Good talk:

 

[The Mystical Man]

 

[The Mystical Man]

Melville, the ?, sat at this desk for eighteen months and crafted one perfect sentence after another.

Edited January 5, 2023 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

"Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe'er I came; wheresoe'er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee."

"I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!"

- Chapter 119

[The Mystical Man]

"Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,--though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,--in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:--through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it."

- Chapter 114

[The Mystical Man]

A perfume inspired by Moby-Dick. I want it.

??

Edited January 7, 2023 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

Moby-Dick: Study Guide | SparkNotes

[The Mystical Man]

 

[The Mystical Man]

This website is amazing:

http://www.powermobydick.com/

For my second read through.

[The Mystical Man]

Free audiobook:

https://www.mobydickbigread.com/

[caspex]

From the passages I read that you posted, it seems wonderful but I understand so little because of my low comprehension.

[The Mystical Man]

4 hours ago, Swarnim said:

From the passages I read that you posted, it seems wonderful but I understand so little because of my low comprehension.

Frankly, I don't understand most of it either, but the language is beautiful, and that's all I care about. When I read a novel, the story isn't that important to me. Prose is what matters to me. Which is why I prefer classic literary works.

[Eternal Unity]

@The Mystical Man Thanks! I have the Penguin paperback edition. Plan to read it.

[The Mystical Man]

1 hour ago, Eternal Unity said:

@The Mystical Man Thanks! I have the Penguin paperback edition. Plan to read it.

I hope you enjoy it. Savor it. There is nothing like it.