So here I am in South Bend, Indiana, between the Great Lakes, which were once ice shelves, and the vast expanse of suburbia that was once prairie.
Sarah, if you're out there (Sarah is also away on a trip), tell us more about this obsession with prairies!
Chapter 58 ("Brit") compares two seemingly endless vistas: the sea, and long fields of waving grass or wheat. Nice little micro-poem he creates with this metaphor. Then we hear about the ways in which this analogy does NOT hold up: the sea is not so like the land, after all. "Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one." Superficial? Compared to what?
225: "Consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as theis appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!"
Translation/gloss, anyone?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
i would agree with this idea that nothing can be 'observed' in its 'natural' element, because the very act of viewing or observing is no longer a 'natural' habitat, because there will ultimately have to be interaction with the thing being observed in order to translate the 'other' into terms that the observer can process, understand and reiterate. the idea of a zoo was once thought to be a replication of a 'natural' habitat and thus folks were able to observe animals in their 'natural' habitat, but alas we have found out that this has physiological and psychological ramifications on the animals in captivity. does this make sense? i feel like it is a bit of a ramble, but basically i feel like the act of observation negates the idea of 'natural.'
I think what Melville is exploring in the "Brit" chapter is a question he asks of the reader constantly throughout the text, imploring us to consider our own relationship to the sea and the land. To the narrator, the soul of man is an island, and what lies outside are described as a "horror" and "half known". He even demands that we not depart from our existential island for fear of never being able to return. Yet isn't that exactly what he is doing in taking his whaling journey? To me, this passage seems to describe the land as a place of comfortable ideas, of truths, and of man. On the other hand, the sea is a place of the subconscious or id, something that lies outside of humanity and deals in partial truths and dream, maybe even insanity. This reading of the passage seems to explain why earlier in the novel the New Yorkers all stand at the piers, looking out on the sea: they are sick of being metaphysically "land-locked" in their mind-numbing 9-5 existence, so they seek escape into both the ideas and the unconquerable nature of the ocean they can see, but never fully understand.
It's interesting that just before that Columbus sentence, Ishamael/Melville calls the ocean a "terra incognita". Ol' Cristobal sails over "numberless unknown worlds" to get to this one, superficial because it is not India like he thought, and more abstractly because it is, from Ish-Mel's persepctive, not so savage and New as he thought. Sure, conquering the New World was a feat, but it seems Ish-Mel regards the nautical conquest as far more admirable. Through his comparison it seems Ish-Mel is giving more credit, I don't know if that's the word, perhaps veneration or simply respectful awe to the ocean, similar to the mix of fear, awe and love Christianity teaches followers to feel towards the power of God. The land, which man has trodden for millenia, succumbs to the "science and skill" of man. The sea, however, "will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make". (These quotes are all on 224) So land is superficial, and the ocean, true and real.
The next analogy made me think more of the Pequod than Tahiti or some island. I think that for Ish-Mel the whaling boat is the verdant (is)land. We know he cannot stand solid ground for very long before his hypos kicks in and he starts de-hatting innocent passerbyers. The Pequod contains his peace and joy, and island in itself but one of different proportions and abilities. The whaling ship can move, can use the tides, currents, winds, stars and sun to manipulate the vast "terra incognita". They are surrounded by horrors but their mobile island keeps 'em safe. So far, at least. Mostly. I guess danger still exists.
The "half-known life": the unknown, the life off land, the life as a seaman. The life of the pursuit of the whale among the horrors of the ocean. So maybe the boat isn't all that safe.
Help, anyone?
Oh yeah, I wanted to add that his last sentences, "God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!" reminded me of The Sermon.
That's all.
I'm here! Well, in Bermuda anyhow, cancelled flights turned nightmarish. I'm stuck in the triangle and somehow reading Melville seems very apt when stuck on a tiny island in the middle of a storm. There really is not much to do but meditate upon the storm-tossed sea.
As to prairies, and meadows, which I think are essentially the same when Ishmael expounds on them, seem to be the way in which the expanse of ocean is inverted into its landed counterpart to make this narrative intellible to landlubbers. And yet, this very unlikeness and constrast of land vs. sea, of the known vs. the unknown, makes this metaphor of ocean-as-expanse-of-prairie incomplete. For the sea, with its infinite impenetrable depths, is far more mysterious than the flat, knowable prairie, and their similarily ends with their mere likeness of expansive openness. But since the surface of the sea is all that Ishmael can witness, and his knowledge of the sea is limited then to "superficial" knowlege, he can know the sea only as well as the flat, two-dimensional prairie.
Anyways, I'm still working on it.
Post a Comment