Quartz 4

đŸŽ€021 Moby Full Text Ch 37

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CHAPTER 37. Sunset. FOOTNOTES

CHAPTER 37. Sunset.

The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out.

I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm1 my track; let them; but first I pass.

Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs2 the blue. The diver sun—slow dived from noon—goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy3 that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy.4 Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. ’Tis iron—that I know—not gold. ’Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!5

The Iron Crown of Lombardy with its 1cm wide band of iron—said to be a nail used in the crucifixion of Jesus. Sorry, this does NOT look comfy to me—uneasy indeed.

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise!6 Good night—good night! (waving his hand, he moves from the window.)

’Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve.7 Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting!. What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac,8 I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy9 was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods,10 ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players,11 ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!12 13I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take some one of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags!14 I have no long gun15 to reach ye. Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve16 me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails,17 whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded18 gorges, through the rifled19 hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle20 to the iron way! Back to Contents

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Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. whelm: overwhelm ↩

  2. plumbs: measures the depth of ↩

  3. “Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear?” echoing Shakespeare’s “Uneasy is the head that wears a crown” (Henry IV, pt. 2, Act 3, sc. 1), In this soliloquy, Henry is sleepless over the state of his kingdom. Ahab’s chapter-long soliloquy—his first was “The Pipe” (Ch. 30), and I doubt this will be the last 😜— is less than a paragraph but again, he’s at least a bit restless about his manipulations of the crew.” ↩

  4. Iron Crown of Lombardy: jewelled crown used at coronations of the Holy Roman emperors, and of Napoleon Bonaparte as King of Italy. It was supposed to contain a nail from the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Unlike Ahab’s metaphorical crown, the original is mainly gold and is now kept in the Cathedral of Monza near Milan, Italy. ↩

  5. US/UK REVISION: the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight! // In the American version of the opening to Ahab’s soliloquy, Melville piles metal upon metal—gold, iron, then steel—in describing the contrast between Ahab’s metaphorical iron crown of duty and his obsession battered brain. The final two clauses introduce Ahab’s steel skull, which, he says, obviates his having to wear a “helmet” or iron crown. The British version deletes these two clauses so that the paragraph ends with “solid metal.” A British editor would have had no reason to remove these words, though a printer might have inadvertently omitted them in setting type. A likelier scenario, however, is that Melville found the extended metamorphizing confusing and made the deletion himself in the proof sheets he sent to England. ↩

  6. damned in the midst of Paradise!: This phrasing echoes Eve to the serpent telling him that she is prohibited from eating “the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden” (Genesis 3.3). Ahab’s lament also recalls Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, “Me miserable! which way shall I fly / Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? / Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell” (IV.73–75). See also note on “hell in himself” in Ch. 44. ↩

  7. cogs/revolve: first of several mechanized metaphors here. ↩

  8. demoniac: Because he is aware of his madness, Ahab claims he is therefore not crazy; it is as if an internal demon controls and uses his insanity. In Plato’s Symposium and in Romantic poetry, a “dĂŠmon” mediates between heaven and earth or gives human form to ideal truths. In this sense, Ahab’s demonism is more spiritual than supernatural. ↩

  9. prophecy: See Elijah in chapter 19. ↩

  10. ye great gods: which God is he fighting against in his mind? Apparently he doesn’t know either! ↩

  11. cricket players? no clue what he’s got against them?! ↩

  12. deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!: William Abednego Thompson (1811-1880; nicknamed Bendigo) won the heavyweight boxing championship of England in 1839 against James (“Deaf”) Burke (1809-1845). Burke was born deaf, but Thompson was never blind. Melville’s epithet “blinded” might refer to temporary sight impairment due to facial swellings, common enough in the ring. ↩

  13. Just a note on Abednego: rooted in the Book of Daniel in the Bible, where it was given to the Hebrew youth Azariah by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. The name (Aramaic origin), means “servant of Nego” or “servant of Nebo,” the Babylonian god of wisdom. It was part of a Babylonian practice to give new names to captives to promote assimilation. ↩

  14. Come forth from behind your cotton bags!: In the Battle of New Orleans (1815), Andrew Jackson’s troops, including frontiersmen with their long rifles, protected in part by cotton bales, defeated a British attack force. ↩

  15. long gun: frontiersman’s rifle ↩

  16. swerve: Old English sweorfan ‘depart, leave, turn aside’, of Germanic origin; related to Middle Dutch swerven ‘to stray’. ↩

  17. iron rails: extended train metaphor alert ↩

  18. unsounded: unmeasured ↩

  19. rifled: grooved on the inside, i.e., what’s done to a rifle bore to make the bullet spin and thus fly true. ↩

  20. angle: According to the OED, a turning point in a zigzag path or bend in a stream. By extension, any curve, or angle, in a railroad would slow down the locomotive. ↩

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