🎤022 Moby Full Text Chs 38

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CHAPTER 38. Dusk. FOOTNOTES

CHAPTER 38. Dusk.

By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.

My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned;¹ and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field!² But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me!³ I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut.⁴ Horrible old man! Who’s over him, he cries;—aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below!⁵ Oh! I plainly see my miserable office,—to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity!⁶ For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide⁷ flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose,⁸ God may wedge aside. I would up heart,⁹ were it not like lead. But my whole clock’s run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again.¹⁰

[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]

Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white whale is their demigorgon.¹¹ Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life.¹² Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on,¹³ hunted by its wolfish gurglings.¹⁴ The long howl thrills me through!¹⁵ Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch!¹⁶ Oh, life! ’tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild, untutored things are forced to feed¹⁷—Oh, life! ’tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but ’tis not me! that horror’s out of me!¹⁸ and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures!¹⁹ Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!

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🎤021 Moby Full Text Ch36			🎤022 Moby Full Text Chs39-40

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Ahab AND Starbuck are resigned to their fates - but it energizes one and completely defeats the latter.

TIME and tide wait for no man

• c 1390 CHAUCER Clerk’s Tale 1.118 For thogh we slepe or wake, or rome, or ryde, Ay fleeth the tyme; it nil no [will no] man abyde.
• c 1520 Everyman (1961) 1.143 The Tyde abydeth no man.
• 1592 R. GREENE Disputation between He Cony-catcher & She Cony-catcher X.
• 241 Tyde nor time tarrieth no man.
• 1639 J. CLARKE Parœmiologia Anglo-Latina 233 Time and tide tary on no man.
• 1767 ‘A. BARTON’ Disappointment II.iI Let’s step into the state-room, and turn in: Time and tide waits for no one.
• 1822 SCOTT Nigel III. ii. Come, come, master, let us get afloat. .. Time and tide wait for no man.
• 2002 Washington Post 10 Mar. SC11 (Family Circus comic strip) Time and tide wait for no man. ‘And a school bus waits for no boy.

Cito pede labitur aetas. — Ovid, Aj’s Amatoria, iii. 65.

Time and tide wait for no man (Hazlitt).

Luken luue at the end wil kith.

• Cursor Mundi^ 4276.

(Concealed love will show itself at last.) Love and a cough cannot be hid (Hazlitt). See no, 128. L’amour, la tousse, et la galle ne se peuvent celer; Prov. ; we say, love and the cough cannot be hidden. — Cotgrave. Though ye tether time and tide. Love and light ye canna hide. — Hislop. D. ii. 46.

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Footnotes

Footnotes

1. Interesting - his soul is a “she”! Is that normal? Like ships are always “she”? ↩

2. Ground arms = stack weapons on the ground, for a drill; lay down arms AND —This is the first time Starbuck has had to face social maneuvering. He’s used to reading a whale and responds appropriately. He’s used to reading a crew and being a good First Mate. He is NOT used to being matched against a madman who is irrational. There are rules of life that are to be followed and suddenly he’s working for a guy who has tossed the rule book out the window. ↩

3. Hearkens back to Chapter 37 where Ahab ended talking about trains and rifled mountains where train tunnels are drilled. ↩

4. Oof - like being caught in the harpoon rope and towed by the whale. ↩

5. Referring to Ahab’s “Who’s over me?” and Starbuck takes that to the next level… you say you’re a fair man—a democrat—whereas to anyone beneath you, you’re a tyrant. (They, too, needed 360 work reviews in 1850!) ↩

6. two ways forward - follow orders and rebel inside, and hate Ahab while pitying him at the same time—this is gonna be one miserable voyage for Starbuck. ↩

7. Time and tide wait for no man = 1395, appearing in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prologue to the Clerk’s Tale. ↩

8. heaven insulting = “judge not, let ye, yourself be judged LINK NEEDED” ↩

9. up heart = lift up my heart ↩

10. Ahab’s has infected Starbuck with his depression. Starbuck doesn’t have a means (a key) with which he can use to raise his spirits (the weight on a grandfather clock) ↩

11. demigorgon =  demogorgon,  Derived from classical mythology, a demonic, primeval god in Spenser, Milton, Shelley, and others. It is not connected to Greek mythology, but the  name probably arises from an unknown copyist’s misreading of a commentary by a fourth-century scholar, Lactantius Placidus. The concept itself can be traced back to the original misread term demiurge. ↩

12. There’s Stubb and the crew up in the stern, ignorant, having a ball. And here I am—aware of what we’ve pledged to and thus miserable. Methinks it pictures life =always this is how it plays out—everyone else is able to fuggeddaboutit and have fun, while I’m left being smart and miserable. Apparently Ignorance truly IS bliss. ↩

13. Further back in the wake ↩

14. Well, there’s your problem! If Starbuck didn’t have a heart / could not feel pity, he wouldn’t be so miserable! ↩

15. Yikes! Different from Witman’s YOP? ↩

16. Did he call this to them or is he saying it to himself like “damnit! can’t you be serious for ONE MINUTE!?!?” ↩

17. Fate/Life is rubbing my face in it ↩

18. Remember, Starbuck is the one man smart enough to be afraid of the job they’re doing. THIS fear, though, is much worse. He’s used to fighting whales, not humans (he’s never been to war). And a whales’ behaviour when being hunted will dictate Starbuck’s next moves—but you can learn how a whale is likely to behave. There is NO telling how Ahab’s going to move on this oath—this may be the first time Starbuck has really felt the horror of the unknown (that’s about to hit you in the face.) ↩

19. I’m the last sane man on the ship—and I’ll fight but I’m pretty sure I’m going to fail. ↩