(helio)tropism
JM
plachazu at ccnet.ccnet.com
Wed Apr 24 19:13:09 CDT 1996
I took a very quick glance through _Call Me Ishmael_ by Charles Olsen, and found
one mention of "heliotrope" (though there may be more) on p. 62: "That night he
[Ahab] does not face the whale as was his custom. He turns his 'heliotrope glance'
back to the east, waiting the sun of the fatal third day like death." Olsen lifted his
two word quotation from the very end of chapter 134 of _Moby-Dick_ where Melville
writes: "while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his
scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; set due
eastward for the earliest sun."
The larger business between Ahab and the sun in _Moby-Dick_ is illustrative of
Ahab's hubris--at one point he swears he'd strike the sun if it offended him. There is
certainly some defiance of the natural order indicated in this. Of course there may
well be other nuances that I'm overlooking. -jm
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