(helio)tropism

[JM]

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