ahab as luddite (Quakerism)

[David Morris]

Great stuff, Terrance.  And while I know this is not the Melville List, I 
would like to repeat my earlier suggestion that following the M&D group read 
we do a Moby Dick group read.  But I guess we can wait till the end of M&D 
to consider that.

DM

>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>
>Helen P. Trimpi, "Melville's Use of Demonology and Witchcraft in
>Moby-Dick," Journal of
>the History of Ideas, vol. XXX (Oct.-Dec., 1969), p. 543-562.
>
>http://www.angelfire.com/me2/artgirl/trimpi.html
>
>Melville's interest in demonology and witchcraft as a literary subject,
>possibly one formative in the writing of Moby-Dick, is evident in some
>jottings he made in his set of Shakespeare acquired in 1849.  In Volume
>VII he wrote. "Ego non baptiso te in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus
>Sancti - sed in nomine Diaboli," a parody of the Christian baptismal
>formula. He repeated the formula partially in Ahab's baptism of the
>harpoon in Moby-Dick (Chap. CXIII, "The Forge"), and again partially in
>a letter to Hawthorne while he was finishing the romance in late June
>1851. In the letter to Hawthorne he wrote that the whole book was
>"broiled" in "hellfire" and that its secret motto is "Ego non baptiso te
>in nomine . . . ," suggesting that the inverted formula is the key to
>the book's
>meaning, as a motto or epigraph was supposed to be in this period. In
>the jottings he also wrote, "Madness is undefinable - It & right reason
>extremes of one, - not the (black art) Goetic but Theurgic magic - seeks
>converse with the Intelligence, Power, The Angel." Some other notations
>which Mansfield and Vincent in their edition of Moby-Dick point out as
>being related to Moby-Dick read: "(Devil as a Quaker)" and "Ten loads of
>coal to burn him -/Brought to the stake - warmed himself by the fire."
>They notice a Faustian suggestion in the entry, "A formal compact -
>Imprimus - First - Second./The aforesaid soul. said soul &c -
>Duplicates." Concerning the jottings about "a Society of
>D's," a letter addressed to the D- 'My Dear D'-," "visits from the
>principal d's," and "Terra Oblivionis" and "Hellities," they say that
>they may have had some part in the diabolism of Moby-Dick.
>
>
>Navigatio Brendani I read
>Father tipping one
>and the sails tipping too
>Three hours from sun set
>And I'm praying to the moon
>Tug Dad's Grandad into the abyss




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