Not P but Moby-Dick (16)

Sun Oct 1 10:06:31 UTC 2023

A fundamental misreading to me.....Melville does not emphasize madness
and madness maddened for a self-aware captain who thinks of the
livelihood of his crew
and his necessary leadership.

Not even close...Ahab contrasting Jeffersonianism?......Nah......

On Sat, Sep 30, 2023 at 10:29 PM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I agree that that your discussion here moves the disambiguation along,
> Joseph, and it sheds further light on Melville’s loaded passage.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Sep 30, 2023, at 2:18 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >
> > I am going to risk the foolishness of repeating my take on the passages
> below in question. I think what I am saying has a clarifying meritand is an
> accurate understanding of what Melvlle is doing.
> >
> > In a way the passage seems a way for Melville to  indicate the
> triviality of a quest to take vengeance on a creature of nature as though
> the whale were the judgement of God rather than a creature of nature
> defending its life. Ahab is calm in that he is self aware enough to know he
> has deified his will to vengeance with calculated deliberateness, and
> "madness maddened" in that he knows that this may be, and will appear to
> others to be, a demoniac quest, but one on which the crew’s livelihood
> depends and therefor no one will swerve him.
> >>
> >> One thing I am observing here is that Ahab is typical of a human
> tendency to ascribe to oneself knowledge, power and technology that one
> often does not personally understand at all. How many of today’s thought
> leaders could actually build a computer or camera or internal combustion
> engine, yet they boast about western technology as though they were an
> owner of that knowledge rather than an inheritor. I think Ahab is similar.
> what does he really know about Iron railways and steam engines? He does
> know a particular technology of  rather crude and risky sea-going
> extraction, interestingly and prophetically of oil extraction, that fuels
> his own power as captain and that fuels the larger system with all its
> technologies of extraction, lubrication, mass production, and burning.  He
> knows the risk of his own will to vengeance, but he knows that the
> livelihood of the crew is dependent on his captaincy and the violent
> business of whaling, just as western expansion depended on disposessing
> indigenous peoples with violence and a lie about vengeance as though tribal
> peoples were the threatening force and not racism and greed.. He is
> describing a world view where the greatness of the great depends on the
> submission and smallness of those who serve this greatness and partake of
> it only vicariously. It is an anti-democratic vision turning to madness
> because Ahab ackowledges it has become a matter of vengeance: to dismember
> his dismemberer. He is again  asking  what kind of revolutionary society
> do we want, the dream of Jeffersonian yoemen farmers and tradespeple, or an
> increasingly hierarchical empire of extraction dependent on endless warfare
> and a dangerous and ant-scientific disregard for a healthy biosphere. He
> asks do we want a citizen-shaped society that understands the
> interdependent nature of every biological community  or one shaped by great
> leaders of iron will and imperial ambition?
> >
> > How to translate this to make it plain is a challenge. The translations
> you cite seem quite wrong to me.  My main points are that the madness is
> coming from Ahab’s embrace of vengeance and with it the power to ignore
> both the business aspect of whaling and to place the safety and
> profitability of his crew second to that will to revenge himself.  It is
> couched in the deification of his will as captain, and representative of
> his connection to ascendant capitalism. This  aspect of his madness may be
> seriously wrong-headed but not an indication of personal insanity.
> >
> > "That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself” … . Perhaps:
> "That wild madness whose only calm is to know (*without regret) his own
> calculated vengeance.    * optional clarification
> >
> > Madness is obviously  not quite the same in English as insanity. It can
> be temporary,  and or emotional,  and or deliberative. It does not
> inherently imply the loss of mental clarity about what is real.It also
> applies more easily to larger cultural
> > movements. A Chinese word would obviously do best if it reflected that
> quality, though I am sure I am speaking to one more expert on this topic
> than myself.
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>>> On Sep 29, 2023, at 5:40 AM, Hübschräuber via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> "Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails,
> >>> whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the
> >>> rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!
> >>> Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!”
> >>>
> >>> The man surely is focused...
> >>>
> >>> I agree that there is a larger general historical/philosophical meaning
> >>> here. I would not narrow it down to "economic forces of history". I
> >>> believe it is more about ideology (belief in a purpose of history,
> >>> restoring Eden, more generally a teleological view of the world) with
> >>> the economy only being one aspect. The "iron rails" in particular point
> >>> to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Clearly, this is the opposite of
> >>> Queequeg's world view, and it is not hard to tell where Melville's
> >>> sympathies lie.
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Am 29.09.2023 um 06:55 schrieb Ian Livingston:
> >>>>
> >>>>> In order to change Ahab's course, any that come to deter him from his
> >>>>> "fixed idea" will suffer the consequence of their attempts. The
> economic
> >>>>> force of history determined with the advent of capitalism cannot be
> >>>>> deterred (swerved off its course) without destroying whole
> populations.
> >>>>> Melville at his most prophetic.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, Sep 28, 2023 at 8:52 PM Mike Jing
> gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Also from Chapter 37:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and
> hidden.
> >>>>>> Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to
> reach ye.
> >>>>>> Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me.
> Swerve
> >>>>>> me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye
> there.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> What does "ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves" mean?
> And what
> >>>>>> is "man has ye there"?
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>> --
> >>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>