Not P but Moby-Dick (7)

[David Morris]

Thanks, Ian
These little passages are tempting morsels. I love MD’s prose much like I
do GR’s.  The images evoked, and the poetic/mind-bending word choices, are
pure magic.

On Fri, Sep 1, 2023 at 9:05 PM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Again I see a pun. The paragraph prior to the passage you cite here dwells
> on Stubb’s apparent ease, reconciliation, if you will, with laboring in
> close proximity to death. To set that image against the clerks peddling
> fascination with and distraction from the fear of death common among
> citizens such as themselves wasting time yearning after and resenting their
> lives rather than living, like Stubb, in the fervor of the moment, Melville
> gives grinning Stubb a truly fire breathing character.
>
> Thus the (morose) “grave peddlers” offer for sale the gravity of want and
> fear of life and death, and Stubb grins over his pipe at them.
>
> All very existentialist, really. Again I find myself wondering if there’s
> a trail to be found between Kierkegaard and Melville.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Sep 1, 2023, at 4:09 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > The following excerpt is from Chapter 27:
> >
> > What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easygoing, unfearing
> > man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of
> > grave peddlers, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped to
> > bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing must have
> > been his pipe.
> >
> > Several of the previous translations interpreted "grave peddlers" as
> > "peddlers of graves", which I feel is wrong.  I think the word "grave"
> here
> > means "serious, not mirthful or jocular," is that correct?
> > --
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