Not P but Moby-Dick (7)

[Ian Livingston]

I agree, David. Mike, you have already prompted me to pull out my old
Norton Critical Edition of Moby Dick from my sophomore year in college,
complete with all my faded sophomoric marginalia. I think I may as well go
ahead and start again at page 1. I was the only student in class to argue
the greatness of MD. All the other students hated it. That was 1984, also
the year GR was first recommended to me, by a fellow student in another
context.

On Fri, Sep 1, 2023 at 6:25 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>> --
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>>
>