Fwd: Not P but Moby-Dick (11)

[Joseph Tracy]

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> Subject: Re: Not P but Moby-Dick (11)
> Date: September 18, 2023 at 12:16:54 PM EDT
> To: Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> 
> The comparison of the captain at table with his invited guests to an ancient  biblical King is the first of a series of similar comparisons in the chapter and one  which the bible-familiar reader of the time will easily recognize. It is not a wish of Ahab particularly, rather a comparison in which the King actually falls short of the royal prestige of a real captain at sea. It is Starbuck’s observation of the power dynamics of the social structure prevailing in such a dinner. I do not think he is implying this is peculiar to Ahab but perhaps having Starbuck admit of the difference between aspirations to revolutionary freedom from imperial power structures and the actuality of established norms of professional hierarchy( there is a sense that Starbuck enjoys being one of Ahabs “emirs”. Who wouldn’t?).
> 
> I would suggest that Melville is having Starbuck overstate his case to emphasize how the visceral experience of such a power imbalance intensely outweighs  any distant, if familiar, examples of such power dynamics no matter how grandiose. 
> 
> Yes to parallel unfolding of the thought.
> 
>> On Sep 18, 2023, at 3:14 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The following excerpt is from Chapter 34:
>> 
>> Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar,
>> King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but
>> courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane
>> grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides
>> over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that man’s
>> unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time; that
>> man’s royalty of state transcends Belshazzar’s, for Belshazzar was not the
>> greatest.
>> 
>> First, what does "To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon" indicate? Is it
>> a wish, or something else entirely?
>> 
>> Second, in the last sentence, are "that man’s unchallenged power and
>> dominion of individual influence for the time" and "that man’s royalty of
>> state" in parallel? Melville’s liberal use of the semicolon is confusing
>> sometimes.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>