Not P but Moby-Dick (15)

[Joseph Tracy]

> On Sep 28, 2023, at 9:43 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> From Chapter 37:
> 
> What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me
> mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild
> madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I
> should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will
> dismember my dismemberer.
> 
> What does "That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself" mean?
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l

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. 


 Non literary Aside: The neocons and their acolytes like Sean Penn are arguing for WW3. None of their previous failures speak to them. The threat of nuclear holocaust does not check them. Why? Power accrues to will, but will is self blinding self glorifying, self centered, and frequently more like cancer than growth.