Not P but Moby-Dick (75)

[Mike Jing]

Of course it's a metaphor, and not just for the unpalatability of mould.


On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 5:55 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> okay.....I would still argue it is a metaphorical associative allusion to
> 'breaking bread'.....
> since there can be little meaning to "green damp mould" as edible....
>
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 3:06 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> It seems I'm not the only one who thinks so. I found this as the first
>> hit in google books search for "green damp mould":
>>
>>
>> https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Pen_of_Iron/kDKrkyn-1DkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22green+damp+mould%22&pg=PA61
>>
>> The peculiar final gesture of this paragraph is another instance of
>> Melville’s propensity to introduce jocular half-notes into dark
>> meditations. The person who skirts around the ineluctable reality of death
>> and despair is unsuited “to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green
>> damp mould with unfathomable wondrous Solomon.” This is, I think, a kind of
>> macabre joke. Solomon was the wisest of men, not for the legendary reason
>> given in the Book of Kings, but because he wrote Ecclesiastes and the
>> gloomier verses of the Book of Proverbs. Spiritual conviviality with
>> wondrous Solomon would be a meeting in a graveyard, where instead of
>> breaking bread together with him one would break green damp mould.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 1:39 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I agree, but I thought "break the green damp mould with" was fashioned
>>> after the phrase "to break bread with" as a humorous way of saying it. I
>>> could be totally wrong though.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 7:03 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think that "break the green damp mould" means to sit with
>>>> Solomon...it repeats with
>>>> this real image that man is not fitted to sit down on tomb-stones [even
>>>> some] so old
>>>> as to have green damp mould on them....
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 6:49 AM Mike Jing <
>>>> gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> From Chapter 96:
>>>>>
>>>>> But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing
>>>>> grave-yards,
>>>>> and would rather talk of operas than hell;  calls Cowper, Young,
>>>>> Pascal,
>>>>> Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men;  and throughout a care-free
>>>>> lifetime
>>>>> swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;—not that man
>>>>> is
>>>>> fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with
>>>>> unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
>>>>>
>>>>> What does "passing wise" mean here?
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, I assume "break the green damp mould with" means to "break bread
>>>>> with", but since Solomon is long dead, so there's only mould on the
>>>>> grave,
>>>>> is that correct?
>>>>> --
>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>
>>>>