Not P but Moby-Dick (75)

[Mike Jing]

Maybe I did not word it properly, but I thought it was obvious that it
should not be taken literally.


On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 1:35 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> And maybe not for bread as food as even Mike’s quoted explication allows.
> Which is where I came in.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Feb 28, 2024, at 1:30 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> 
> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>