Not P but Moby-Dick (86)

[Michael Bailey]

“Let’s not even get into talking about the after-life,” might be a quick
paraphrase

Context:

Ahab’s ruminating on the pain caused by his ivory leg - including a weird
incident pre-sailing where it seemed to have attacked him, and its current
state of disrepair, and not forgetting the original loss of the leg. As he
weighs up the joys and sorrows of life on earth, he concludes that not only
do sorrows outweigh joys, but even that they are more meaningful -

For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a
certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all
heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic
grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not beliethe obvious deduction.




On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 2:57 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> From Chapter 106:
>
> For, not to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain canonic
> teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children
> born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed
> by the joy-childlessness of all hell’s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal
> miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive
> progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there still
> seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing.
>
> What does "not to hint of this" mean here?
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>