Needless to say, my research did not uncover any obvious reference on Ishmael’s part, but it did get me thinking about aristocracy, symbols of divine blessing, and the French Revolution, which speaks to both of the former, as well as to the cosmetic usage of spermaceti.

Chapter 77: The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Great cask of delicious wine
Built ‘neath the castle floor
As a sign of the bounty of our righteousness,
As a crown on the kingdom’s store.

Whoa-oh, Whoa-oh!
Guard your luxury!

Great wax of a class divine
Sought for appearance sake.
As they smooth every wrinkle from an aging face
Does the face turn collectively blank.

Whoa-oh, Whoa-oh!
Guard your luxury!

Great tun on the monster’s mind,
Promised and plentiful,
So take care with the lever on the guillotine
Lest you spill it on the castle floor.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea November 9, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea February 19, 2010

Ishmael starts this chapter with the almost Homeric mission of putting his story “on lasting record,” and he tells this to his readers, wetting our lips with an implied wondrousness. Then, rather than just telling his story, he tells the story of telling his story to his friends in Lima years earlier, adding their credulous and interested voices to the audience, like a sitcom laugh track, or a shill at a game of three card monte. And though Ishmael uses plenty of Christ imagery in his story, suggesting religious subtext, it is easy to forget that the Bible is a book full of well-woven tales, and as such is a good place to study the art of storytelling, or for that matter, to borrow from.

By the end of the chapter, Ishmael has told such a fantastic story that I, for one, share Don Sebastian’s response to his friend Ishmael, “Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful!” And as Ishmael swears on a Bible that his story is true, in the audience of a priest no less, I don’t believe a word of it, but I decide to believe anyway, for the sake of the story.

Chapter 54: The Town-Ho’s Story

In the conduit connecting the animal to nature,
Born and bred a wretched beast — the intellect abstracted.
Be it anchored in the heavens or deep into to soul,
It can move a mountain peak.

Ocean to ocean,
No contradiction meant
From motion to motion.
Take your position
And reside there forever!

Every act of violence punished by punishment’s creator.
Exorcise your will in peace.

Ocean to ocean,
A move towards democracy
From motion to motion.
Take your position
And reside there forever!

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea November 1, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea February 6, 2010

Tashtego, a non-Christian Native American, attributes the scar to an “elemental strife at sea.” In one sense, this conjures a greater idea Ishmael has built, associating each officer of the Pequod with on of the four natural elements. It makes sense for Ahab, god of fire, to be damaged by the sea. In another sense, Tashtego is simply saying that Ahab was born whole or pure, and that any blemish on this purity must be the existential result of natural forces.

The Manxman takes a very different view of the scar, insisting that Ahab must have been born with the mark, implying something much more akin to a Christian idea of original sin — a soul marred to begin with.

These kinds of contradictions coexist throughout Moby-Dick in a tenuous way that seems, to me at least, at the same time impossible and honest. This mash-up often leaves me thinking that both perspectives seem valid, but also that sometimes a scar is just a scar.

Chapter 28: Ahab

All but consumed by fire,
As in spirit, the body tempered — a cast alive.
Scar from tip to toe
From a battle, perhaps with his very birth.
But the wise man points to the elements.
As the fire locked jaws with the ocean, hence.

Stands on an effigy
Of the jaw that did undermine his stability.
Anchored upon the tip
In an auger hole of his firm resolve.
With a gaze clamped tight on the infinite,
Could a faltered captain lose his grip?

High times for all!

Still but to watch and wait,
No excitement of purpose to drive the clouds away.
Creases upon his brow
From the weight of a wrecked principality.
But the tropic air dances casually
‘Round the crags of Ahab, softening.

High times for all!

But the wise man points to the elements.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea October 25, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea January 24, 2010

First, by citing in great volume tales similar to that of the Pequod, Ishmael seeks to negate the wonder of the narrative Moby-Dick is most well-known for. Explicitly, Ishmael tells these tales to educate his audience beyond disbelief, and to prevent that his readers “might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.” Beyond this purpose, however, Ishmael’s attempt to turn the story of Ahab and Moby Dick into banal fact effectively shifts that story from the center of his narrative into an elaborate frame for the true focus of his story — the whaling life fleshed out in full.

The second major difference between “The Affidavit” and other chapters of its kind is the I-swear-on-my-mother’s-grave tone Ishmael takes in his accounts of the incredible. Ishmael swears himself up and down this chapter, to the point where I, for one, stop believing him. At one point, for instance, Ishmael seeks to substantiate an account of a whale attack that he read in a book by claiming himself the nephew of the captain of the ship in question, and tells us that this uncle gave first-hand affirmation of the account.

To me, this roundabout, ad hoc fact-checking from Ishmael in “The Affidavit” somewhat transforms the novel itself into one giant chapter fleshing out perhaps the most essential aspect of the whaling life — storytelling. In the telling of a tale that would be utterly fantastical were it not so banal, that would seem pure fancy were it not the sworn truth of its teller, we find ourselves fully transported to a distant forecastle, in a distant ocean, in a distant time.

Chapter 45: The Affidavit

I’ll testify to the reverend’s holy words:
All truth told here.  It’s your choice to believe it,
Irrevocably.

I’ve seen it thrice — embattled monsters torn
From dealing fateful blows, brought back after years gone by.
Death follows.

No simple brute — a thoughtful, malicious eye
Turns back assault, and stove in many leaders.
Irrevocably.

You will never be
Broken, lest irreverent
To powerful things
When you face them.

Haughty disbelievers knocked from donkeys
On the road to Damascus.  It’s your choice to believe it.
Death follows.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea October 1, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea October 4, 2009

The phrase “meta-fiction” refers to a story told about the telling of that story, laying bare all of the constructs of storytelling along the way. Moby-Dick as a whole is not a work of meta-fiction, obviously, but Ishmael often uses the device in his storytelling, allowing for a slow acceleration into his non-traditional narrative.

“The Crotch” provides a prime example of Ishmael’s meta-. Long after abandoning the sequential narrative he gives of his experience in New Bedford, long after he begins telling his story through the minutiae of whaling life, Ishmael pauses for explanation of his seeming tangents. First, he says, it’s only natural. Like branches and twigs off a larger trunk, so grow many finer details from a few “productive subjects.” Second, whether we consciously know it or not, we want these details, we would ask for them if we only knew how. As readers, we naturally tend against gaps in the world of a story — so much so that we make stuff up if we have to. In describing whaling minutiae, Ishmael gives us the raw materials with which to create the whaling world repeatedly, throughout the rest of the book.

Sadly, the process sours some to the story in a different way, analogous, perhaps, to driving across the country at one mile per hour. But that sounds interesting to me. And so with Moby-Dick. The beauty of the story lies in the way the story’s told.

Chapter 63: The Crotch

Not foreshadowing,
I take my time with the details still,
To set the stage.

No complaining!
You need to live every moment of
A whaler’s life.

Let’s not sully
The great defiance
In every action
With mere description!

Let’s prepare you
To construct
The moments as they come,
And I will step aside.

Now imagine
Two harpoons on a single line,
And tossed at sea.

The whale is struggling,
The loose harpoon flaps from side to side
With sharpened steel.

Now imagine
Every boat on a single whale
With loose harpoons.

You’re gonna use it.
The image sifts back into your mind
Until the end.

Let’s not sully
The great defiance
In every action
With mere description!

Let’s prepare you
To construct
The moments as they come,
And I will step aside.

It’s not the way
You’re used to reading –
I’m aware of it.
Now let me step aside!

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea September 7, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea August 2, 2009

“The Advocate” approaches a similar question from the opposite end. Why, Ishmael asks, does society shun whaling as an unrespectable profession? Whaling is no more barbarous, nor requiring of any less bravery than military command, yet military command holds a much higher prestige in society. Whaling vessels have anonymously contributed more to the pursuit of discovery and exploration than the famous voyages of Captain Cook and others, but with no recognition of the feat. Whaling also contributes immensely to the world economy, and provides many highly useful commodities. In short, whaling deserves a much higher esteem than society affords.

At root, underneath the high salaries, underneath the impressive degrees from selective and expensive private universities, doctors and lawyers are practitioners, like plumbers, electricians, and engineers. All of these professions require great skill and craft, so why might the comparison seem like a loss of prestige for doctors and lawyers? Perhaps we don’t bestow upon other skilled laborers the respect they deserve.

Chapter 24: The Advocate

Listen here, I’ve had enough of this shit
Saying whaling is only for scoundrels (What?),
That it’s a dirty (Huh?), filthy (Who?), job for the base (Uh-uh!),
That we’re barbarian butchers at sea.

Tell me now of those soldiers you host
In the highest company (Uh, uh!).
They’re the bloodiest butchers you’ll ever meet
But they’d buckle at the sight of a fanning tail (Oooh!).

For what are the terrors of man
Compared to the terrors of beasts?

Our whaling ships are at the edge of the world
Bringing peace and information (Uh-huh!).
We’re diplomatic, democratic, and we spread it around
We’ve liberated colonies!

They say that whaling’s not respectable
Although the English call whales “a royal fish.”
But they insist (uh!), persist (uh!), they never let up (uh-uh!)
Saying there’s no good blood in our veins!
(Say what?)
They say there’s no good blood in our veins!
(Nuh-uh!)
They say there’s no good blood in our veins!

(Haven’t they heard of Benjamin Franklin,
Democratizer, father of nations?
His grandmother, a woman of whaling,
The matriarch sent her family a-sailing!)

I know . . . I know . . . I don’t understand it.
Maybe they’re just scared,

For what are the terrors of man
Compared to the terrors of beasts?

We make the world light up!

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 30, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea June 8, 2009

Chapter 56, “Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes,” recognizes that “the French are the lads for painting action,” and as such, can more accurately capture the image of a whale than other formal art.

Since Melville and the early Impressionists were contemporaries, and since Ishmael shouts out to French painters (though of an earlier era) in Chapter 56, I took a moment to think about Moby-Dick as an Impressionist painting. Melville wrote each chapter beautifully in its own right. I for one am fascinated by the minutiae of whaling life, of stories of the sea, of snippets and glimpses of each character in daily life. But these are just splotches, which taken in full bring a whole different level of life and movement.

I don’t know if Melville wrote Moby-Dick as a reaction to early Impressionism, or as a parallel reaction to whatever the Impressionists reacted to, or neither of the above, but I think it’s an interesting thought either way. Melville surely recognized the novel as imperfect, and perhaps with Moby-Dick strove simply to create a “less erroneous” picture of the world than those that came before, and that suddenly seems an awfully noble enterprise.

Chapter 56: Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes

Poetry in motion!
Poetry in motion!
So chop away
At their flanks, come on!

Poetry in motion!
Poetry in motion!
The war identity
Captured in every painting,
Good and True.

You’ll never have a picture
Without the reckoning force,
The justice of the scriptures,
Of nature’s course!

Humans live in the action!
Humans live in the action!
Construct a narrative
Through adversaries, oh!

Humans live in the action!
Humans live in the action!
Emotions conquering
Our studied observations
For the Truth.

You’ll never have a picture
Without the reckoning force,
The justice of the scriptures,
Of nature’s course!

Poetry in motion!
Poetry in motion!
So chop away
At their flanks, come on!

Poetry in motion!
Poetry in motion!
The war identity
Captured in every painting,
Good and True.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 21, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea May 9, 2009

“The Lamp” definitely speaks to the elevation and illumination born from labor — the men enjoying their “entire freedom” to dip as many makeshift lamps as they own into vats of pure, unprocessed oil — but I think it’s important to note that the chapter is part of a cycle that can hardly be called romantic. Though “The Lamp” finds workers at peace in an “illuminated shrine,” perhaps we can find a significance in the lamps illuminating the men as dead royalty, lifeless in the fruits of their labor. These are men liberated by their labor, but also men utterly spent in the process. Then again, perhaps the men in their labor have captured nature’s purity in a “fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore.” In the end we may find the answer in a line from the next chapter, speaking to the entire cycle of work: “Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.” And so we live it.

Chapter 97, The Lamp

I’m bathed in the light.
I shine in the purity –
A tailor of right,
Equal luminosity.

And the vessels of light are the common vials
Of the everyday man
Emptied of their recipe,
Retooled to help us see.

I live at the roots,
The primal dichotomy –
A fork in the road,
A choice in its infancy.

And I’m filling our lamps with the murdered beasts.
Only nature can lead
From the fool’s eternity,
Untainted by human beings.

Sleep in the light as if I’m only
Closing my eyes for a while.

[instrumental]

I’m bathed in the light.
I shine in the purity –
A tailor of right,
Equal luminosity.

And the vessels of light are the common vials
Of the everyday man
Emptied of their recipe,
Retooled to help us see.

And the vessels of light are the common vials,
And the vessels of light are the common vials,
And the vessels of light are the common vials
Of the everyday man,
To help us see.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 13, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea March 2, 2009