Up To The Pulpit

Inhabiting that poise as readers, our senses have unexpectedly been heightened as each Chapter of Moby Dick breezes into its succesor. We are treading on this familar terrain, immortalized and so familar and despite the narrative generally we find ourselves testing this comfort by asking untimely Nietzschean questions. Melville paints an archetype of pursuit, pointing us outwards if only to allow Homer to take us home again.

These first seventy pages strike me as being steeped in brine. Not pickled but laden with the eternal, even as it rots or is devoured. Ajar from that, the atmosphere of New Bedford is placeless, stateless, a capricious breed dwelling on an unfinished map. Perhaps this isn't Melville or metaphor, but the truer nature of the maritime: passage and commerce along with the reek.

What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw
upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly
perished without a grave. (p.65)

I really like that passage.