Viva La Propagandista

i12bent:

Melville’s Moby-Dick continues to inspire artists and writers alike…

Above: Poster by Mark Weaver

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!” — H.M.

Robert Gibbons: The Soul of Melville

Both of us noticed the richness & depth of light in November First, as if it were the richest & deepest yet, but today relapsed into light mixed with darkness most All Souls’ Days demand from below. No denying their presence, movement, agitation. When I walked alone I didn’t feel alone. Detoured into the bramble for what must be the last raspberries for the year, imagining that if I dropped even a drop of blood-red juice Souls would form a long ritual line of Homeric Nekuia. The search for Melville’s Soul brought me all the way up to Brunswick & Hawthorne’s former college, where within the confines of the library I stumbled on Melville’s June 1, 1851 letter to his friend. “Dollars damn me…,” tossing me forward onto the same citation in Olson’s Call Me Ishmael. The week before Melville writes to Harper asking for an advance for The Whale. Hermetic research at its fortuitous, intuitive best, which I take no credit for, but offer up as valid evidence. Dollars damn me is just the internal/infernal/eternal debate I left the house, as if a wreck, this morning. But listen, hear, Melville picks up the gauntlet within the same letter, saying he’ll not “write the other way” in order to sell more books, or patronage or fame, but continue on with the path of difficulty, until together he & Hawthorne reach Paradise & find a shady patch of grass to stretch out & cross their celestial legs, while sipping from their smuggled basket of Champagne, “(I won’t believe in a Temperance Heaven),” adding, “Let me be infamous…”