Response Journal Week 6/7 - Gabi

I want to break this response into two distinct sections, each one relating to a theme I found relevant in F. O. Matthiessen’s work.

1) Melville incorporates nature into Moby Dick in a very consistent way. His manner of doing so however is varied. Sometimes he seems to work with the traditional manner of evoking feelings of the sublime (pgs 19, 133, the whole of Chapter 17, “The Tail” etc.). He also, using his scientific knowledge, attempts to impart awe in the reader. He goes on and on about the magnificence of the whale, its spout, its tail, and about the glory of the ocean among other things. Matthiessen maintains that while Melville does to some extent praise the wonders of nature he “was never stirred by the advantages of living with animals.” (Matthiessen, 407). Taken literally this doesn’t make much sense. In Romantic Movement (which sort of overlaps with the period during which Melville was most active), the idea existed that going back to nature was ideal for man. This idea intersected with primitivism but in a gentler way. Within this context, it becomes relevant to compare Melville’s writing about nature and the idea of the sublime to a Romantic ideal of “living with animals” and the like. Matthiessen doesn’t connect Melville’s rejection of this ideal to the Romanticism or even the Romantic ideal as directly as I do, but I think a connection is definitely apparent. He argues that Melville sees this slight tendency towards primitivism as “a denial of the mind, and consequently... a regression to an immature state.” (Matthiessen, 407). In order to counter balance this tendency, Melville brings the reader back to 'intellectual civilization' with the bits of science that he intersperses throughout the novel. Not only does he use science, but he also uses very careful, observations about the physical appearances of things to the same effect. These more technical and/or physical observations are a one of the multiple mediums (along with, for example, more obvious philosophical rants) that Melville uses in order to arrive at the larger questions that interest him. At one point in the supplementary reading, Matthiessen addresses the issue of theater and how the medium itself was unappealing to Melville, who apparently greatly preferred the novel form. The novel form, combined with his scientific interjections (regardless of their periodic inaccuracy), along with the philosophical ramblings that the characters sometimes engage in, along with the plot line itself, all come together as a function of Melville’s search for certain truths about mankind. The idea of nature as sublime comes through in all of these particles. His bits of science and technical explanation (like for example Chapter 86, “The Tail” in particular) are intended to encourage his reader to be awed by the complexity of the whale, the ocean, and other natural components of his book. The philosophical ramblings are often in some way or another linked to nature or how a character’s immediate environment makes them feel. Lastly, the impressiveness of nature as handled in the plot should be pretty obvious.

2) Matthiessen compares Melville’s work, specifically Moby Dick to Shakespeare’s work. He does this in a few different capacities. Specifically, at one point he focuses on Shakespeare’s use of theater as an artistic medium. The theater necessitated a distinct treatment of the audience (this was in fact one of the reasons that Melville supposedly disdained of the theater form) which shaped the way Shakespeare’s works were written. Most people who have passed through even the most basic class on Shakespeare’s work are familiar with distinction between the portions of the play that were intended for the groundlings and those that were intended for the ‘more cultured’ upper class. Some jokes could be shared by all members of the audience, but some deeper commentaries were exclusively directed to an ‘elite.’ Matthiessen introduces the idea that Melville was so deeply influenced by Shakespeare’s form (a product of W.S.’s time and his medium) that he subconsciously imitated it to a degree. His more basic plot was intended for the ‘groundlings’ in his literary audience, and the deeper philosophical messages were intended to reach the more intellectually articulate members of the audience(Matthiessen, 415-416).While Matthiessen’s contention is interesting and even makes logical sense, it seems to contradict the actual work. To Matthiessen’s credit, the form of Melville’s novel makes any logical analysis of the work extremely challenging to formulate. However, the book is so epic in proportion that it is hard to imagine that any part of it would be formulated (whether consciously or not) to cater to a specific audience. The purely fictional element of the novel is so fundamentally integrated with it’s philosophical and ideological premise that the two are impossible to break apart—even with regards to accessibility. For example, Chapter 85 “The Fountain” is a combination of facts about the whale’s spout as well as a sort of poetic elegy to the whale. This chapter comes quite a bit after Chapter 62 “Stubb Kills a Whale,” but they are definitively interlinked. Towards the end of the earlier chapter, Melville describes the gory mess that Stubb makes in his hunt, “At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air...” (Melville, 233). At the beginning of the chapter Melville (or Ishmael) carefully described the puffs that came out of the whale’s spout. The hunting scene much earlier sets the stage for “The Fountain.” The chapters in which Melville becomes more ‘scientific’ work collaboratively with the rest of the narrative. If one attempts to break the novel into distinct pieces, one intended for a certain crowd and another intended for someone else, the book immediately falls apart. This is particularly interesting considering how jagged the narrative sometimes seems to be. Melville inserts often seemingly random chapters into an otherwise ‘smooth’ story-line. His style (at least in Moby Dick) is one of the things that makes his writing most unique. The chapters and different portions subsequently fall into place, like pieces in a puzzle (or at least this seemed to be Melville’s intention). Matthiessen mentions the idea of levels, specifically the levels into which Shakespeare’s theatrical works were divided (reflecting a split in the audience), but Moby Dick seems to be devoid of any distinct levels. There is no single part of the novel that is simply narrative or simply humor or simply philosophy or science. The components all bleed into each other.