M
a.

erett
Hy

/

Mh
i

a
—_—

SB Si aa eg eee

——

HHO

Pan \\e

pale

! ‘

Mh hin fee}
i Wf: Le ;

14 € OO) = > a PD) CO: <

|
HH
I! :
4} fe aes fi '
Hy I | a
HT a ne
Mpigifin! A i, ‘
i] ; if, if ; —
tf, :

f

2213

R65

Card No,
©1965 FOLKWAYS RECORDS & SERVICE Corp

Library of Congress Catalogue

> were as
Tele one SoS ane

SZ246 da SAVA\H iOS

oR

Le

NCEE

SAY,

<S .
See
Ss

©
Fi

Sa
Soe ere

1

by,

1

os

i

roa

Ses

COVER DESIGN BY RONALD CLYNE

SSSESE

es
sas

J. 07632

N.

Sewanee

’

ty
Records.

iffs

aes

iW)
, Ff
i

{

Hie

<
y
i

Dane
ae

€

New York C

F olkways/Scholastic
Englewood Cl

sa

Seen

by Herman Melv

oF ’
as

701 Seventh Ave
buted by

906 Sylvan Ave.,

Distr

We
ie

wow Soe ed
fet SSoeexn

ae

6

»;

oe
ey

wees
See
a oir eres

<9 Say
Tee
Neg ciceson

OF
eo
|
O I
N |
M |
» =
he |
» |
QA |
—
n |
Z |
6 |
eC
H |
OF
ix] |
hm |
iz] =
Q

or The Whale,

DESCRIPTIVE NOTES ARE INSIDE POCKET

EARS
vi
if

re
i
+s

Baan
o
; i
Mi
cone)
i
it

i)

’

a

vA

oe

ee
is

ot

ct

Oe

eich,

os

GZZ46 ld SAVM™ 104

=
eS

i

i

iy

FOLKWAYS RECORDS Album No. FL 9775
© 1965 Folkways Records and Service Corp., 701 Seventh Ave., NYC USA

MOBY-DICK
OF

The Whale

Herman Melville

Selections read by Louis Zorich

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE

by Ann Charters —— ee
When Moby-Dick was published in 1851, Melville was MELVILLE, HAWIHORNE, AND MOBY-DICK two guests from New York, Evert A. Duyckinck, a
living with his wife and family on a farm among the publisher's reader and mgazine editor who had helped
hills of Western Massachusetts, far from the sea. A Chapter from the book in preparation,* launch Melville's literary career, and Cornelius
While deep in the writing he imgined that his bed- Matthews, a young novelist and pamphleteer, went to
room resembled a ship's cabin: “at nights when I Writers in a Landscape, by Ann Charters the railroad station in Pittsfield to board a train
wake up and hear the wind shrieking, I almost fancy for Stockbridge. They were on their way to an outing
there is too much sail on the house, and I had better proposed by David Dudley Field, a barrister who
go on the roof and rig in the chimey," but most of vacationed in Stockbridge and who was Duyckinck's old
the book was written in a farmhouse facing a Berkshire This is a long letter, but you are not at all friend. Field had in mind a run up Monument Mountain,
view which he described in the opening chapter of Moby- bound to answer it. Possibly, if you do answer followed by an elaborate mid-day dinner at his summer
Dick: "woodlands. . . reaching to overlapping spurs it, and direct it to Herman Melville, you will mis- mansion. At the Pittsfield station, a wooden struc-
of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue." Literary send it -- for the very fingers that now guide this ture representing a local architect's vague notion of
critics who have charted the growth of Melville's pen are not precisely the same that just took it up an Egyptian palace, the three men were joined by
genius through Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), and put it on this paper. Lord, when shall we be Oliver Wendell Holmes, another summer vacationer in
Redburn (1819) and White Jacket (1850), discussing done changing? Ah! it's a long stage, and no inn the Berkshires, who carried a shiny rubber bag stored
the development of the 31 year old mariner who turned in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with bottles of champagne and ice for the morning
mystic in his remarkable romance about the last whal- with you for a passenger, I am content and can be climb (actually the only refreshment brought along to
ing voyage of the Pequod, have mentioned the important happy. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more the mountain “picnic").
influence on Melville of another writer living near satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing
him in the Berkshires while work on Moby-Dick was in you persuades me more than the Bible of our immor- The cars took them to Stockbridge fifteen miles down
progress. The Hawthorne-Melville friendship is one of tality. the line, where they left the train and were met by
the most famous relationships between American authors (Melville to Hawthorne, Pittsfield, Mass., their host, D.D. Field. At his home, perhaps after
because in the contact it would seem that Hawthorne November, 1851) sampling the champagne, they all took a practise
acted on Melville as a catalyst, releasing philosophi- run up a hill while waiting for the other members of
eal speculation unprecedented in Melville's earlier *From the doctoral dissertation the party. Finally other mountain climbers appeared,
works. Melville felt such a vital sense of apprecia- in American Literature, D.D. Field's daughter Jenny, and the Boston publisher
tion that he dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne "in Columbia University, 1965 James T. Fields, with a fancily dressed new bride on
token of my admiration for his genius." It is of his arm. With J.T. Fields was one of his authors,
course impossible to distinguish all the separate ele- Nathaniel Hawthorne, at 46 the oldest member of the
ments that contribute to the creative energies of a It began with a picnic, probably the most famous pic- group, who had left his wife Sophia behind to watch
writer, especially a man capable of the powerful vision nic ever held in the Berkshires. Melville had not the children in the cottage he was renting in the
of Moby-Dick, but a friendship was born in the Berk- yet bought his farm and wes staying with his cousin neighborhood. He had to be introduced to the gentle-
shires that undoubtedly helped produce what many Robert in Broadhall, the old family home outside men from New York. Later Duyckinck remembered the
readers consider the greatest novel ever written in Pittsfield. Early on the morning of August 5, 1850, author of The Scarlet Letter as "a quiet mn. . .~

America. four days after his 3lst birthday, Melville and his very handsome,” and Duyckinck went on in a letter to

~~

steersman to take new turns with the line, and hold it so; and
commanded the crew to turn round on their seats, and tow
the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line
felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air!

“What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!—’tis whole
again; oars! oars! Burst in upon him!”

Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat,
the whale wheeled round to present his vlank forehead at
bay; but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing
black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it the source of all
his persecutions; bethinking it—it may be—a larger and
nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing
prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.

Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. “I grow
blind; hands! stretch out before me that I may yet grope my
way. Is’t night?”

“The whale! The ship!” cried the cringing oarsmen.

“Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that
ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time
upon his mark! I see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men!
Will ye not save my ship?”

But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through
the sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-
ends of two planks burst through, and in an instant almost,
the temporarily disabled boat lay nearly level with the
waves; its half-wading, splashing crew, trying hard to stop
the gap and bale out the pouring water.

Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego’s
mast-head hammer remained suspended in his hand; and
the red flag, half-wrapping him as with a plaid, then
streamed itself straight out from him, as his own forward-
flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the
bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster
just as soon as he.

“The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye
sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck
die, if die he must, in a woman’s fainting fit. Up helm, I say
—ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is this the end of all my burst-
ing prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo,
thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm
again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow
drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot de-
part. My God, stand by me now!”

“Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are
that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin
at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or
kept Stubb awake, but Stubb’s own unwinking eye? And
now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattress that is all too
soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee,
thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call
ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost.
For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but
hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but
there’ll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab!
For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his
drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;—
cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry
ere we die!”

“Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow.
Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother’s drawn my part-pay ere
this; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage
is up.”

From the ship’s bows, nearly all the seamen now hung in-
active; hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, me-
chanically retained in their hands, just as they had darted
from their various employments; all their enchanted eyes
intent upon the whale, which from side to side strangely vi-
brating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of over-

spreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed.
Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his
whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the
solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship’s star-
board bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon
their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the har-
pooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the
breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents
down a flume.

“The ship! The hearse!—the second hearse!” cried Ahab
from the boat; “its wood could only be American!”

Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering
along its keel; but turning: under water, swiftly shot to the
surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards
of Ahab’s boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent.

“I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let
me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of
mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou
firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,—
death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me?
Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest ship-
wrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh,
now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief.
Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye
bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one
piled comber of my death! 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!”

The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward;
with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove;—
ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the
flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as
Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the
boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the
heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-
empty tub, knocked down an oaxsman, and smiting the sea,
disappeared in its depths.

For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then
turned, “The ship? Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they
through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading
phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the upper-
most masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or
fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan har-
pooneers still maintained their sinking look-outs on the sea.
And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and
all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and
spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one
vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured them-
selves over the sunken head of the Indian at the main-mast,
leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together
with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly un-
dulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying bil-
lows they almost touched;—at that instant, a red arm and a
hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the
act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding
spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-
truck downwards from its natural home among the stars,
pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this
bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing be-
tween the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling
that ethereal thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his
death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of
heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak

8

thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the
flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan,
would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of
heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning
gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all
collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it
rolled five thousand years ago.

EPILOGUE

“AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE.”
JOB.

THE DRAMA’S DONE. Why then here does any one step
fo:th?—Because one did survive the wreck.

It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was
he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab’s
bowsman, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the
same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed
from out the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating
on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it,
when the half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I
was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex.
When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round
and round, then, and ever contracting towards the button-
like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle,
like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital cen-

tre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by |

reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoy-
ancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot length-
wise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed
up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I
floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks,
they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the
savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second
day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It
was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search
after her missing children, only found another orphan.
FINIS

UTHO IN U.S.A.

aint

Joann Miller to confide that "He (Hawthorne) has a
sort of hestitating manner and peculiar half timid

smile which reminded me of our friend Miss Coddington."

The last member of the party, young Harry Sedgwick,
representing local Stockbridge aristocracy, arrived
on horseback after the others had started.

Field's carriage took the party to the foot of
Monument Mountain, a few miles south of Stockbridge,
and when the climbers chose an easy trail to the
summit, Melville, in high spirits, abandoned the
path and scrambled up over the sharp rocks to more
precipitous slopes. Half-way up the trail they were
deluged with a sudden shower, and legend has it that
Hawthorne and Melville sought shelter under the same
overhanging rocks. Under a hastily improvised tree-
umbrella, Holmes uncorked champagne, pouring it into
silver mugs. When the shower passed they continued

to the summit, everyone in understandably high spirits.

Holmes affected the symptoms of vertigo and moaned
that he was "epigastrically affected" by heights;
Hawthorne peered around in an elaborate search for
the great carbuncle; while Melville became a young
sailor again and mounted a projecting rock, pre-
tending it was a bowsprit and hauling on imaginary
ropes "for our delectation," Fields later remen-
bered. Cornelius Matthews than seized the occasion
to bring up the question of literary nationalism, a
thorny issue in a group that had representatives
from the traditionally antagonistic camps of Boston
and New York. But Matthews had brought along a copy
of Bryant's poem "Monument Mountain" and insisted on
declaiming the blank verse saga of the Berkshire
Indian maiden who threw herself off a cliff near where
the party was standing. The young New Yorker had
not chosen one of Holmes' favorite pieces, but the
Boston Brahmin endured the reading. Probably as a
tactful host, D.D. Field urged his guests to forget
literature while descending the mountain on their
way back to dinner.

In Stockbridge, over a three hour spread of turkey,
roast beef, and ice cream "well moistened by the way,"
the conversation again turned to literary nationalism.
Holmes had his revenge, soon vanquishing the Light-
weight Matthews who somewhat blindly insisted that
America should produce Niagras of poetry and Missi-
sippis of prose. Forcing the logical absurdity of
the argument, Holmes scornfully predicted that "in
less than twenty years it would be a common thing

to grow in these United States men sixteen and seven- a
teen feet high; and intellectual in proportion"; as
Duyckinck recalled, he "drew the company out by
laying down various propositions of the superiority
of Englishmen-" If Matthews was no match for the
wily doctor, Melville was ready to give battle.
Accounts of Hawthorne vary -- Duyckinck said he
"looked on," while Fields remembered he “rayed out

in a sparkling and unwonted manner," "stoutly" taking
the part of the Americans with Melville. There was
no reason for Fields to favor either Holmes or
Hawthorne; he had them both under contract for new
books.

exchanged after this time. After buying Arrowhead,
the Melvilles were busy transporting their household
from New York City to Pittsfield. Melville wrote
Evert Duyckinck on October 6, 1850, that at his farm
there was "Every thing to be done, and scarcely any
one to help me do it." ‘The famous author of five ad-
venture books about the sea, who had lived among the
cannibals, was also in great demand at social func-
tions at nearby Broadhall, which was sold about the
same time Melville bought Arrowhead, to the wealthy
John Morewood and his wife Sarah. The Morewoods liked
nothing better than to arrange lavish picnics, fancy
dress balis, fishing trips to Pontoosuc Lake, and
long group walks in the mountains, which the
Melvilles often attended. A local journalist, J.E.A.
Smith, who knew Melville in the Berkshires, wrote,
"In Pittsfield he did not exclude himself from the
entertainments of the local social circle in which
his family moved, nor was he ever neglectful of any
of the reasonable observances required by its
etiquette."

But the main reason that Melville and Hawthorne met
only infrequently in the Berkshires was that both
men were deeply engaged in finishing books the
winter of 1850-51. Hawthorne had started writing
The House of the Seven Gables shortly after the pic-
nic to Monument Mountain, and Melville had brought
with him from New York to Pittsfield an incompleted
manuscript of a novel he had hoped originally to
finish in late autum, 1850. The full social
calendar at Broadhall and the move with his wife,
young son, mother and sisters to Arrowhead undoubted-
ly delayed Melville's work schedule, and the meetings
with Hawthorne in August and September, 1850, may
also have effected his plans for the unfinished book,
As the critic Howard P. Vincent has said about the
writing of Moby-Disk» there is only "seanty" evi-
dence for following the growth of the novel through
the winter of 1850-51, but it is important to keep
in mind that the Hawthorne-Melville relationship was
first of all a writers’ friendship. A book the
length and magnitude of Moby-Dick took a vast amount
of hard, solitary labor, and by December 16, 1850
(inserted incorrectly as "this sixteenth day of
Decenber, A.D. 1851" in chapter LXXV of Moby-Dick),
Melville was deep into it.

He broke off in March, 1851, to share with Hawthorne
"excellent Montedo sherry" and "most potent Port...
mulled wine with wisdom, and buttered toast with
story-telling" when Hawthorne and his seven year
old daughter Una came to stay at least two days --
and perhaps a week -- at Arrowhead. With the com-
pleted manuscript of The House of the Seven Gables
in the printer's hands, Hawthorne was at ease to
listen sympathetically to his friend, who might have
been having plot difficulty with his own half-finish-
ed book. Scholars have tried to trace the design of
Moby-Dick as it grew from a romance Melville thought
could wrap off in six months to an epic which
didn't reach completion until nearly a year later,

Hawthorne's journal for August 5, 1850, contained a
note on the picnic that was also his first mention
of Melville in the Berkshires. Particularly

struck by the young author who had maintained an
argument against the Boston Autocrat » Hawthorne
also wrote his friend Horatio Bridge two days later,
"Duyckinek, of the Literary World, and Herman
Melville are in Berkshire, and I expect them to
call here this morning... I met Melville, the other
day, and like him so much that I have asked him to
spend a few days with me before leaving these parts."

On the morning of August 7th the expected visitors
arrived; not only Melville and his two houseguests,
but also his son Malcom, eighteen months old
("Melville, Junior" as Hawthorne listed him in his
journal). While the men talked they strolled down
the path to admire the beautiful lake nearby, and
for refreshments there was again champagne.
Melville's visit had been enough of an event for
Hawthorne to write Horatio Bridge the next day,
"Duyckinck and Melville called as expected; but
Melville's visit of a few days is yet to be paid --
my invitation having been prospective » &8 he spends
some time in Berkshire. .. "

The third meeting of Hawthorne and Melville in the
Berkshires -- only eight have been recorded --
apparently occured more than a week later » on August
17, 1850 » the day of the publication of the first
installment of Melville's now famous review of
Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, (Duyckinck
probably brought the review back to New York for
his magazine when he left Broadhall on August 12th).
Melville wrote Duyckinck from the Berkshires on
August 16th, thanking him for an advance copy of
the Literary World with his essay in it, and adding
at the end of the letter, "If it is a fair day, I
shall drive to Hawthorne's tomorrow, and deliver
his parcels."

Hawthorne kept no record of this visit, but the
parcels Melville had been sent by Duyekinck as
presents for the Hawthornes mist have been de-
livered because on August 29th » Sophia Hawthorne
wrote her thanks to the journalist. Unknown to
Melville, he had delivered a wrapped package of
his own books. Sophia wrote in her letter, "We

2

since the novel may have been first conceived as
another sea story like Redburn or Whitejacket,
centering about a conflict between two sailors
aboard ship, perhaps an officer and a common sailor,
& plot that interested Melville as late as Billy
Budd. But shortly after Hawthorne's visit to
Arrowhead, after days of "smoking and talking
metaphysics in the barn," Melville found the courage
to return to the more ambitious plan of moral allegory
that had brought him critical disfavor and financial
disaster the first time he had tried in Mardi. Ex-
actly when the White Whale took central place in the
unfinished manuscript is unknown, but shortly after
the visit with Hawthorne, Melville's father-in-law
sent him Owen Chase's Narrative of the Most Extra-
ordi. and Distress Shi ck of the Whale-
ship Essex, of Nantucket; Which Was Attacked and

Fi Destro by a Large rmaceti-Whale in
The Pacifie Ocean. With Chase's Narrative, the
plot of a grand conflict between an extraordinary
man and a near mythical whale may have taken final
shape in Melville's mind; and with Hawthorne's
encouraging example that the creative writer could
honestly express his thoughts on great moral ques-
tions, Melville went on to transform his sixth ad-
‘venture story into a great American epic romance.

Two weeks after Hawthorne's March visit, Melville had
spent so much time with the Moby-Dick manuscript
that he had a recurrence of his old trouble with
eye strain. It was a time akin to madness for hin,
when all the world reflected his obsession with Ahab
and the whale. When in April Hawthorne presented
him with the newly published House of the Seven
Gables, Melville spent a day reading it, and then
wrote Hawthorne his impressions, a rambling letter
that veered off sharply in a long paragraph that
might have just as well been ruminations about Moby-
Dick.

We think that into no recorded mind has the in-
tense feeling of the visable truth ever enter-
ed more deeply than into this man's (Hawthorne).
By visable truth, we mean the apprehension of
the absolute condition of present things as
they strike the eye of the man who fears them
not, though they do their worst to him, -- the
man who, like Russia or the British Empire,
declares himself a sovereign nature (in himself)
amid the powers of heaven, hell, and earth. He
may perish; but so long as he exists he insists
upon treating with all Powers upon an equal
basis. If any of those other Powers choose to
withhold certain secrets, let them; that does
not impair my sovereignty in myself; that does
not make me tributary.

How directly Hawthorne influenced the creation of
Moby-Dick is hard to say. Certainly to Melville,
his neighbor was one of the great authors, like
Shakespeare, who did not fear to reveal the "things,
which we feel to be terrifically true, that it were

3

have been very mich interested in Mr. Melville's
books, and we are very much obliged to you for
them. Mr. Hawthorne has read them all on the new
hay in the barn, which is a delightful place for
the perusal of worthy books."

Duyekinck probably read the letter with pleasure ?
for he was also the editor of the review in the
Lite: World whieh mystified Hawthorne's wife.
She asked him in the same letter, "The Viginian
is the first person who has ever in print appre-
hended Mr. Hawthorne. . . Who can he be, so fear-
less, so rich in heart, of such fine intiution?
Is his name altogether hidden?"

The essay on Hawthorne's Mosses by the so-called
"Virginian spending a summer in Vermont" was cer-
tainly the most important discussion to date of
Hawthorne's work. If Melville's comparison of
Hawthorne to Shakespeare was extravagent » Melville
was nevertheless making a sound point: Hawthorne

was the most important novelist yet produced in
America, worthy of being considered by critics as
respectfully as they dealt with English writers.
(Perhaps this idea occured to Melville as an exten-
tion of the debate on American and English Literature
he had with Holmes after Monument Mountain.) Further-
more, in the Mosses review Melville wrote of the
philosophical rapport he felt with Hawthorne's work.
Hawthorne's "great power of blackness" derived "its
force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of
Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visi-
tations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking
mind is always and wholly free."

"The Virginian" became better known to the Hawthornes
when he spent five days with them September 3-7, 1850,
and a week later, on September 1}, 1850, he made him-
self their bona fide neighbor. With a $3,000 loan
from his father-in-law Judge Lemel Shaw, Melville
bought a farm in the country two miles outside of
Pittsfield adjoining Broadhall on the east, with an
old two-story farmhouse located only a few yards from
a@ main carriage route between Pittsfield and Lenox.
Shortly afterwards, on a moonlit night, Melville rode
the six miles to visit the Hawthornes and in his en-
thusiasm told them that he was "really going to build
@ real towered house -- an actual tower" on his
property. By this time he was mich better known to
them. They had discovered he was the author of the
famous review in the Lite World, and there had
apparently been "some aati choral conversations" be-
tween him and Sophia about her husband. Her own
fondest convictions about her husband were pleasant-
ily confirmed when Melville told her that "Mr.
Hawthorne was the first person whose physical being
appeared to him wholly in harmony with the intellec-
tual and spiritual."

Although there were several meetings between Melville
and Hawthorne in September, 1850, extenuating circum-
stances explain why there were not frequent visits

— =e —_— a
but madness for any good man, in his own proper
character, to utter, even to hint of them." In
Shakespeare's play, Melville wrote, "Tormented into
desperation, Lear, the frantic king, tears off the
mask, and speaks the same madness of vital truth."
In Moby-Dick, Ahab also knew "All visible objects,
» are but as pasteboard masks. But in each
event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed --
there, some unknown, but still reasoning thing puts
forth the mouldings of its features from behind the
unreasoning mask. If a man will strike, strike
through the mask. . . Talk not to me of blasphemy,
man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me..."

Hawthorne was a man with whom Melville might share
his apprehension of what lay behind the mask of
visible objects, that perhaps there was after all
"no secret. We incline to think that the Problem
of the Universe is like the Freemason's mighty
secret, so terrible to all children. It turns

out, at last, to consist in a triangle, a mliet,
and an apron, -- nothing more! We incline to think
that God cannot explain His own secrets, and that He
would like a little informtion upon certain points
Himself." For Melville, "no secret" was a terrible
secret, and he told Hawthorne that "it has bred
great exhilaration and exultation" to know "that
the architect of the Gables resides only six miles
off, and not three thousand miles away, in England,
say.e" The discussions between the two men, unre-
corded but suggested in the Melville letters and the
excitement in the long speeches and interior mono-
logues of Moby-Diek, were Hawthorne's contributions
to the book. From this friendship Melville was en-
couraged to write what was in the depth of his heart;
he had written "a wicked book," he told his friend,
but he felt "spotless as the lamb."

=
= SSS

= Ss a

In the spring of 1851, with Moby-Diek "in his flurry",
Melville broke away from the manuscript to labor be-
hind a plow, hurriedly finishing as much of the plant-
ing on his farm as he could himself, so that he could
get back to the novel. He had talked with Hawthorne
about a possible excursion together to New York, but
by the time Moby-Dick was ready for the printer in
June, 1851, Melville left for the city himself, as
his friend was engaged in another writing project,
The Wonder Book.

AN THE Wil

Finally came an afternoon when all books were out
of the way and the two writers found themselves
simultaneously at leisure. On August 1, 1851,
Melville's 32nd birthday, he saddled his horse and
rode over to see Hawthorne. The visit occured while
Hawthorne was keeping the journal called "Twenty
Days with Julian and Little Bunny," and he describ-
ed with great enjoyment how he and his guest sat up
together very late, after Melville had drunk one cup
of tea, but only one, "because it would keep him
awake." Sophia was away with Hawthorne's young
daughters visiting in West Newton, and the two men
had one of their best talks that night, "about time
and eternity, things of this world and of the next,
and books, and publishers, and all possible and in-
possible matters..." They were so mich at their
ease talking on the antique ottoman and the ancient
carved chair in the drawing room of the Little Red
House, with the bust of Apollo and Correggio's
Madona looking on, that Hawthorne and his guest even
smoked cigars together, an indulgence they knew
Sophia did not permit indoors. It was probably one
of their most rewarding visits, and it was good it
"lasted pretty deep into the night." Only one
other meeting between Hawthorne and Melville was
recorded in the Berkshires, the next week, August

8, 1851, when Evert and George Duyckinck and
Hawthorne and Melville had “a day of days" driving
through the countryside.

There is a sense of irony in the timing of events
after this meeting. Moby-Dick was published in
mid-November, 1851, and shortly afterwards, almost
as if to suggest that the Hawthorne-Melville
friendship was linked with the book, the two men
were no longer neighbors. It was a conspiracy of
circumstances, for Hawthorne intended to live in
the Berkshires at least through the winter, but on
November 2lst, as a result of an unfortunate misun-
derstanding about property rights with the landlord
of the Little Red House, Hawthorne and his family
moved away. The last words on Moby-Dick had been
exchanged between the two men only a few days be~
fore his departure, when Hawthorne sent Melville

a "plain, bluff letter" praising the book and

Side One, Band l.

Loomings

Catt me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how
long precisely—having little or no money in my purse,
and ae particular to mterest me on shore, I thought

il about a, little and see the watery part of the
world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing
grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly
November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily
pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear
of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos
get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the
street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then,
I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This
is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical
flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take
to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but
knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean

I would sa:

with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted
round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce
surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take
you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where
that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes,
which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look

at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.
Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence,
by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like
silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon
thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads;
some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some
high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better sea-
ward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent
up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches,
clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields

gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the
water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing
will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loiter-
ing under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not
suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they
possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—amiles
of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and
alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west.
Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue
of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract

them thither?

Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high
land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to
one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by
a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most
absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—
stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that
region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American
desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be
supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one

knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreami-

CHAPTER 1

offering to review it. Melville spurned the offer:
"Don't write a word about the book. That would be
robbing me of my miserly delight" -- and charged,
"You did not care a penny for the book. But, now
and then as you read, you understood the pervading
thought that impelled the book -- and that you
praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough
to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul."

One would assume that Melville also spoke with

Hawthorne in person, but the only record of Melville's
activities is in a letter from Sarah Morewood describ-

ing a recent "amusement" to George Duyckinck, dated
November 21, 1851, the day Hawthorne left the Berk-
shires.
A party of friends were spending the evening
with us -- Mr. Melville and three of his
sisters among the number -- we agreed by way
of amusement to write names for our cows
and house -- and to decide by drawing lots --
I drew for the house Broadhall -- for the
three cows -- Molly Polly and Dolly. Miss
Kate Melville had the naming of the house --
Herman Melville the cows --

For Melville, Hawthorne, and Moby-Dick, the dram
was done.

Side One

Band 1. Chapter 1. "Loomings" ao t55

Band 2. Chapter 36. "The Quarter Deck." 925"

Ahab and All."

(Beginning )

Side Two

Band 1. Chapter 36. "The Quarter Deck." 11°20"
(Conclusion)

Band 2. Chapter 135. "Ihe Chase - Third 16115"

Day"
(The last of the
chase and Epilog)

Recorded under the supersion of Samuel Charters,
Recording by Cue Studio, New York.

A NOTE ON THE SELECTION

While Moby-Dick is such a complex and profound book
that eee tee a@ complete reading could begin to
do it justice, this long-playing record has been
produced in the belief that a dramtic reading of
parts of the text by a professional actor can sug-
gest new dimensions of the novel to students, as
well as provide entertainment for the general reader.

4

est, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic
landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief
element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a
hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and
here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up
from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant
woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping
spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though
the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree
shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head,
yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon
the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June,
when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep
among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—

Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara
but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles
to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon sud-
denly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether
to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his
money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is
almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul
in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon
your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such
a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship
were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians
hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate
deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not with-
out meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story
of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the torment-
ing, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and
was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all
rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phan-
tom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea
whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin
to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have
it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go
as a passenger ‘you must needs have a purse, and a purse is
but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, pas-
sengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of
nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;
—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am some-
thing of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a
Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of
such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abomi-
nate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations
of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do
to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques,
brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,
—though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a
cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow,
I never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled,
judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and pep-
pered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully,
not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is
out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon
broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mum-
mies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the
pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before
the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the
royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some,
and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in
a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleas-
ant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly
if you come of an old established family in the land, the

5

Chapters 1 and 36, and the last half of the final
chapter 135 were selected to emphasize points of
major significance in the novel. The opening pages
of Moby-Dick, "Loomings," introduce Ishmael and
suggest some reasons for his -- and Melville's --
decision to go to sea, expressed with the novel's
characteristic power and evocative assurance.
Chapter 36, "The Quarter Deck," contains the bril-
liant psychological portrayal of Ahab and certain
important members of his crew revealed at the de-
cisive moment when Ahab commits them to a unified
participation in the chase of the White Whale.
Chapter 135, "The Chase - Third Day" and “Epilogue”
describe the last efforts of Ahab to conquor the
Whale, the mgnificent action of the Pequod's
destruction, and the calm that followed.

The text has not been altered for this reading ex-
cept in the instance of the phrase "Buoyed up by
that coffin" in the Epilogue; for clarity it has
been changed to "Buoyed up by Queequeg's coffin,"
referring to the coffin that Queequeg built for
himself when he became il] on the Pequod and feared
death (chapter 110); later it was made into a spare
life-buoy (chapter 127) when the first man to mount
the mast to look for Moby-Dick fell from his perch
and drowned.

When Ahab shouts, "The ship! The hearse! -- the
second hearse! Its wood could only be American,"
he is referring to the second part of the prophecy
made by the Parsee Fedellah, who ever since his
first appearance as one of Ahab's secret crew
aboard ship (chapter 48), has been a diabolical
presence.

The first part of the prophecy, that he should be
killed before Ahab, came true in the previous chapter
(134), leaving Ahab to ponder how "he should go be-
fore me, my pilot, and yet be seen again.” Just be-
fore the last selection begins, the dead Parsee has
been seen lashed to the whale's back, and now Ahab
awaits the fulfillment “of the last letter of thy

word," the still veiled reference to the second hearse.

ABOUT THE READER

Louis Zorich, who was born in Chicago and studied
acting at Goodman's, has done a wide variety of
roles on Broadway and the Off-Broadway stage, as
well as television appearances on programs like
Defenders, Naked City, Route 66, and the Hallmark
Hall of Fame. He was a member of the American
Theatre Group at the McCarter Theatre at Princeton
University in the 1964 season. He has toured the
United States with Arthur Miller's "View From The
Bridge," and his recent Broadway appearances have
included "Beckett," with Sir Laurence Olivier and
Anthony Quinn, and the Orson Wells adaptation of
"Moby Dick," with Rod Steiger.

Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And
more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the
tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster,
making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transi-
tion is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a
sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the
Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears
off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me
to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that
indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the
New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks
anything the less of me, because I promptly and respect-
fully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who
aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old
sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump
and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that
it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served
in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical
point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed
round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-
blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make
a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never
pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the
contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is
all the difference in the world between paying and being
paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.
But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane
activity with which a man receives money is really marvel-
lous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be
the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a
monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the
wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck.
For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent
than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the
Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore
on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand
from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it
first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty
lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time
that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that
after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor,
I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who
has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me,
and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can
better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going
on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme
of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came
in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more ex-
tensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill
must have run something like this:

“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the
United States

“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL
“BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN”
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage

managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of
a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnifi-

cent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in
genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I can-
not tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs
and motives which being cunningly presented to me under
various disguises, induced me to set about performing the
part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was
a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and dis-
criminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea
of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious
monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant
seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable,
nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending
marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped
to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such
things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I
am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.
I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror,
and could still be social with it—would they let me—since
it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of
the place one lodges in. ;

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage
was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world
swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my
purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul,
endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

Side One, Band 2, CHAPTER 36

The Quarter-Deck
[Enter Ahab: Then, all]

IT was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that
one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont,
ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-
captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen,
after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden.

Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he
paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread,
that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with
the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too,
upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would
see still stranger foot-prints—the foot-prints of his one
unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.

But on the occasion in question, those dents looked
deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper
mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every
uniform turn that he made, now at the mainmast and now
at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in
him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so com-
pletely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the
inward mould of every outer movement.

“D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb; “the chick
that’s in him pecks the shell. "Twill soon be out.” ‘

The hours wore on;—Ahab now shut up within his cabin;
anon, pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of
purpose in his aspect.

It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt
by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-
hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered
Starbuck to send everybody aft.

“Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or
never given on ship-board except in some extraordinary
case.

simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be
enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blas-
phemous.”

“Hark ye yet again,—the little lower layer. All visible
objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each
event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some
unknown but still reasoning thing put forth the mouldings
of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man
will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner
reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me,
the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes
I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks
me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an
inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is
chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the
white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk
not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted
me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other;
since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presid-
ing over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that
fair play. Who’s over me? Truth has no confines. Take off
thine eye! more intolerable than fiends’ glarings is a doltish
stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted
thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in
heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom
warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense
thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted
tawn—living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The
Pagan leopards—the unrecking and unworshipping things,
that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life
they feel! the crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and
all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he
laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand
up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot,
Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. Tis but to help strike
a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From
this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket,
surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has
clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see!
the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!—Aye, aye! thy
silence, then, that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from
my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck
now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion.”

“God keep me!—keep us all!” murmured Starbuck,
lowly.

But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the
mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet
the low laugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibra-
tions of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap
of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts
sank in. For again Starbuck’s downcast eyes lightened up
with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died
away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved
and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings!
why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predic-
tions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predic-
tions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things
within. For with little external to constrain us, the inner-
most necessities in our being, these still drive us on.

“The measure! the measure!” cried Ahab.

Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the har-
pooneers, he ordered them to produce their weapons. Then
ranging them before him near the capstan, with their har-
poons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side
with their lances, and the rest of the ship’s company formed
a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly
eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his,
as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of

“Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab. “Mast-heads,
there! come down!”

When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and
with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were
eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon
when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing
over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the
crew, started from his stand-point; and as though not a soul
were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With
bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, un-
mindful of the wondering whispering among the men; till
Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have
summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a
pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently
pausing, he cried:—

“What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”

“Sing out for him!” was the impulsive rejoinder from a
score of clubbed voices.

“Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones;
observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected
question had so magnetically thrown them.

“And what do ye next, men?”

“Lower away, and after him!”

“And what tune is it ye pull to, men?”

“A dead whale or a stove boat!”

More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approv-
ing, grew the countenance of the old man at every shout;
while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other, as
if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so
excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.

But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-
revolving in his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up
a shroud, and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it, ad-
dressed them thus:—

“All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give
orders about a white whale. Look ye! d’ye see this Spanish
ounce of gold?”—holding up a broad bright coin to the
sun—“it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D’ye see it? Mr.
Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.”

While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without
speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the
skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without
using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself,
producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that
it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his
vitality in him.

Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced to-
wards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand,
exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high raised
voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raises me a white-
headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw;
whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with
three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look you,
whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall
have this gold ounce, my boys!”

“Huzza! huzza!” cried the seamen, as with swinging
tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.

“It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed Ahab, as he threw
down the top-maul; “a white whale. Skin your eyes for him,
men; look sharp for white water; if ye see but a bubble,
sing out.”

All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had
looked on with even more intense interest and surprise than
the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and
crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately
touched by some specific recollection.

“Captain Ahab,” said Tashtego, “that white whale must
be the same that some call Moby Dick.”

6

their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the
bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the
Indian.

“Drink and pass!” he cried, handing the heavy charged
flagon to the nearest seaman. “The crew alone now drink.
Round with it, round! Short draughts—long swallows, men;
tis hot as Satan’s hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently.
It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye.
Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this way it
comes. Hand it to me—here’s a hollow! Men, ye seem the
years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!

“Attend now, my braves, I have mustered ye all round
this capstan; and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and
ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons; and ye, stout
mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble
custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will
yet see that Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come
not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run
brimming again, wer’t not thou St. Vitus’ imp—away, thou
ague!

“Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me.
Well done! let me touch the axis.” So saying, with extended
arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances at their
crossed centre; while so doing, suddenly and nervously
twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from Starbuck
to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by
some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have
shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated
within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three
mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic
aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the
honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.

“Tn vain!” cried Ahab; “but, maybe, ’tis well. For did ye
three but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own
electric thing, that had perhaps expired from out me. Per-
chance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye
need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint
ye three cup bearers to my three pagan kinsmen there—
yon three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my
valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the
great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for
ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension,
that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut
your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!”

Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now
stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some
three feet long, held, barbs up, before him.

“Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them
over! know ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So,
so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. The irons! take them;
hold them while I fill!” Forthwith, slowly going from one
officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with
the fiery waters from the pewter.

“Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous
chalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this
indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done!
Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye har-
pooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful
whaleboat’s bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if
we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” The long, barbed
steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions
against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously
quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and
shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter
went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his
free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired
within his cabin. 7

“Moby Dick?” shouted Ahab. “Do ye know the white
whale then, Tash?”

‘Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes
down?” said the Gay-Header deliberately.

“And has he a curious spout, too,” said Daggoo, “very
bushy, even for a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain
Ahab?”

“And he have one, two, tree—oh! good many iron in
him hide, too, Captain,” cried Queequeg disjointedly, “all
twisketee be-twisk, like him—him—” faltering hard for a
word, and screwing his hand round and round as though
uncorking a bottle—“like him—him—”

“Corkscrew!” cried Ahab, “aye, Queequeg, the harpoons
lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout
is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a
pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-
shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a
squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have
seen—Moby Dick—Moby Dick!”

“Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and
Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing
surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which
somewhat explained all the wonder. “Captain Ahab, I have
heard of Moby Dick—but it was not Moby Dick that took
off thy leg?”

“Who told thee that?” cried Ahab; then pausing, “Aye,
Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that
dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead
stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted with a
terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken
moose; “Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that
tazed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and
a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless impreca-
tions he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round
Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway
Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him
up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase
that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides
of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out, What
say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do
look brave.”

“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, run-
ning closer to the excited old man: “A sharp eye for the
White Whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!”

“God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout.
“God bless ye, men. Steward! go draw the great measure
of grog. But what’s this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt
thou not chase the white whale? art not game for Moby
Dick?”

Side Two, Band 1.

“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of
Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of
the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not
my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy
vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab?
It will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”

“Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck;
thou requirest a little lower layer. If money’s to be the
measure, man, and the accountants have computed their
great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas,
one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee,
that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here!”

“He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb,“what’s that for?
Methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.”

“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that

Side Two, Band 2.

Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly
impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last
when Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to
distinguish Starbuck’s face as he leaned over the rail, he
hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him, not too
swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he saw
Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the
three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two
staved boats which had but just been hoisted to the side,
and were busily at work in repairing them. One after the
other, through the portholes, as he sped, he also caught fly-
ing glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on
deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all
this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other
hammers seemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied.
And now marking that the vane or flag was gone from the
main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just
gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a
hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.

Whether fagged by the three days’ running chase, and the
resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore;
or whether it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in
him: whichever was true, the White Whale’s way now began
to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly nearing him
once more; though indeed the whale’s last start had not been
so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the
waves the unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so perti-
naciously stuck to the boat; and so continually bit at the ply-
ing oars, that the blades became jagged and crunched, and
left small splinters in the sea, at almost every dip.

“Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to
your oars. Pull on! ’tis the better rest, the shark’s jaw than
the yielding water.”

“But at every bite, Sir, the thin blades grow smaller and
smaller!”

“They will last long enough! pull on!—But who can tell”
—he muttered—‘whether these sharks swim tu feast on the
whale or on Ahab?—But pull on! Aye, all alive, now—we
near him. The helm! take the helm; let me pass,”—and so
saying, two of the oarsmen helped him forward to the bows
of the still flying boat.

At length as the craft was cast to onc side, and ran rang-
ing along with the White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely
oblivious of its advance—as the whale sometimes will—and
Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which,
thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled round his great,
Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when,
with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted
to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer
curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to
the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways
writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow,
and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat
over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gun-
wale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have
been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen—
who foreknew not the precise instant of the dart, and were
therefore unprepared for its effect-—these were flung out;
but so fell, that, in an instant two of them clutched the
gunwale again, and rising to its level on a combing wave,
hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man help-
lessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.

Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungrad-
uated, instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted
through the weltering sea. But when Ahab cried out to the

FOLKWAYS Records.

AND SERVICE CORP., 701 SEVENTH AVE., N.Y.C.

Leng Playing Non-Breakable Micro Groove 33/3 K°M

© 1965 by Folkways Records & Service Corp.

MOBY DICK

Selections read by Louis Zorich
SIDE 1
Bec 5 a FL9775A

Band 1. Chapter 1
Band 2. Chapter 36 (Beginning)

FOLKWAYS Records

AND SERVICE CORP., 701 SEVENTH AVE., N.Y.C.

Long Playing Non-Breakable Micro Groove 33/5 RPM

© 1965 by Folkways Records & Service Corp

MOBY DICK

Selections read by Louis Zorich

Bh) | 1) yd

33% RPM FL9775B

Band 1. Chapter 36 (Conclusion)

Band 2. Chapter 135, the last of the
chase and Epilog