The Literature Network - Melville, Lorenz Oken, and biology: engaging the "Long Now".(Herman Melville)(Critical essay)

Melville, Lorenz Oken, and biology: engaging the "Long Now".(Herman Melville)(Critical essay)

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From: Leviathan
Date: 20051001
Author:Barnum, Jill

In Moby-Dick Herman Melville intuited and illumined "the heart of [the] almighty forlornness" that has so often made its presence felt in our age. (1) By any modern measure, Melville's dark vision a century and a half ago was a clairvoyant lock on a uniquely American condition. The light he shed on that condition was slant and indirect, yet its visionary flashes cast long and flickering shadows that still lure and startle us today.

Melville had a sense of modernity that was unparalleled. Something in his vision was anticipated by a like-minded precursor, Lorenz Oken, and ...

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