Progymnasmata

I'm a sucker for well-turned prose -- for aphorisms, one-liners, and sage advice. So I thought I'd compile some from my current book, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

In addition to the Moby-Dick material, I'll briefly reflect on those ideas.

On Religion and Faith
"I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things [unfamiliar religious practices], and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not. . . .Heaven have mercy on us all -- Presbyterians and Pagans alike-- for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending." (Chapter XVII)

In this passage Ishmael addresses his astonishing tolerance of Queequeg's worship of his wooden idol "Yojo". The lines quoted here underscore Ishmael's identification with outsiders and his almost existential, ironically Calvinistic sense that all humanity is bound by shared depravity.

I'd forgotten just how wonderful a narrator Ishmael is. . .his presence in the story and his occasional chatting directly with the reader -- "Call me Ishmael" -- help us to snuggle up to his idiosyncrasies and, in a way, call those same idiosyncrasies our own.

Of God and the Sea
"in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God -- so, better it is to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety" (XXIII)

This passage is taken from the chapter titled "The Lee Shore" -- one of the shortest chapters in Moby-Dick. I looked forward to reading this short bit because it was the favorite chapter of my favorite professor in graduate school.

I remember that this professor told us how in his undergraduate days several of his geeky friends got together for an all-night, complete read of Moby-Dick. Each person would pick a several chapters to read aloud until all of the chapters were selected. Then they would go around the room, reading this novel aloud to each other.

And of all the chapters in Moby-Dick, "The Lee Shore" was his favorite and the one that he lobbied most to read. "Teach" -- "it's a damn good chapter" says I.

. . . . .

I had intended for this blog post to be longer, but I got too caught up in the search for the whale and, in so doing, lost some umph for this post, such as it is.