The Symphony: Ahab Geek Out the Last
We come to a close soon. We are finishing the novel, and we are finishing the year. A lot of things are coming together. We hear, in a way, a number of voices, a number of competing voices blending together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in opposition.
That is what a symphony is.
Were we not sheltering at home (which is where I usually shelter) and teaching and learning remotely (and, let's face it, we have often been remote), I'd devote a day to the study of chapter one hundred thirty-two, "The Symphony."
I'd make you listen to this, if I felt ambitious. It's the first movement of Romantic composer Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. If I were feeling less ambitious, or sense that the class just didn't have twenty minutes of stillness in it (no condemnation--just a remote finger on the metaphorical pulse), I'd play this, the much more familiar Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. I would be trying to set a mood, give you a feel for what symphonic music sounds like. (Yes, I'm fully aware that the Adagio is NOT a symphony, but it IS played by symphony.) Listen to the voices. Listen to the opposing and blending forces.
Get out on the water with Ahab on that beautiful day and FEEL the opposing forces in him. He looks over the side, sees his reflection, and cries.
I'd read the chapter aloud to you and insist that you listen with as few distractions as possible.
Listen. Listen to hear the drumbeat and cello stroke of the word "forty."
On such a day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before—and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now?
Look at the forces fighting in him:
What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
He feels the same things eating at him that all deep thinking men and women feel, that I feel, the forces of Fate, personified in an all-controlling God, whom Ahab has steadfastly opposed, declaring himself, in chapter thirty-seven, prophet and fulfiller. When Starbuck in chapter thirty-six called him "blasphemous" for seeking revenge (which, biblically and particularly for the pacifist Quakers, is the province of God), he didn't know the half of it. Ahab was controlling his own fate in defiance of God. The question rises in him now, and for a moment he is close to turning and going home: who is making me do this? In controlling my own fate am I not just fulfilling the fate given me by God?
As we can clearly see as we read on, he goes on--and he loses most gloriously.
The character though, is so very complex, so subtly nuanced. This chapter used to stick out to me as a bit of an anomaly, as a bit of a digression for the fixed and determined Ahab, but a few years ago I had a breakthrough in my understanding in a fresh read of chapter one hundred twenty-eight, "The Pequod meets the Rachel." Captain Gardiner pleads his case. He lowered after Moby Dick and lost the boat on which his own son was hunting. (I am always reminded of the ending of The Goblet of Fire when I read this passage, as Harry brings Cedric Diggory back and Mr. Diggory beholds his dead son.) He pleads for Ahab to do what Ahab himself would like done in similar circumstances. We call this the Golden Rule. Ahab rejects it.
In my teaching I used to call this the end. He rejected pleasure (his pipe). He rejected even the pretense of religion (baptizing his harpoon in the name of the devil). He rejected science (smashing the quadrant). Sure, he took pains to keep the men on his side, like fixing the leak in the hold and fixing the compass, but he also was not above threatening to kill them. Here, with the rejection of Captain Gardiner's suit, he eschews the Golden Rule, which is the rule which makes all human interaction possible. Humanities? Gone.
Or are they?
Look at HOW he rejects the suit.
“Avast,” cried Ahab—“touch not a rope-yarn”; then in a voice that prolongingly moulded every word—“Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers: then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.”
I have you listen to the symphony on this day to remind you of the importance of the music in words--and to remind myself! I hadn't listened to the music in this passage until I'd been through the novel perhaps twenty times. I listened and wondered why and when a person would "prolongingly mould" every word. My answer: when he or she does not want to say them. He admits what he's doing in wrong and wonders aloud if he'll ever be able to forgive himself, but he says he has no choice.
I don't know what Ahab is yet. I keep coming back to this book because it keeps rewarding the return. I wonder what I'll next discover!
That is what a symphony is.
Were we not sheltering at home (which is where I usually shelter) and teaching and learning remotely (and, let's face it, we have often been remote), I'd devote a day to the study of chapter one hundred thirty-two, "The Symphony."
I'd make you listen to this, if I felt ambitious. It's the first movement of Romantic composer Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. If I were feeling less ambitious, or sense that the class just didn't have twenty minutes of stillness in it (no condemnation--just a remote finger on the metaphorical pulse), I'd play this, the much more familiar Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. I would be trying to set a mood, give you a feel for what symphonic music sounds like. (Yes, I'm fully aware that the Adagio is NOT a symphony, but it IS played by symphony.) Listen to the voices. Listen to the opposing and blending forces.
Get out on the water with Ahab on that beautiful day and FEEL the opposing forces in him. He looks over the side, sees his reflection, and cries.
I'd read the chapter aloud to you and insist that you listen with as few distractions as possible.
Listen. Listen to hear the drumbeat and cello stroke of the word "forty."
On such a day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before—and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now?
Look at the forces fighting in him:
What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
He feels the same things eating at him that all deep thinking men and women feel, that I feel, the forces of Fate, personified in an all-controlling God, whom Ahab has steadfastly opposed, declaring himself, in chapter thirty-seven, prophet and fulfiller. When Starbuck in chapter thirty-six called him "blasphemous" for seeking revenge (which, biblically and particularly for the pacifist Quakers, is the province of God), he didn't know the half of it. Ahab was controlling his own fate in defiance of God. The question rises in him now, and for a moment he is close to turning and going home: who is making me do this? In controlling my own fate am I not just fulfilling the fate given me by God?
As we can clearly see as we read on, he goes on--and he loses most gloriously.
The character though, is so very complex, so subtly nuanced. This chapter used to stick out to me as a bit of an anomaly, as a bit of a digression for the fixed and determined Ahab, but a few years ago I had a breakthrough in my understanding in a fresh read of chapter one hundred twenty-eight, "The Pequod meets the Rachel." Captain Gardiner pleads his case. He lowered after Moby Dick and lost the boat on which his own son was hunting. (I am always reminded of the ending of The Goblet of Fire when I read this passage, as Harry brings Cedric Diggory back and Mr. Diggory beholds his dead son.) He pleads for Ahab to do what Ahab himself would like done in similar circumstances. We call this the Golden Rule. Ahab rejects it.
In my teaching I used to call this the end. He rejected pleasure (his pipe). He rejected even the pretense of religion (baptizing his harpoon in the name of the devil). He rejected science (smashing the quadrant). Sure, he took pains to keep the men on his side, like fixing the leak in the hold and fixing the compass, but he also was not above threatening to kill them. Here, with the rejection of Captain Gardiner's suit, he eschews the Golden Rule, which is the rule which makes all human interaction possible. Humanities? Gone.
Or are they?
Look at HOW he rejects the suit.
“Avast,” cried Ahab—“touch not a rope-yarn”; then in a voice that prolongingly moulded every word—“Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers: then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.”
I have you listen to the symphony on this day to remind you of the importance of the music in words--and to remind myself! I hadn't listened to the music in this passage until I'd been through the novel perhaps twenty times. I listened and wondered why and when a person would "prolongingly mould" every word. My answer: when he or she does not want to say them. He admits what he's doing in wrong and wonders aloud if he'll ever be able to forgive himself, but he says he has no choice.
I don't know what Ahab is yet. I keep coming back to this book because it keeps rewarding the return. I wonder what I'll next discover!
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