Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER 42

  The Whiteness of The Whale

  What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times,he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.

  Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick,which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm,there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horrorconcerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpoweredall the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it,that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form.It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim,random way, explain myself I must, else all these chaptersmight be naught.

  Though in many natural objects, whiteness refininglyenhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own,as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nationshave in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue;even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title"Lord of the White Elephants" above all their other magniloquentascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurlingthe same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and theHanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger;and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome,having for the imperial color the same imperial hue; and thoughthis pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself,giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe;and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even madesignificant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone markeda joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings,this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things--the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though amongthe Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum wasthe deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifiesthe majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributesto the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds;though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religionsit has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power;by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame beingheld the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies,Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull;and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacredWhite Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology,that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy theycould send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of theirown fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white,all Christian priests derive the name of one part of theirsacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock;and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white isspecially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord;though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed,and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white beforethe great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth therewhite like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations,with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yetlurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue,which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness whichaffrights in blood.

  This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness,when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupledwith any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terrorto the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles,and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth,flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are?That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness,even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect.So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat canso stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark.*

  *With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him whowould fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness,separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness ofthat brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said,only rises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousnessof the creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocenceand love; and hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotionsin our minds, the Polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast.But even assuming all this to be true; yet, were it not for the whiteness,you would not have that intensified terror.

  As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of reposein that creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallieswith the same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is mostvividly hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish.The Romish mass for the dead begins with "Requiem eternam"(eternal rest), whence Requiem denominating the mass itself,and any other funeral music. Now, in allusion to the white,silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadlinessof his habits, the French call him Requin.

  Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritualwonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sailsin all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell;but God's great, unflattering laureate, Nature.*

  *I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was duringa prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas.From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck;and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thingof unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime.At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if toembrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it.Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghostin supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes,methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abrahambefore the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white,its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I hadlost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell,can only hint, the things that darted through me then.But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this.A goney, he replied. Goney! never had heard that name before;is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknownto men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goneywas some seaman's name for albatross. So that by no possibilitycould Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mysticalimpressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck.For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to bean albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnisha little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.

  I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the birdchiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this,that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses;and these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when Ibeheld the Antarctic fowl.

  But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not,and I will tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowlfloated on the sea. At last the Captain made a postman of it;tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with the ship'stime and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt not,that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven,when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking,and adoring cherubim!

  Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that ofthe White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignityof a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage.He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses,whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountainsand the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westwardtrooped it like that chosen star which every evening leadson the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his mane,the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings moreresplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him.A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen,western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and huntersrevived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walkedmajestic as a
god, bluff-bowed and fearless as this mighty steed.Whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van ofcountless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains,like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient subjects browsingall around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewedthem with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness;in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the bravestIndians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe.Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary recordof this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly,which so clothed him with divineness; and that this divinenesshad that in it which, though commanding worship, at the sametime enforced a certain nameless terror.

  But there are other instances where this whiteness losesall that accessory and strange glory which invests it inthe White Steed and Albatross.

  What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocksthe eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin!It is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressedby the name he bears. The Albino is as well made as other men--has no substantive deformity--and yet this mere aspect of all-pervadingwhiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion.Why should this be so?

  Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her leastpalpable but not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlistamong her forces this crowning attribute of the terrible.From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas hasbeen denominated the White Squall. Nor, in some historic instances,has the art of human malice omitted so potent an auxiliary.How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart,when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperateWhite Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-place!

  Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of allmankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue.It cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspectof the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallorlingering there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badgeof consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here.And from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hueof the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our superstitionsdo we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms;all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog--Yea, while these terrorsseize us, let us add, that even the king of terrors, when personifiedby the evangelist, rides on his pallid horse.

  Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or graciousthing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundestidealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.

  But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortalman to account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible.Can we, then, by the citation of some of those instanceswherein this thing of whiteness--though for the time eitherwholly or in great part stripped of all direct associationscalculated to impart to it aught fearful, but nevertheless,is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however modified;--can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct usto the hidden cause we seek?

  Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls.And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressionsabout to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet fewperhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and thereforemay not be able to recall them now.

  Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be butloosely acquainted with the peculiar character of the day,does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancysuch long, dreary, speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims,down-cast and hooded with new-fallen snow? Or to the unread,unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States,why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun,evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?

  Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings(which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Towerof London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of anuntravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors--the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers,the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods,comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mentionof that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is fullof a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of alllatitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exertsuch a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sealulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons onthe waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets?Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressedto the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe,does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changelesspallor unrestingly glides through the green of the groves--why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping impsof the Blocksburg?

  Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-topplingearthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessnessof arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide fieldof leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop(like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenuesof house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;--it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil;and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe.Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new;admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads overher broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixesits own distortions.

  I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whitenessis not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terrorof objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is thereaught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mindalmost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibitedunder any form at all approaching to muteness or universality.What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectivelyelucidated by the following examples.

  First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands,if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feelsjust enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but underprecisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammockto view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness--as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimminground him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shroudedphantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost;in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helmthey both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again.Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so muchthe fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whitenessthat so stirred me?"

  Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight ofthe snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps,in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigningat such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulnessit would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the sameis it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparativeindifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow,no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness.Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas;where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the powersof frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead ofrainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seemsa boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monumentsand splintered crosses.

  But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter aboutwhiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul;thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael.

  Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peacefulvalley of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey--why is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but
shake a freshbuffalo robe behind him, so that he cannot even see it, but onlysmells its wild animal muskiness--why will he start, snort,and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies of affright?There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild creaturesin his green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he smellscannot recall to him anything associated with the experienceof former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt,of the black bisons of distant Oregon?

  No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute,the instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world.Though thousands of miles from Oregon, still when he smellsthat savage musk, the rending, goring bison herds are as presentas to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, which this instantthey may be trampling into dust.

  Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea;the bleak rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains;the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies;all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robeto the frightened colt!

  Though neither knows where lie the nameless things ofwhich the mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet with me,as with the colt, somewhere those things must exist.Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formedin love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

  But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness,and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul;and more strange and far more portentous--why, as we have seen,it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay,the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is,the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.

  Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartlessvoids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behindwith the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depthsof the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is notso much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the sametime the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that thereis such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscapeof snows--a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers,that all other earthly hues--every stately or lovely emblazoning--the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gildedvelvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls;all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherentin substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deifiedNature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements covernothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further,and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces everyone of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remainswhite or colorless in itself, and if operating without mediumupon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses,with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the palsied universelies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland,who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes,so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumentalwhite shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol.Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? ..