by Paul Metcalf
In addition, there are the folds and ridges, like waves, of the mucous membrane, and the powerful leukocytes, white monsters that attack the sperm.
“Forward progress of the human spermatozoon is at the rate of about 1.5 mm a minute which, in relation to their respective lengths, compares well with average swimming ability for man.”
Driven by temperature and secretions, the sperm’s action is a fight against time; for
“A spermatozoon is only fertile if it is capable of performing powerful movements.”
Olson, on Melville: “He only rode his own space once—MOBY-DICK. He had to be wild or he was nothing in particular. He had to go fast, like an American . . .”
Thus, the spermatozoon, like the salmon, swimming “a spiral course upstream.”
September 19:
“. . . but as the land never appeared they presently believed nothing, concluding from those signs since they failed, that they were going through another world whence they would never return.”
September 24:
“. . . they said that it was a great madness and homicidal on their part, to venture their lives in following out the madness of a foreigner, who . . . had risked his life . . . and was deceiving so many people: especially as his proposition or dream had been contradicted by so many great and lettered men, and considered as vain and foolish: and that it was enough to excuse themselves from whatever might be done in the matter, that they had arrived where men had never dared to navigate, and that they were not obliged to go to the end of the world . . .”
“Some went further, saying, that if he persisted in going onward, that the best thing of all was to throw him into the sea some night, publishing that he had fallen in taking the position of the star with his quadrant or astrolabe . . .”
Ahab, in MOBY-DICK: “Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling one after the other, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered: ‘Foolish toy! babies’ plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be in this wide planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all things that cast men’s eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth’s horizon are the glances of man’s eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!’ dashing it to the deck, ‘no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea.”’
And Columbus—greatest dead-reckoning navigator of all time, whose bearings may be followed and trusted today, whose faulty observations of the stars never interfered with his level look at sea, signs, and weather—Columbus
“here says that he has had the quadrant hung up until he reaches land, to repair it . . .”
October 7, course changed from West to West-South-West, to follow the great flocks of birds overhead.
October 10:
“Here the people could endure no longer. They complained of the length of the voyage. But the Admiral cheered them up in the best way he could, giving them good hopes of the advantages they might gain from it. He added that, however much they might complain, he had to go to the Indies, and that he would go on until he found them . . .”
Ahab: “‘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 . . .?’ ”
October 11:
The crew of the Pinta picked up “a reed and a stick, and another stick carved, as it seemed, with iron tools and some grass which grows on land and a tablet of wood. They all breathed on seeing these signs and felt great joy.”
October 11:
“. . . the Admiral asked and admonished the men to keep a good look-out on the forecastle, and to watch well for land . . .”
“‘It’s a white whale, I say’ resumed Ahab . . .: ‘a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.”’
“. . . and to him who should first cry out that he saw land, he would give a silk doublet, besides the other rewards promised by the Sovereigns, which were 10,000 maravedis to him who should first see it.”
“‘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 ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce my boys!”’
October 11, course changed again to West.
(As a traveler to unknown parts, Columbus was of course expected to bring back tales of fish growing on trees men with tails and headless people with eyes in their bellies . . .
And there was the light, seen by Columbus—or so he says—two hours before midnight on the Eleventh: “. . . like a little wax candle rising and falling.” Be it the pine-knot torch of an Indian . . . sea worms, phosphorescent . . . or the jammed and crowded imaginings of Christopher . . . whatever it be, Columbus, on the strength of it, claimed his own doublet, and the Sovereigns’ 10,000 maravedis . . .
Ahab: “‘. . . the doubloon is mine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the White Whale first. There she blows! . . .”’
Like a great albuminous globe, monstrous beyond all proportion, the ovum looms ahead . . .
October 12:
“At two hours after midnight the land was sighted . . .”
CHARYBDIS
ONE
AFTER ALASKA, Carl came back to Indianapolis, with a duffle bag of old clothes and odd relics . . . bits of bone from walrus, seal, and man, pieces of carved wood, various stones shaped by the ocean, or by Carl himself, or perhaps by long-dead Indians. He stayed (as always) only a short time . . . “just long enough to change my sox.” Then he was off, apparently without funds (this is another story, where his money came from, where he got it, or whose it was—he never seemed to have any except just when he needed it, and then only just enough), heading east . . .
and the next we heard he was in Spain, flying a plane . . . seat of the pants flying, he said, no instruments, no time to learn (he had never flown before) . . . for the Loyalists.
Columbus:
“this night the wind increased, and the waves were terrible, rising against each other and so shaking and straining the vessel that she would make no headway, and was in danger of being stove in.”
The first return voyage:—as on all eastward voyages, the voyages of return, voyages back—opposite and contrary to those westward—he met dirty weather.
“At sunrise the wind blew still harder, and the cross sea was terrific. They continued to show the closely reefed mainsail to enable her to rise from between the waves, or she would otherwise have been swamped.”
For two days, on board the Niña, the officer of the watch scanned each on-coming wave, and gave quick orders to the helmsman, in order that the wave might be met at the best angle. All contact with the Pinta was lost, and no attempt was made to hold to a course.
“. . . no one expected to escape, holding themselves for lost, owing to the fearful weather . . .”
“Here the Admiral writes of the causes that made him fear he would perish, and of others that gave him hope that God would work his salvation, in order that such news as he was bringing to the Sovereigns might not be lost. It seemed to him the strong desire he felt to bring such great news, and to show that all he had said and offered to discover
had turned out true, suggested the fear that he would not be able to do so . . .”
(Melville to Hawthorne: “. . . I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances. The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose,—that, I fear, can seldom be mine.”
“He says further that it gave him great sorrow to think of the two sons he had left at their studies in Cordova, who would be left . . . without father . . ., in a strange land; while the Sovereigns would not know of the services he had performed in this voyage, nor would they receive the prosperous news which would move them to help the orphans.”
And Melville in Pittsfield, winter of 1851, writing MOBY-DICK: his son Malcolm an infant, and Lizzie pregnant again: to Hawthorne: “Dollars damn me . . .”
“. . . that the Sovereigns might still have information, even if he perished in the storm, he took a parchment and wrote on it as good an account as he could of all he had discovered . . . He rolled this parchment up in waxed cloth, fastened it very securely, ordered a large wooden barrel to be brought, and put it inside . . . and so he ordered the barrel to be thrown into the sea.”
Lizzie, reporting Herman: “Wrote White Whale or Moby Dick under unfavorable circumstances—would sit at his desk all day not eating anything till four or five oclock—then ride to the village after dark . . .”
. . . heading for the conclusion, the disaster, the sinking of the Pequod:
Melville, as Starbuck: “. . . may survive to hug his wife and child again.—Oh Mary! Mary!—boy! boy! boy! . . . who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck’s body this day week may sink . . . !”
And Ahab, to Captain Gardiner of the Rachel (who has begged him to join in searching for his lost son): “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 . . .”
Ahab to Starbuck: “I see my wife and my child in thine eye.”
And: “About this time—yes, it is his noon nap now—the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me . . .”
Pittsfield, 1851—the infant Malcolm; Lizzie, pregnant; and cannibal old Melville, in the chase:
“At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy greenish foam. He saw the vast involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond.”
From the medical book: “It is even assumed that the ovum itself has a certain radiation designed to attract the spermatozoa.”
(Ahab: “. . . the most vital stuff of vital fathers.”
“As soon as the first spermatozoa have reached the ovum, they surround it and try to penetrate with their heads the outer membrane.”
Starbuck: “Oh! my God! what is this that . . . leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant,—fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue.”
Again, the wind hesitates, the children below are quiet. The sensation I have had of the attic as a ship, pitching upon the plain, is gone, and I tilt back in the chair, balancing on the back legs; my body is still, and numb,
and glancing upward, I notice the crossbeam, a tremendous piece of oak, hand-hewn, that divides the attic over my desk . . . something associated with it comes to mind, and in a moment I recall
the tornado
We had seen it coming from the front porch, and my father had herded us—Mother, Carl, and myself—into the basement, while he went first to the barn to secure a logging chain, and then returned to the house, and climbed (we could hear his footsteps, the chain clanking on the stairs behind him) to the attic . . . then there was silence, save for the rising wind. I was little then, easily held by the wrist, but Carl, whining and squirming, suddenly broke away, and before he could be reached he had jumped the steps three at a time and was gone . . . Mother screamed after him, but didn’t follow: she tightened her grip on me, and let him go. The house fairly shook, we heard the barn roof lifting and settling in the pasture, some of the other outbuildings collapsing, and we thought for a moment that the roof of the house had been moved . . . After it was over, Father would say little, except to command Carl to what was left of the barn for punishment . . .
but Carl—the excitement of the storm mixed with the tears of his beating—couldn’t wait to tell me what had happened: how Father had lifted planks, had secured one end of the chain to floor beams, the other to the cross-beam overhead; how the roof had started to lift, and the chain had held—but the second time, the chain had broken, and Father had grasped an end in each hand . . .
. . . when the roof lifted a third time, Father had spreadeagled himself, his feet off the floor, the whole superstructure held by his hands, arms, and shoulders . . .
(Melville: “And prove that oak, and iron, and man/Are tough in fibre yet . . .”
The roof twisted slightly, and settled back in its old position . . .
. . . and after, Father had deliberately unfastened the chain, surveyed the broken link, restored the floor planks, and (although he had taken no notice of him, Carl had thought himself undiscovered) called to Carl, dragged him from his hiding place near the eaves, and marched him to the barn for a thrashing . . .
It was the Polar Front—meeting of Polar Continental and Tropical Maritime—that caused Columbus’ dirty weather. The violent air masses, forming a circular motion . . .
(Bondi, COSMOLOGY: “The nebulae show great similarity amongst themselves. They are probably all rotating and many of them show a spiral structure.”
. . . create a hurricane, or perhaps tornado or waterspout, a sucking up . . .
But Columbus, first and always a navigator, fought it out . . .
and Melville, too, whose eye was level . . .
(“. . . let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze upon God.”
. . . went—not up—but sounding, into the whirlpool, the vortex . . .
. . . went down.
“. . . resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby-Dick swam swiftly round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him . . . Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble . . .”
The vortex: “. . . whose centre had now become the old man’s head.”
TWO
Hur obed, the Phoenician sailors called it: hole of perdition . . .
Charybdis.
And on the second voyage, Columbus, sailing along the southern coast of Cuba, suddenly “entered a white sea, which was as white as milk, and as thick as the water in which tanners treat their skins.” The colors changed—white, green, crystal-clear, to black—and the men recalled old Arabic tales of the Green Sea of Gloom, and endless shoals that fringed the edge of the world.
“. . . there was no room to shoot up into the wind and anchor; nor was there holding ground . . .”
Carib Charybdis—such, perhaps, as Hart Crane—the ocean already in his head—leaped into . . .
First voyage, return: “All night they were beating to windward, and going as near as they could, so as to see some way to the island at sunrise. That night the Admiral got a little rest, for he had not slept nor been able to sleep since Wednesday, and he had lost the use of his legs from long exposure to the wet and cold.”
And elsewhere, contending with cannibals: “The barbarians, being only three men with two women and a single Indian captive . . . persevered in seeking safety by swimming, in which art they are skilful. At last th
ey were captured and taken to the Admiral. One of them was pierced through in seven places and his intestines protruded from his wounds. Since it was believed that he could not be healed, he was thrown into the sea. But emerging to the surface, with one foot upraised, and with his left hand holding his intestines in their place, he swam courageously towards the shore. This caused great alarm to the Indians who were brought along as interpreters . . . The Cannibal was therefore recaptured near the shore, bound hand and foot more tightly, and again thrown headlong into the sea. This resolute barbarian swam still more eagerly towards the shore, till, transpierced with many arrows, he at length expired.”
Reaching Portugal, “. . . they were told that such a winter, with as many storms, had never before been known, and that 25 ships had been lost in Flanders . . .”
And on Española, at Navidad, a few Spaniards had been left behind, the first colonists: “These, fighting bravely to the last, when they could no longer withstand the attack of the thronged battalions of their foes, were at length cut to pieces. The information conveyed . . . was confirmed by the discovery of the dead bodies of ten Spaniards. These bodies were emaciated and ghastly, covered with dust and bespattered with blood, discoloured, and retaining still a fierce aspect. They had lain now nearly three months neglected and unburied under the open air.”
MOBY-DICK: “At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging 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 . . .”
(Melville, elsewhere: “. . . since all human affairs are subject to organic disorder, since they are created in and sustained by a sort of half-disciplined chaos, hence he who in great things seeks success must never wait for smooth water, which never was and never will be, but, with what straggling method he can, dash with all his derangements at his object . . .”