The Symphony

I just read Moby Dick. Herman Melville is, in my opinion, one of the most poetic prose writers in English language literature. He is like a cross between John Milton and Charles Dickens. He also reminds me a lot of one of my other favorite authors--John Steinbeck. There are so many absolutely gorgeous passages in Moby Dick, but I just had to post this one. It is my favorite chapter. [Disclaimer: Starbuck is my favorite character, which is part of the reason it is my favorite chapter...but then who else could be my favorite?] So, without further ado, "Symphony":

CHAPTER 132

The Symphony

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.

Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion- most seen here at the Equator- denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven.

Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel- forbidding- now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.

Ahab turned.

"Starbuck!"

"Sir."

"Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. 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 soul!- 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? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!- crack my heart!- stave my brain!- mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearthstone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board!- lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!"

"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's- wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!- this instant let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."

"They have, they have. I have seen them- some summer days in the morning. 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; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance him again."

"'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"

But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.

"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 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. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the airs smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swarths- Starbuck!"

But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.

Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there, Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail.

Animated Lord of the Rings

I've recently been reading a bunch of hysterical critiques of Bakshi's Lord of the Rings and the Rankin/Bass Return of the King. I loved the reviews because they pointed out all the idiosyncratic and idiotic elements of the movies, that my sister and I have been laughing at for the past ten years. I do have a soft spot in my heart for them, however. Farmor showed them to us when I was 8, and I was so enthralled that I tracked down the trilogy (hiding in Daddy's garage) and read it in a week (and then read it again). So, I had to think of something good about them, and here it is:

The Rankin/Bass Return of the King is filled with sappy songs that can be quite annoying. One that comes up more than once is "It's so easy not to try / let the world go drifting by. / If you never say hello, / you won't have to say goodbye." Silly. Sappy. Sorry.

HOWEVER

I think that this song alone gets closer to the heart of Tolkien's trilogy than anything Jackson made. Peter Jackson got so excited about the special effects and action, that he lost the beautiful wistfulness of the books. Tolkien is always talking about beauty passing away and being lost. Elf women give up their immortality, and Frodo Baggins give up the Shire that he suffered to protect. Yet Tolkien shows that it is better to have these beautiful things and lose them, than it is to just protect yourself.

This reminds me of a quote by C.S. Lewis: "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

Lewis states eloquently what Tolkien showed in his book: To love is to be vulnerable, but obviously worth it. Rankin/Bass's song may not have been very eloquent. The movie may have missed plot details and hopelessly confused what it added. But it made the same point, through the song, and the bits of the Sam/Frodo story that they portrayed (admittedly, they did not preserve the point in the other half of the story as well, but then Sam and Frodo get the most screen time in this movie).

Doesn't that make the movie seem so much nicer!

Die Walkure

I learned last year that I liked Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. I borrowed a DVD of it purely because Sir Thomas Allen was singing Beckmesser, and I love his voice. Well, I didn't just suffer through to hear him sing, instead I discovered a wonderful, dramatic, and even humorous opera. When I had to listen to Tristan und Isolde in Opera class, I decided that Meistersinger was a fluke. But I got the whole Ring trilogy out from the library, and I love it! Firstly, the music is beautiful. I don't think I'll be singing along to it, but it is very emotional and dramatic. Secondly, the story is interesting. No, it isn't LotR, and never for a minute with I believe that Tolkien copied from Wagner. But the story is interesting. I really REALLY need to get to reading more Norse mythology (and find out what Wagner did to it). And finally, it's just amazing to watch men and women singing Wagner!

In Die Walkure, Wotan's farewell to Brunnhilde is so very beautiful and moving!

But I have to read more about these operas. I think I may become a fan of BOTH ring cycles!

Inaugural Post

So, I decided to randomly start a blog. I think I'll just put the stuff I'm thinking about on it.

Right now I'm reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in several years. The thing that I'm noticing the most this time through is its wistful quality and its bittersweetness. So much of the book revolves around the idea that there must always be suffering to gain something worthwhile. Much is made of preserving innocence. For example, Aragorn says (speaking of the hobbits), "If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so." Aragorn fights for them to stay simple, but I think that Tolkien leads the reader to the conclusion that it is better to have care and fear if that is the only way one can see the beauties of the world. More on this later, though, because I think the development of the four hobbits, and especially of Sam, is important here. I want to reread the whole book before I begin blathering.

This theme is also found in Paradise Lost. There is bittersweetness at the end of Paradies Lost, for even if Adam and Eve are leaving the Eden, they are walking hand in hand into the greatest story of all: the story of Redemption. (Tolkien would call it the ultimate, and most beautiful myth--the true myth.) Anyway, Milton says he wants to justify the ways of God to man. How does he do this? My most recent thought on the matter is that Milton's justification is Paradise Lost itself--he can write this poem only because of the fall.

When I was a little girl, I worried about Heaven. Did I really want to go there if there could be no books? I love books and reading, but there is always sin in them, for without evil there can be no real conflict or satisfying resolution. I worried about this for so long. But the answer was always right there if I could only have seen it. A song we used to sing in Sunday School was "I love to tell the story," the refrain of which runs, "I love to tell the story, 'twill be my theme in glory: to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love." Of course there will be stories in Heaven, for we all will have our personal stories of Jesus' love and then the "old, old story" of his death on the cross. And of course there will be sin in them, for it is the sin itself that makes the story possible.

And that is how Milton uses his poem as a justification: without the fall, there would be no Paradise Lost, and no redemption.

It seems as if this is the most simple answer to the question of evil. Evil is obviously a tool for God's glory, for it is an opportunity for God to manifest his love and mercy. Yet it is such a simplistic answer, that I must be missing something.

Did I just go from LotR to the problem of evil? I wonder if Tolkien had that in mind? I see it there, though...among many other things. The other things will have to wait because I want to read more!