It
is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the
precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the
monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,
corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he
probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.
Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long
months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one
hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape;
then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another;
and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward
voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems
all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he
was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital
strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified
by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even
there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung
to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more
sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated
across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's
delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came
forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when
he bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm
orders once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now
gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is
oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it
may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab's
full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated
Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably
through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not
one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad
madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That
before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious
trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and
carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark;
so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did
now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought
to bear upon any one reasonable object.
Sample Post with Pagination and Slide Featured Content
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the
eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had
dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking
with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That
captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his
sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's
leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no
hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.
Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal
encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale,
all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to
identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his
intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before
him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which
some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with
half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been
from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe
one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east
reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship it
like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white
whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most
maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth
with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all
the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were
visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He
piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and
hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest
had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.
It
is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the
precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the
monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,
corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he
probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.
Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long
months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one
hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape;
then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another;
and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward
voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems
all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he
was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital
strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified
by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even
there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung
to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more
sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated
across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's
delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came
forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when
he bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm
orders once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now
gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is
oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it
may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab's
full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated
Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably
through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not
one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad
madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That
before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious
trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and
carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark;
so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did
now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought
to bear upon any one reasonable object.
It
is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the
precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the
monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,
corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he
probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.
Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long
months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one
hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape;
then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another;
and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward
voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems
all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he
was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital
strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified
by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even
there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung
to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more
sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated
across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's
delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came
forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when
he bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm
orders once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now
gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is
oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it
may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab's
full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated
Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably
through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not
one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad
madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That
before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious
trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and
carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark;
so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did
now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought
to bear upon any one reasonable object.
