The Shape of the Whale: Flukes and Other Tales

The Shape of the Whale: Flukes and Other Tales JUANA CELIA DJELAL Pennsylvania State University University Park T ‘hereare some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.” So Melville avers in the opening sentence of Chapter 82 of Moby-Dick, “The Honor and Glory of Whaling.” One enterprise to which he refers concerns the author’s research into the “great honorableness and antiquity” of whaling, “and especially,” he writes, “when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.”’ As an affiliate of this illustrious fraternity, Melville embraces with “careful disorderliness” the life of the whale-man, as well as antiquity’scelebration of the whale. How does Melvilleenact this claim and on what is his careful disorderliness founded? What are his strategies, deliberate or incidental? These questions concerning Melville’sallusive etymologizing and adaptation of classical references to whalessend the reader on a number of excursions into mythic and natural history Melville’s certainty regarding the presence of the whale in classicalmyths confirms the persistent permeability of myths borders and Melville’s celebration of the perennial interpenetration of myth traditions. Early accounts of the perceived configuration and characteristics of the whale determine not only Melville’s “true method” of “careful disorderliness” set forth in Chapter 82; they also condition his verbal painting “Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales” in Chapter 55 and in the syncopated opening of MobyDick . I refer here to the headings “Etymology”and “Extracts”and their respective sections. Melville descries flukes wherever creatures roil the seas and, aligning his writing project with the tradition of mythmaking, deftly shapes the whale in his pursuit of an epic tale. In retrospect, we gather that Melville’s pursuit of his tale begins prophetically .Prophecies,however,leave their decipherment to those who would query the prophet. Playful in his mantic utterance, Melville provides permutations of the word “whale” that invite the reader to trace the etymologies and root out meaning. There are two “Etymology”headings. The first precedes recognition ’Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 19881,361; hereafter cited as NN MD. A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L ES T U D I E S 3 7 J U A N A C E L I A D J E L A L of “a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School,” purported supplier of etymologieswho is reminded of his mortality while perpetually dusting grammars and lexicons with a “queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world.” Through the multi-nationa1flags that Melville displays at such a strategic moment at the head of his text, he signals the significancehe places on the multi-lingual semiosis of the second etymology section. In this section Melville traces the word “whale” and then gives the equivalent term for whale in thirteen languages. Embedded in the list is the suggestive resonance of biblical prophecy in the French and Spanish words for whale (NNMD, xvi). The French baleine, and the Spanish ballena, although derived from the Latin balaena, echo the sound and sense of the name for an ancient Phoenician deity I am referring to Ba‘al, the divinity whose name in Hebrew carries the meaning of “lord,”in the sense of master, possessor, or controller. In I Kings 18.18,the prophet Elijah charges the Hebrew King Ahab: “ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Ba’alim,”allies of the Phoenician deity. Ba’al figures in the destiny of King Ahab, who renounces Jehovah and worships Ba’al to please his Phoenician wife,Jezebel. Here, then, is Melville’s etymological nexus: the hunted ballena or baleine (Moby Dick) becomes master and possessor of Captain Ahab, whose destiny is to follow his “ba’al.”Melville’s “careful disorderliness” conflates baleine / ballena and the divinity Ba’al who received human sacrifices, a...