The Value of Herman Melville

Talk by Geoffrey D. Sanborn, Amherst College, Professor of English

[Steve]

Let me add something small, but I don't think too small. The lecturer says, "try to clear your mind of expectations, open it up and listen with nothing more than ordinary human curiosity." And may I suggest that the easiest way to do this is to at least start by reading it aloud. I went to college many years ago, and I don't know if it's still true, but back then speed-reading courses were the rage for incoming freshmen. Now a thousand words per minute might work for digesting a pile of the latest scholarly articles. But if you really want to understand something in its depths -- and your depths -- then READ ALOUD, at least when you begin.

[litaholic]

"Moby Dick" is a boyhood favorite of mine. After learning of the real disaster that inspired the book in high school, my fascination for the story and the world it took place in grew. Really was a disgrace the novel did not get the renowned praise and appreciation it deserved when Melville published it. It definitely is one of those books that never loses significance to society, human nature, morality vs madness and being courageous in the most terrifying of moments. I certainly plan on re-reading the book to experience the adventure again and immerse myself in what I missed from it as a kid.

[helenmary]

It was great to finally listen to your talk on Melville! Moby Dick kept me reading for a long time. When i encountered the audiobook it even became more fascinating. Thank you!

[robertelconin]

Thank you Professor Sanborn for this incredibly rich presentation. Informative, entertaining, and provocative. Enjoyed it a great deal as I delve into Melville and Moby Dick at my late age.

[mashaogmartar]

That remark about the difference existig between reading and listening a book is so reasonable. I've read MD seven years ago and now I decided to listen it in order to save time. But this is not, absolutely not the same. This doesn't give me that feelig of a dream where I experience something mystical, like a kind from a tribe goig through the process of initiation. Thanks so mutch for this lecture. And thanks to the audience for the good questions (but who am I to say that).

[vishweshwermangalapalli]

Wonderful lecture... Just completed Benito All of Melville's works is my reading goal for 2022.... A great, great, great writer.... incomparable and in a class of his own....

[johnburman]

I have lived a fairly adventurous life. The wonderful thing is that you find yourself in strange circumstances, in foreign countries in company with fellow adventurers. Everyone has stories to tell almost unbelievable, part fact, part fiction, life as seen from another is Melville.

[TheFatesLieutenant]

Great discussion! I do think that a stronger comparison of the growth of Melville's writing style and growing power is the juxtaposition of the Typee section with the opening of The Symphony (MD Chapter 132).

[brentchapman]

Wonderful..right to the end. Maybe the Eichmann story could have been the most profound. Learning to think. Thank you.

[libertysprings]

"Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched, But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. --It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. --It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. --It's a blasted heath. --It's a Hyperborean winter scene. --It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathian himself?
In fact, the artist's design seemed this; a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads." - Chapter 3 Moby Dick

[ishmaelforester]

Scholars and critics with all their shibboleths always seek to displace artists from the arts. Artists should rule art, because it is sacred and beyond and above. The critical scholars are not negligible (all the petty politics and whatnot) but entirely negligible artistically.

[pequodexpress]

_Moby Dick_ is the _Fight Club_ of the 1850s.

[sitahcummings]

well, yes, this reading, even though executed at TOP speed, sends me back to MD again. But at a more humane velocity. Less is more, no?