dual personalities

While this has been the summer of Melville celebrations, I am switching gears today. Last week, in the midst of a conversation about re-naming the honors program I’m now “managing,” I thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature. It is so, so good.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

[…]

Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

Personally, I thought we should name our program HONORS EYE-BALL. Do you think bright young freshmen would live up to the motto, “I am nothing; I see all”? And hello, we’d have a mascot ready to go!

Nineteenth-century illustration by Christopher Pearse Cranch

You can read (or skip around in) the complete Nature here.

Is it Wednesday already? Since my Saturday post, I haven’t done much unless seeing Hobbs and Shaw at the movies counts as an adventure — which it should. It’s a fun movie and a great antidote to the end-of-summer-the-world-is-crazy blahs. The film checks all the right boxes, but amusing banter and a good message are the only ones I care about. Physics defying action isn’t my thing,

though I do love a Samoan haka!

Interestingly, one of the main plot elements hinges on the fact that the villains have control of the media and consequently “control the narrative” to make our good guys appear to be bad guys.  Though a typical action movie plot device, it seemed pointedly to remind viewers not to take the news at face value. Everyone has an angle.

My solution? When you read/watch the news, always ask two vital questions: What do they want me to think? What are they leaving out? The second one is harder, but definitely worth the effort. Think about it.

Switching gears, I give you a happy reading newsflash: Amor Towles has published a new short story, The Line, at Granta.  The story offers a timely reminder of the irrepressible human spirit.  Towles always sees the best in his characters and pushes his readers to think. His innate optimism is contagious, and I don’t know about you, but I need that right now. Read the story, watch a fun movie, and question the news. (Better yet, ignore it!)

*Shaw (Jason Statham) to Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).

Well, the party is over. DN and I have returned to the mid-Atlantic and daughter #1 to mid-MO. After ten days at home, it will probably be a real shock to my system to return to the salt mines! But we will all hang in there. Next weekend, daughters #1 AND #2 are both moving to new apartments, so this week will be spent packing boxes full of books and the like. Remember to lift with your legs!

In the meantime, tomorrow’s blog post will feature a full rundown of our Melville Bicentennial extravaganza. Stay tuned!

Today’s the big party, and though I’ll be toasting Herman Melville from the north country, I’ll be there in spirit.

The Essex and the Sperm Whale 

I hope someone will read this quote from Moby-Dick on my behalf.

“…and Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”

Though the passage is taken out of context, we can all relate to the sentiment (at least the cracked part), if not to one another.  Let us remember that we’re all in need of God’s mercy, and act accordingly!

*Saying inscribed on a scrimshaw. The whole thing reads, “Death to the living, long life to the killers, success to sailors’ wives, and greasy luck to whalers” (source: New England Today).

Happy birthday, Herman Melville! Today (and this weekend), we celebrate the bicentennial of Melville’s birth on August 1, 1819. Readers of the blog know that Melville is one of our most beloved authors, and Moby-Dick? It’ll change your life.

Visiting Melville’s portrait at the Houghton Library

Melville was born and died in New York City, and in his 72 years he traveled the world–from Nantucket to Cape Horn, Tahiti to Lima, Honolulu to the Holy Land. Wikipedia divides his life into categories that include “Years at sea,” “Successful writer” and “Unsuccessful writer.” It’s true that Melville’s professional life was not marked by incredible success, at least not in any sustained way.

Thankfully, in the past century and a half, American authors and readers (and filmmakers and songwriters) have come to understand and appreciate the great genius of Melville’s works, particularly, of course, Moby-Dick. Nathaniel Philbrick describes in Why Read Moby-Dick? the novel’s influence on William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and others. And when Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, he spoke of three major works of literature that influenced him, among them Moby-Dick.

So what does it all mean? Myself and a lot of other songwriters have been influenced by these very same themes. And they can mean a lot of different things. If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means. When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don’t think he would have worried about it either – what it all means.

I think that’s true. Or perhaps another way to put it: it doesn’t mean just one thing. The great thing about Melville is that one can spend years and years trying to figure out “what it all means” (sometimes you can at least manage to get a PhD along the way) and still have more to learn. His novels and stories just never stop giving.

ERE now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.

But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.

From Moby-Dick, “The Doubloon”

Now, some celebrations of Melville can be a bit hokey: think giant inflated whales. But it sounds like other bicentennial activities center on reading, including Moby-Dick marathons. In our neck of the woods, we’ll celebrate Melville’s life from Nantucket to Tahiti, with nautical decor and tiki punch. Armed with our favorite quotes, we plan to do a bit of reading ourselves. Are you ready?

If you haven’t read any Melville this year–or ever!–you could start small, with a novella or short story. Try Bartleby the Scrivener or “The Piazza.” Maybe you’ve read Moby-Dick and you’re ready for another daunting novel. Try Pierre! It features another diverse cast of characters and quite the wacky plot, but it supplies ample rewards in digestible bits of wisdom. Perhaps a pilgrimage would inspire you: Clarel is inspired by Melville’s own trip to the Holy Land. And if the seafaring tales are your thing, I’m partial to Melville’s last work, Billy Budd, which combines the ocean setting of the early novels with the moral significance of the later works.

If all else fails, perhaps give one chapter of Moby-Dick a listen: might I suggest Benedict Cumberbatch reading “Brit,” one of my all-time favorites?

*from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s journals, The English Experience, 1853-1864