“All is vanity”(Ecc1.2); everything, absurd; all of life the pursuit of an uncontrollable wind—as Melville might put it: the chase for an uncatchable at the center of the greatest gale, the whitest whale, Moby-Dick. Who among us is lord of the winds that may command a direction upon them? Yet still I can open a window and create a draft. Does this not, in whatever small fashion, effect the movement of the air both inside and outside my opened window? At what point does the change of the winds’ flow of ‘invisible and irresistible arms’ end? At what point did they begin?
We walk around altering the winds of space and time, inhaling oxygen, exhaling carbon dioxide: in search of what? by whose command? Ishmael hypothesized, “the wind… seem{s} the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslave{s} {humanity} to the race” (415) towards absurdity, an effort in futility, and, in more human terms, shit. “ALL” (328). Ahab speculates that perhaps it is “these same {winds} that so directly blow my good ship on; these {winds}, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and full as strong—blow my keeled soul along!” (420).
But what percentage of thinking beings considers existence in such a way? How many carry a hammer of wisdom capable of driving in the nail of life’s most elusive questions—origins, endings, ultimate meaning—into the boards of human consciousness so that a table of truth may be built? King Solomon in Ecclesiastes tells of his personal experience in pursuit of both the ability to answer, wisdom, and the answers themselves, truth.
All this I tested with wisdom. I thought I could fathom it {what is best for a man to do in life (6.12)}, but it eludes me. The secret of what happens is elusive and deep, deep down; who can discover it? I turned with all my being, to understand, to search out and to seek wisdom and the reason of things; and to understand evil, folly and the folly of madness. And I found more bitter than death the woman {madness} who traps, her heart nets, her hands chains. He with whom G-d is pleased will be delivered from her, but he who sins will be taken by her. (7.25-26)
Melville
paraphrases this portion of Ecclesiastes, writing, “There is a wisdom that is
woe; but there is a woe that is madness” (328). To have wisdom is to know the sorrow of
ungraspable truth, but to be trapped by that woeful wisdom is to be taken in by the chains of inconsolable madness.
In contrast to the above portion, Melville writes not of the trap of madness, but of wisdom’s mountain eagle existing in some selected souls that may sink into the deepest, blackest gorges of sorrow as well as soar to the apex of understanding. Yet, “even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain even though they soar” (ibid). Ishmael, not Ahab, is an eagle.
What has changed in Moby-Dick is not the object of Ecclesiastical wisdom, but the subject. Ishmael is no king like Solomon, in fact he only expects the 275th lay on the Pequod and is offered much less. Although Ahab is himself the captain on board, much like a king upon the ocean, he is not portrayed in the same light as the king in Ecclesiastes, for as Ahab says in his ‘Symphony’; “{even} the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh bread, to my mouldy crusts…” (405). Ahab has cast himself upon the sea in isolation from the social surroundings of a normal life on land. He is unable to enjoy his wife or any such human relationship due to the way he “has furiously, foamingly chased his prey…” (Ibid). Still, this notion is not unknown to Ahab, as he says to Starbuck, “let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon G-d” (406, emphasis added). Nonetheless, he is unable to relinquish his unquenchable monomania, to give up his quest for G-d; his inquisition is an unending one, he is like a man looking for sustenance whom already has an unending supply of food and water:
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 ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, G-d, or who, that lifts this arm…? How then can this one heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless G-d does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. (407, emphasis added)
The
woman whose hands are chains has trapped Ahab by a maddening quest for answers—i.e., the ‘woe that is madness’. He has fallen off of the cliff of the mountain eagle and his wings have been clipped: there is nothing anyone can do to derail this train from its tracks to
self-destruction
There are those upon the Pequod that have not succumbed to Ahab’s monomania and have instead replaced it with megalomania. Their thirst is not for the infinite, but rather the notoriety of the accomplishment and the prosperity of the ‘doubloon.’ They have not paid heed to Ishmael’s wise words: “Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease” (74) and are too easily defined as a “money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with {their} benevolence”(321). All their attempts to aggrandize the self, above and beyond others, are futile and vane, for “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecc 3.20). And although many Christians would like to consider their religion as superior to all others, Ishmael refers back to
The same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg there, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands (84).
In summation, through Moby-Dick, Melville is able to make an adventure story out of Solomon’s quest in Ecclesiastes; he makes an example of the absurdity of humanity’s vanity; he further categorizes ultimate truth as ungraspable; he shows with precise detail the division between wisdom and madness; ultimately, a truth of the equality of all ‘under the sun’ is perpetuated by Melville’s saber-like pen.
Yet perhaps the most outstanding way in which Melville brings “this willful world” closer to “unchristian Solomon’s wisdom” (328) is in his overall critique of traditional Christian religion (different from being a critic of Jesus, himself). It is assuredly the subtlest (or most blunt, depending) critique, yet if one looks closely enough, Ahab, in his faithless existence finds the idea that “the coffin is…an immortality preserver” (396) to be absurd. Merely ‘another orphan’ of the Rachel (the mother of the Hebrews)—which “still remained without comfort {mosiach}” (399) in search of its anointed (messiah) lost son, Ishmael says “take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me” (45), which is quite contrary to the eschatological notion of Christian theology’s resurrection. Ishmael goes so far as to say that he is very willing to take a pagan friend, “since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy” (56). Starbuck, who whispers to the sea of existence “Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe” (373). Even after “all {his} bursting prayers” and “all {his} life-long fidelities” (425), Starbuck, representative of the paradigm of Christian virtue and faith, is not spared from ultimate death. For Melville and Solomon, the jar of our bodies will return to dust, and our spirit is that which ascends to the infinite (Ecc 12.7). For Melville, the human notions of separate religions and of death as a terrifying thing are absurdities: all beings living and dead belong to the ‘First Congregation’ and “still we refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss” (Melville 45). “‘All is vanity.’ ALL” (Ibid).
Epilogue
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread, -behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it-he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher, found it not.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley
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