The Full Front of the Head
In some particulars, the most imposing physiognomical view of the Sperm Whale is that of the full front of his head, which the narrator describes as sublime.
The Sublime Brow
The narrator meditates on brows: a fine human brow resembles the troubled morning East, a bull’s curled brow touches the grand, and an elephant’s brow is majestic pushing cannon through mountain defiles. Human brows often resemble mere strips of alpine land along the snow line, with few rising like Shakespeare’s or Melanchthon’s to reveal clear, eternal mountain lake eyes, their wrinkles tracking antlered thoughts. In the great Sperm Whale, this god-like dignity in the brow is immensely amplified—gazing at the full front view, one feels the Deity and dread powers more forcibly than any other living object. The whale has no distinct features—no nose, eyes, ears, mouth—only a broad firmament of a forehead pleated with riddles, “dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, ships, and men.”
Genius in the Whale
In profile, one perceives the horizontal semi-crescentic depression in the forehead’s middle that Lavater identified as a mark of genius. Yet the narrator questions whether genius in the whale means writing books or speaking speeches—the Sperm Whale’s great genius lies in doing nothing particular and in its pyramidical silence. Had the ancient Orient known this whale, they would have deified it, as they deified the tongueless crocodile of the Nile. The Sperm Whale has no tongue, or one so small as to be incapable of protrusion. If a cultured poetical nation ever restores the old gods, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it from Jove’s high seat.
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