Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Dangers of Close Whale Spout Contact

Whalemen deem the spout poisonous and avoid it. The outer vapory shreds of the jet cause feverish smarting of the skin, and closer contact can cause skin to peel off entirely. The jet can blind a person if it reaches the eyes. The wisest course for any investigator is to leave this deadly spout alone.

Hypothesis: Whale Spouts Are Pure Vapor

The author’s hypothesis is that the spout is nothing but mist. He is impelled to this conclusion by considerations of the sperm whale’s great inherent dignity and sublimity—the fact that it is never found on soundings or near shores, being both ponderous and profound. Like Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, and Dante, profound beings emit semi-visible steam while thinking deep thoughts. The whale’s vast head becomes overhung by a canopy of vapor from its incommunicable contemplations, and this vapor, glorified by rainbows, bears Heaven’s seal—since rainbows visit only vapor, not clear air. The author ends with gratitude for divine intuitions that enkindle his fog with heavenly rays, acknowledging that all have doubts, many deny, but few have intuitions.

第八十六章 The Tail.

The narrator dedicates this chapter to celebrating the sperm whale’s tail, which he measures as comprising at least fifty square feet on its upper surface alone, expanding into broad flukes that exceed twenty feet across in a full-grown whale. He describes the tail’s remarkable triune structure of tendons—long horizontal fibres in the upper and lower layers with short crosswise fibres in the middle—a design he compares to the alternating stone and tile courses in ancient Roman walls, which imparts immense power to the member. This concentrated might in the tail is further augmented by muscular fibres running from throughout the whale’s bulk that blend into the flukes, making it, as the narrator declares, the thing that could accomplish “annihilation occur to matter.” Despite this overwhelming strength, the tail moves with exceeding grace, and the narrator identifies five distinct motions: propulsion, combat as a mace, the delicate act of sweeping that suggests a sense of touch concentrated in the tail like an elephant’s trunk, the playful lobtailing like a kitten on solitary seas, and the sublime peaking of flukes when the whale plunges, a sight he likens to majestic Satan thrusting forth his claw from Hell. The narrator ultimately admits that however much he dissects the whale, he can only go “skin deep,” knowing not even “the tail of this whale,” much less comprehend how the creature has “no face.”