It has been a while since a novel swept me away. Umberto Eco’s ‘Baudolino’ comes to mind. I thought my novel reading days were behind me. It is good to know just how wrong you can be. Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ revels in grandeur; storytelling depicting through words, haunting, images, and suggestions greater majesty and mystery. In a world of too many writers, too many books, and too much writing, it is good to read something essential.
Tethered unknowing,
A harpoon landed at birth,
Struck grave solemn and dull,
Wounded loose fish,
Roaming the seas in consternation,
A creature amidst creation,
Did you not know?
In reality and truth,
The whole time a fast fish you be.
I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of a whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another ship) came up with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and finally appropriated it before the very eyes of the plaintiffs. And when those defendants were remonstrated with, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs’ teeth, and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat, which had remained attached to the whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the value of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat.
What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?
