Was looking for something else in my emails and found the notes I made from years ago when reading Moby Dick.
(Would just like to add that I typed these into my pre-smartphone phone! I think I was writing it at around the same time I was trying to make a film called "three dreams", which I shot but never edited).
Check out pictures of the narwhale moby dick page 120...
Also is the right whale / greenland whale the blue whale?
Page 122: the huzza porpoise. 'I call him thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward. They are the lads that always like before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen.'
page 141 about the whale: how can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me... He tasks me, he heaps me; i see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what i hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, i will wreak that hate upon him.'
page 143: god hunt us all, if we do not hunt moby dick to his death!
Page 144: this lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since i can ne'er enjoy...
Pips line from page 153 of moby dick... ' oh, thou big white god aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear'. Could i give this line to sijad in the film?
Elsewhere, pip is referred to as a 'blackling'.
Page 184 moby dick: "in times of strong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent. The permanent constitutional nature of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness."
Moby dick page 228: 'i know it to be true; it happened on this ball.' ie the earth. The whole radley / steelkilt story is great and then it ends with him swearing its truth over the biggest bible they can bring which really makes you feel like you are reading something completely real, and then he says he's met steelkilt since and its really really strong. Just a great story within a story.
Page 229: 'antediluvian Hindoo' ?? Its a really worldly book, like when he talks about the wrong pictures of whales...
Really gives you a sense of the world at that time, in detail, and how he is questioning loads of false assertions really well. Giving vent to all his little thoughts on things which you tend to agree with because of the plain and reasoned way in which he writes.
The descriptions of the inaccuracies of whale drawings, the detail in how he describes the tools for the kill - the line, the boats and so on. Its all so documentary. He even gives recommendations, that the harpooner should not row.
The 61st chapter, 'stubb kills a whale' is really gripping, like the earlier story inc story of steelkilt. And great last line as with the other. Then after that, when stubb gets the black cook to preach to the sharks to not eat the whale so loudly, thats just hilarious. Tragedy followed by farce.
Moby dick page 310 the blind whale: 'for all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and merry makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.'
Moby dick page 328: "The more i consider this mighty tail...".
Page 366: "burning a corpse, plunging it into that blackness of darkness...".
Page 367: "glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp, all others liars." (the karna connection).
Page 368: "The sun hides not the ocean...".
Page 411: "for whatever is truth - truly wondrous."
Moby dick page 419: "can you smoothe out a seam like this?"..,"glad enough would i lay my head upon the anvil"
page 426, the dying whale for the death of karna?
"he too worships fire" "he turns and turns him to it, how slowly but how steadfastly ... As the whale dies it turns to the sun. "but see! No sooner dead than death whirls round the corpse and it heads some other way"
karna needs to die as the sun dies. Imminglings?
"in vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again." the dying person wants to live, looks to the sun to give it life.
Photocopy this whole page. "i am buoyed by breaths of once living things"
Page 428 of moby dick... Where its the whale watch and the parsee is telling him how he might die.. Only thru hemp, and ahab is arrogant, thinks hes immortal, its all really reminiscent of vishnu avatars, of the demon thinking he can live forever, always forgetting something...
Really makes me think that moby dick is precisely so strong cos melville has used the hinduism he must have sailed with... Made it meet the christianity. Would not be so strong without the mingling of the two.
Moby dick page 446: ahab and pip... "thou touchest my inmost centre boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let's down."
and pip saying about his hand... "this seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for i will not let this go."
page 464-5: "what cozzening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me..." "Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?"
Moby dick page 447 onwards. Its coming thick and fast now. The wailing seals, the man overboard, the useless buoy, deciding to use queequegs coffin as life buoy... Its all gushing out. Like watching a really good film its all there to savour. The ships crew all fucked.
Ahab says to pip page 455: "like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health." and about fedallah, unsleeping, unmoving ... Id like to adapt this book, put it on as as a play.
Moby dick. Page 451-452: "a life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! And then to pip: "now then pip, we'll talk this over; i do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown world must empty into thee!"
Moby dick page 462 the description of the sea as man and air as woman, birds as feminine and sharks as masculine, sun as king... Its like an art direction for karna!
And then ahab described like a demon: "eyes glowing like coals".
And theres more... The king the sun giving the air to the sea and thats where ahabs demon steps in.
Moby dick page 473: the whole page... "Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck." "ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbours."