Herman Melville

[luka]

im not

 

[version]

i always admired the conspiracy nutters way of watching films. theyd always detect the hidden symbolism in a way that made me feel really stupid. it would always be about transhumanism and monarch programming, every single time.

There are loads of irritating, half arsed ones too. I saw a couple of posts last night with one person claiming there was a Blood Meridian reference in Barbie because someone smacked a doll's head on a rock and another claiming there was a Gravity's Rainbow reference in Oppenheimer because there were V-2 rockets in it.

 

[line b]

Do you remember where by chance? V relevant to my research

I was reading story of the eye. It might have been broached in there but I also might be confusing it with some secondary stuff I was reading on it, either way dont have any in depth thing to recomend.

Story of the eye I liked alot though and is only 100 pages. It seemed dumb and gimmicky at first but as it goes along you see how its suggestive of all sorts of interesting things and not just the usual fruedian pyscho sexual bit you would expect. Had the feel of a sampler or teaser.

 

[line b]

I finished moby dick a couple days ago. Feel like the book mocks you with its ending as its a sort of an anti climax that reminds you all of ahabs monologues are insane ramblings, which you knew, but he spends so long intoxicating you with them that its a bit jarring when theres really no dramatic final battle between him and the whale. Moby dick swats them away like flies for a few days and then pops ahabs head off when hes finally annoyed enough to pay him mind. So much for destiny

 

[line b]

And thats what I took from the final image of Tahego grabbing the hawk from the sky and taking it down with the boat. The bird as this ultra ripe bit of symbolic matter and the pequod getting a last cheap shot in against that sort of thing after its been lead to its demise by myth making

 

[line b]

But all of the 'signs' say that the ship is doomed and the hunt for moby dick will lead to disaster so that contradicts that.

Loved the line that the pequod 'like satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it'

 

[version]

I finished moby dick a couple days ago. Feel like the book mocks you with its ending as its a sort of an anti climax that reminds you all of ahabs monologues are insane ramblings, which you knew, but he spends so long intoxicating you with them that its a bit jarring when theres really no dramatic final battle between him and the whale. Moby dick swats them away like flies for a few days and then pops ahabs head off when hes finally annoyed enough to pay him mind. So much for destiny

A gnostic would probably view the whale as the demiurge or an archon. Ahab has his monologue about striking through the mask, escaping the prison. His was always a futile quest as he was waging a one-man war against the universe.

 

[line b]

A gnostic would probably view the whale as the demiurge or an archon. Ahab has his monologue about striking through the mask, escaping the prison. His was always a futile quest as he was waging a one-man war against the universe.

Theres alot of gnosticism in the first half of the book where hes explicity raging against the material world

 

[IdleRich]

Of course they coasted off charisma, cult of personality, etc

Which is why said attributes should be treated as red flags

You've got the logic back to the front here though. Just cos Ted Bundy was charismatic, it doesn't mean that all charismatic people are Ted Bundy... some of them are Neal Cassady.

 

[version]

Theres alot of gnosticism in the first half of the book where hes explicity raging against the material world

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough."

 

[sus]

You've got the logic back to the front here though. Just cos Ted Bundy was charismatic, it doesn't mean that all charismatic people are Ted Bundy... some of them are Neal Cassady.

I think you chose a dicey example, Cassady was a sociopath

 

[IdleRich]

Yes deliberately so, but look at the people overflowing with charisma on here... eg Stan is hardly a psychopath is he?

Tom Cruise definitely is though hmmm

 

[line b]

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough."

The fire worship also reads gnostic. The tryworks are the 'divine spark' of the Pequod. And the part with St elmos fire:

"There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!”

 

[line b]

Gnosticism also gives a 'reason' for all the scientific bits too

 

[Clinamenic]

eg Stan is hardly a psychopath is he?

Perhaps another dicey example.

 

[version]

At Melville's Tomb​

By Hart Crane

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Hart Crane's one for Luka's big words thread.

 

[version]

I am pleased this threadis now populated by Melville-esque characters - confidence men and lightning-rod men; self-inventors. I’d recommend The Lightng-Rod Man, it’s very short and simultaneously confusing and illuminating.

That is a good one.

The Lightning Rod Man by Herman Melville

 

[version]

Vidal... He can be quite cutting and entertaining, but who's reading Vidal these days? Certainly fewer than are reading Faulkner and Melville.

 

[Benny Bunter]

THE RAVAGED VILLA

In shards the sylvan vases lie,
Their links of dance undone,
And brambles wither by thy brim,
Choked fountain of the sun!
The spider in the laurel spins,
The weed exiles the flower:
And, flung to kiln, Apollo's bust
Makes lime for Mammon's tower.