deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
إن "اللوياثان" العظيم هو المخلوق الوحيد في العالم الذي لا بد من أن يظل دون أن يُرسم إلى الأبد. حقا قد تجيء صورة أقرب إلى الواقع من صورة أخرى ولكن لن تكون هناك صورة تحكي الواقع نفسه بقسط كبير جدا من الدقة. ليست هناك طريقة على الأرض تسعفك على أن تجد بدقة كيف يكون شكل الحوت، ولعل الطريقة الوحيدة التي بها تستمد فكرة مقبولة عن سعته واستفاضته هي أن تذهب أنت نفسك محوّتا. غير أنك إن فعلت ذلك لم تكن مجازفتك ميسورة لأنها قد تؤدي بك إلى أن يمزقك ويغرقك ومن ثم كان عليك - فيما يخيل إلىّ - ألا تكون متعنتا في تطلعك وتشوفك إلى هذا اللوياثان.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung.
And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves of an old jacket.
I leave a white and turbid wake;pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelongswell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. Yonder, by theever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold browplumbs the blue. The diver sun --slow dived from noon, --goes down; my soulmounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavythat I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; i, the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that i wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron --that I know--not gold. 'Tis split, too --that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!
Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. Speak, thou vast and venerable head, muttered Ahab, which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!