>The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
This is probably the best passage ever written.
It's undoubtedly magnificent. Any time I see someone say they don't like this book, I dismiss their opinions on art entirely.
I was always meaning to ask who were the top prosesmiths of the meatier variety
In English, Shakespeare and Melville are at the top (Maybe Milton too). After that, you mostly have the modernists-Joyce and Faulkner foremost among them. The 19th century saw consistent quality across the century but no one who could rival the top dogs. Post ww2 has some really good candidates as well but they’re pretty divisive in terms of aesthetics. They usually are either loved or hated by people with no in between. This would be writers like Pynchon, McCarthy, Mervyn Peake, Hemingway, etc.
Shakespeare and Melville are the barometers by which all other english writers are judged though.
Wasn't shakey several different authors?
"If I have written more than others, it is by employing an army of ghost writers"
maybe, but wouldn't you rather choose to believe that he was one uniquely brilliant man?
I don't understand. Shakespeare didn't write prose he wrote plays.
>plays don't contain prose
but does prose, contain plays?
In Melville’s case, yes.
Gibbon.
>Commodus had now attained the summit of vice and infamy. Amidst the acclamations of a flattering court, he was unable to disguise from himself, that he had deserved the contempt and hatred of every man of sense and virtue in his empire. His ferocious spirit was irritated by the consciousness of that hatred, by the envy of every kind of merit, by the just apprehension of danger, and by the habit of slaughter, which he contracted in his daily amusements. History has preserved a long list of consular senators sacrificed to his wanton suspicion, which sought out, with peculiar anxiety, those unfortunate persons connected, however remotely, with the family of the Antonines, without sparing even the ministers of his crimes or pleasures. His cruelty proved at last fatal to himself. He had shed with impunity the noblest blood of Rome: he perished as soon as he was dreaded by his own domestics. Marcia, his favorite concubine, Eclectus, his chamberlain, and Lætus, his Prætorian præfect, alarmed by the fate of their companions and predecessors, resolved to prevent the destruction which every hour hung over their heads, either from the mad caprice of the tyrant, or the sudden indignation of the people. Marcia seized the occasion of presenting a draught of wine to her lover, after he had fatigued himself with hunting some wild beasts. Commodus retired to sleep; but whilst he was laboring with the effects of poison and drunkenness, a robust youth, by profession a wrestler, entered his chamber, and strangled him without resistance. The body was secretly conveyed out of the palace, before the least suspicion was entertained in the city, or even in the court, of the emperor’s death. Such was the fate of the son of Marcus, and so easy was it to destroy a hated tyrant, who, by the artificial powers of government, had oppressed, during thirteen years, so many millions of subjects, each of whom was equal to their master in personal strength and personal abilities.
Phenomenal passage. I recently finished Moby Dick and it is without a doubt at the top of the literary heap. I want to learn about Melville because this masterpiece can't have come out of a vacuum.
Also they put the wrong type of whale on the cover, interesting choice.
god me too im obsessed with him. I have typee and mardi, i want to read typee soon. and reread moby dick this year to be honest
I've got omoo and mardi on my desk that I'm meaning to read soon. I loved typee, it's more of a classic adventure novel than moby dick but it was still super fun and melville still gets autistic about the details of the world, which in this case is polynesian anthropology instead of whaling. His short stories are great too. I liked Benito Cereno and the paradise of bachelors and tartarus of maids.
Melville's story is pretty sad. Moby Dick killed his reputation and he died an insane has-been.
That's absolutely brutal. Sad that such a great book wasn't appreciated when it came out. What were the criticisms of the book?
Mardi was the book that killed his career, well before he published Moby Dick, which wasn't that harshly criticized because nobody even read it. and while he was certainly eccentric he was not by any stretch "insane". aside from his depressive episodes he lead a very normal domestic life with his wife and children
>he lead a very normal domestic life with his wife and children
he was an alcoholic and a wife beater, his wife's family tried to get her to leave him. his son killed himself and his granddaughter wanted nothing to do with him.
Way too verbose and pretentious. It's dogshit in that context.
>Believing in God is madness
Sounds pretty accurate
McCarthy read this novel many times. Really not too surprising.
i was disappointed in the lack of whale biology in the book
Are you joking? That's like, a quarter of the book.
Why did they make a fake sperm whale skull with goofy oversized teeth
I think a similar species of sperm whale existed earlier.
yeah they named it after Melville even
kinda glad it's extinct. Though it lived in the same seas as Megalodon, would've been some kino fights
i dont get it
what's the passage about? He went mad from being dragged into the depths, yet his madness is actually a touch of divine knowledge, akin to a near-death experience? ok
Sir have you never looked at the ocean and been moved?
Filtered; start with Phaedrus
Reading it right now for the first time, nearing the halfway point (first whale engaged, small boat got lost at sea in a squall)
It really is fantastic. While I can imagine someone disliking Dostoevsky, Pynchon, *insert your favorite literary author here*, I can’t fathom anyone with even a half-developed taste in literature not appreciating this.
Finished it for the first time yesterday. Wonderful book. I like the whaling autism.
>He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it
Shouldn't it be "and spoke of it?"
Only if you're a pleb using basic b***h grammar.
Not when it was 173 years ago.
Also does this guy write every paragraph like this or are they only reserved when he intends to make a point?
Not every paragraph is that ornate, this is a kind of stand out passage, but the prose is broadly beautiful throughout.
>Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.
Damn. Is that from Moby Dick?
Yeah it's from the chapter "The Albatross"
FINE, i'll fricking read it finally, jesus.