” Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit”
—— From the chapter “Try-Works” in Melville’s Moby Dick
Melville’s prose builds stairways between the material and ethereal, between the weather hardened world of the existential and the hard to be apparent but numerously profuse possible meanings of our existence on earth with the help of a wide expanse of thoughts – philosophical or otherwise – in a way that is deeply appealing for their startling originality, sheer beauty, force and flawless command of language.
Shakespeare is great but for many he is inaccessible, one needs a teacher, a guide to take us through the beauty of his labyrinthine and deeply thoughtful and entertaining writing. On the other hand, Melville is all that Shakespeare is but one has the luxury of being an autodidact with him.
What a joy to read him !!
There is not a single page in Moby-Dick which does not again and again remind us the greatness of his achievement as a writer.
Excursions Of A Bibliophile 