Leander Scholz: Kapitel 3: The Spouter-Inn Die Wandervögel auf Seefahrt
"Das 3. Kapitel, das den Titel »The Spouter-Inn« trägt, oder in der deutschen Übersetzung von Matthias Jendis »Das Gasthaus ›Zum Walfänger‹«, gehört zu den Anfangskapiteln, die den Leser auf die Eigenheiten der bevorstehenden Schiffsreise vorbereiten. Ishmael, der Ich-Erzähler, hat sich entschieden, der traditionellen Route zu folgen und seine Reise als Matrose eines Walfängerschiffs von der vorgelagerten Insel Nantucket aus anzutreten. Auch wenn er zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht wissen kann, auf welchem abenteuerlichen Schiff er anheuern wird und welche Gefahren ihn erwarten, beginnt die Eingliederung in die wilde Mannschaft der Pequod bereits während seiner Wartezeit an Land in New Bedford. Denn dort muss er übernachten, bevor er das Postboot besteigen kann, das ihn auf die berühmte Insel der Walfänger bringen wird. Bereits die Namen der Gasthäuser, die Ishmael im vorangehenden Kapitel in Betracht zieht, machen deutlich, dass er sich von nun an vorrangig unter Seeleuten befindet. Aber er wählt nicht das Gasthaus The Crossed Harpoons, auch nicht das Sword Fish Inn und ebenso nicht The Trap. Für Ishmael kommt allein das Spouter-Inn in Frage, dessen Name auf das Blasloch der Wale verweist und das sich somit unmittelbar an die Walfänger richtet, die es gewohnt sind, auf See nach dem Blas als Anzeichen für die großen Meeressäugetiere Ausschau zu halten. Dass die Wahl des Gasthauses allerdings eine schicksalhafte ist, macht erst der Name des Wirtes Peter Coffin deutlich. Auch wenn dort kein Sarg auf Ishmael wartet, wie es der Nachname erwarten lassen könnte, so knüpft die nächtliche und äußerst folgenreiche Begegnung mit dem Harpunier Queequeg, der ebenfalls zur späteren Schiffsbesatzung der Pequod gehören wird, dennoch Ishmaels Schicksal an einen Sarg. Denn sehr viel später, im 110. Kapitel mit dem Titel »Queequeg in his Coffin«, wird es genau dieser Harpunier sein, der sich einen Sarg zimmern lässt, weil er erkrankt ist und glaubt, in absehbarer Zeit sterben zu müssen. Und dieser Sarg seines inzwischen engen Freundes wird Ishmael zuletzt das Leben retten, nachdem die Pequod untergangen ist und der Sarg unverhofft zu seinem Rettungsboot wird. In den ersten Absätzen des Kapitels wird ein großes Ölgemälde beschrieben, das im Eingangsflur des Spouter-Inn hängt und dessen zentrales Motiv zunächst nicht erkennbar zu sein scheint. Tatsächlich aber gibt es das Leitmotiv des gesamten Romans ab. Da das Bild verräuchert, verdreckt und verunstaltet ist und der Maler mit zahlreichen Schatten und Schattierungen gearbeitet hat, dauert es eine ganze Weile, bis sich Ishmael sicher ist, dass es sich nicht um das Schwarze Meer handelt, auch nicht um den Kampf der vier Elemente und nicht um eine verbrannte Heide und ebenso wenig um eine arktische Winterlandschaft oder um den Strom der Zeit. Das unheilschwangere Etwas in der Bildmitte stellt einen großen Wal dar, der gerade aufgrund seiner unklaren Abbildung das Rätsel aller Rätsel schlechthin verkörpern kann, nach dessen Lösung alles andere einfach wäre: »That once found out, and all the rest were plain.« (26) Im Verlauf des Romans wird dieses Rätsel jedoch nicht allein durch den weißen Wal verkörpert, dem die Mannschaft der Pequod auf manische Weise hinterjagt. Jeder Protagonist, ob Mensch, Tier oder Ding, kann zum Stellvertreter der Frage werden, deren Beantwortung der Schiffsbesatzung samt Kapitän zuletzt einen Tod bringt, der die eigentliche Antwort auf die gestellte Frage ist. Im 3. Kapitel ist es jedoch zunächst der seltsame Harpunier Queequeg, der nicht nur für Ishmael das Rätsel und seine Auflösung verkörpert. [...]
Dass der Wirt ihm auf verschlungene Weise erzählt, der Harpu-nier sei vermutlich damit beschäftigt, einen Menschenkopf aus der Südseezu verkaufen, lässt die Situation allerdings noch furchterregender erscheinen und den baldigen Bettgenossen noch geheimnisvoller. Erst als der Wirt ihm versichert, dass er den Harpunier wahrscheinlich gar nicht mehr antreffen wird, beruhigt sich Ishmael wieder und lässt sich auf das karge Zimmer führen, in dem sich Queequegs Habseligkeiten befinden: eine Hängematte, ein Seesack, fremdartige Angelhaken, eine lange Harpune, gelehnt an das Kopfende des Bettes, und ein merkwürdiger Umhang, von dem sich Ishmael angezogen fühlt und den er sich anzieht. Als er damit vorden Spiegel tritt, erschrickt er sich und zieht die fremdartige Kleidung desHarpuniers, mit dem er die Nacht verbringen wird, gleich wieder aus.
Spätestens jetzt dürfte wenigstens dem Leser klar geworden sein, dass der Wirt seine Worte mit Bedacht gewählt hat und mit »that sort of thing« nicht nur Ishmaels symbolische Angliederung an die Mannschaft der Pequod sondern auch seine sexuelle Initiation gemeint ist.
In seiner berühmten kulturhistorischen Schrift Totem und Tabu von 1913 hat Sigmund Freud die libidinöse Energie eines urzeitlichen Männerbunds beschrieben, bei dem sich jeder mit jedem identifiziert. Während sich die vorhergehende »Vaterhorde« dadurch auszeichnet, dass sie voneinem »gewalttätigen, eifersüchtigen Vater« beherrscht wird, der »alle Weibchen für sich behält und die heranwachsenden Söhne vertreibt«, konstituiert sich die »Bruderhorde« über den gemeinsamen Mord an dem despotischen Vater und dem Verbot, dass sich jemals einer an die zentrale Stelle des getöteten Vaters setzt. Brüder sind die Mitglieder des so entstandenen Männerbunds also nicht nur, weil es sich um ehemalige Söhne handelt, sondern weil sie zugleich die bestehende Möglichkeit ausschlagen, als Vertriebene irgendwo anders selbst eine eigene despotische Vaterhorde zugründen. Die brüderliche Gleichheit löst allerdings nicht nur ein Problem, sondern sie schafft auch ein neues: »Das sexuelle Bedürfnis einigt die Männer nicht, sondern entzweit sie.« Da sich alle wechselseitig miteinander identifizieren und kein »Überstarker« mehr die Rolle des Vaters übernehmen kann, verschärft sich die Konkurrenz im Hinblick auf die begehrten Frauen, so dass es zunächst zu einer Reihe »schwerer Zwischenfälle«kommt. Die Lösung dieses Problems besteht nach Freud in der Aufrichtung des Totemismus, der auf zwei Tabuvorschriften beruht, nämlich erstens, das Totemtier zu ehren, und zweitens, das Inzestverbot einzuhalten. Die Verehrung des Totemtiers, das an die verwaiste Stelle des Vaters getreten ist, garantiert, dass kein anderer an diese Stelle treten kann. Und das Inzestverbot stellt den Verzicht auf die Frauen dar, um derentwillen die Söhne den Vater getötet haben: »Sie retten so die Organisation, welche sie stark gemacht hatte und die auf homosexuellen Gefühlen und Betätigungen ruhen konnte, welche sich in der Zeit der Vertreibung bei ihnen eingestellt haben mochten.«
Obwohl an Bord der Pequod wie bei allen Schiffen eine strenge, auf die Arbeitsteilung ausgerichtete Hierarchie herrscht, zeichnet sich die dunkle Verbundenheit der Mannschaft durch eine brüderliche Gleichheit aus, die sich in den entscheidenden Momenten der Mobilisierung darin äußert,dass alle an der Intensität des Geschehens teilhaben. Getragen wird die gemeinsame Fahrt aber nicht allein durch die maritime Lust und die imaginären Versprechen des Meeres, sondern ebenfalls durch einen unversöhnlichen Aufstand gegen die symbolische Ordnung des Landes und deren territoriale Aufteilungen. Während an Land das Prinzip der Familie herrscht und das alltägliche Leben durch die Formen sowohl der produktiven und als auch der reproduktiven Arbeit bestimmt wird, muss zwar an Bord ebenfalls harte Arbeit geleistet werden, aber alle Verrichtungen erhalten ihren Sinn nur im Rahmen des Beutezugs, zu dem die Pequod aufgebrochen ist. Das Reiseziel des verschworenen Männerbundes besteht nicht darin, irgendwo wieder an Land zu gehen und etwa eine eigene Kolonie zu gründen. Die Gemeinschaft der Seemänner stellt eine eigenständige Lebensform dar, die nicht von dem Verlangen strukturiert wird, sich übersich selbst hinaus zu erhalten. [...]
Dass die Reise von Anfang an auf den Tod der Mannschaft hinausläuft, deutet sich bereits im 3. Kapitel durch das Erscheinen eines Mannes mit dem Namen Bulkington im Spouter-Inn an, der Ishmael im 23. Kapitel zu einem Loblied auf das Sterben auf See inspiriert, das einer Apotheose sehr nahe kommt."
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.— It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.— It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?
In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads. [...]
(Melville: Moby Dick Kapitel 3)
Chapter 110: Queequeg in His Coffin
Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then.
Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh to his endless end.
Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but—as we have elsewhere seen—mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called.
Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after some days’ suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So that—let us say it again— no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean’s invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards his destined heaven.
Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favor he asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.
Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg’s bidding, whatever it might include. There was some heathenish, coffin-colored old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took Queequeg’s measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg’s person as he shifted the rule.
“Ah! poor fellow! he’ll have to die now,” ejaculated the Long Island sailor.
Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work.
When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.
Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one’s consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within; a flask of fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view. “Rarmai” (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock. [...]
But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon there seemed no need of the carpenter’s box; and thereupon, when some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;— at a critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg’s conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day. So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg—“Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!”
(Chapter 110: Queequeg in His Coffin)
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