Mast-head (Moby Dick)

 Der folgende Artikel wird demnächst gekürzt. Der in Moby Dick beschriebene mast-head  ist kein Mastkorb oder Krähennest. Das wird gegen Ende des Kapitels beschrieben. Die Einrichtung, die beschrieben wird,  war viel primitiver (sieh Bild)

Literatur dazu:

Leander Scholz Kapitel 35: The Mast-Head. Der Sturz der Souveränität

"Das 35. Kapitel, das den Titel The Mast-Head oder in der deutschen Übersetzung von Matthias Jendis Im Masttopp trägt, gehört zu einer Reihe von Kapiteln, in denen die symbolische Ordnung des Walfängerschiffs entfaltet wird. Dabei geht es nicht nur um die Verteilung der symbolischen Plätze, deren fest gefügte Hierarchie den jeweiligen Ordnungen der verschiedenen Schiffsdecks entspricht, sondern um die Stiftung einer – je nach Lage der Dinge – dynamisierbaren Kohärenz, die aus der funktional differenzierten Besatzung der Pequod eine unter dem Blick aus dem Ausguck hoch mobilisierte Gemeinschaft macht. Denn der Masttopp beschreibt nicht bloß ein bestimmtes Bauteil innerhalb der Gesamtordnung des Schiffes, ohne dessen nautischen Einsatz der Gesamtzweck des Walfangs nicht gewährleistet wäre, sondern eine Blick-Konstellation, von der aus die symbolische Ordnung der Schiffsgesellschaft ihre imaginäre Einheit gewinnt und an der gewissermaßen das gesamte Schiff aufgehängt ist. [...]"

Lookout

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came round.

In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground.  And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her—say, an empty vial even— then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last! and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here.  I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.  For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians.  And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes:  a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stairlike formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight.  In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post.  Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange sight.  There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of Vendome stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks below, whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil.  Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules’ pillars, his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go.  Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and even when most obscured by that London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is smoke, must be fire.  But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze; however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.

It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket, stands accountable.  The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected lofty spars along the seacoast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house.  A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach.  But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea.  The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours.  In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head:  nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.  There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes.  There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves.  The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor.  For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner— for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years’ voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months.  And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves.  Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t’ gallant crosstrees.  Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull’s horns.  To be sure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you.  You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make a convenience closet of your watch-coat.

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow’s-nests, in which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas.  In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled “A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;” in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow’s-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet’s good craft.  He called it the Sleet’s crow’s-nest, in honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget.  In shape, the Sleet’s crow’s-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a movable sidescreen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale.  Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom.  On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats.  In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences.  When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing.  Now, it was plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of his crow’s-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow’s-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the “local attraction” of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship’s planks, and in the Glacier’s case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned “binnacle deviations,” “azimuth compass observations,” and “approximate errors,” he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow’s nest, within easy reach of his hand.  Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird’s nest within three or four perches of the pole.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float.  For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard.  With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.”

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket!  Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head.  Beware of such an one, I say:  your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer.  Nor are these monitions at all unneeded.  For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.  Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:—

     “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! 
      Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient “interest” in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise.  But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve?  They have left their opera-glasses at home.

“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet.  Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.”  Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.  In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.  But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror.  Over Descartian vortices you hover.  And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever.  Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

(Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Kap. 35)

Die Mannschaft der Pequod (Moby Dick)

 CHAPTER 26

"Knights and Squires 

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. [...]

And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. "Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery." But we shall ere long see what that word "careful" precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter. [...]

As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American literally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew."

(Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Kap.26)

Pottwal (Sperm Whale) in Moby Dick

 "Der Pottwal fand durch Herman Melvilles Roman Moby-Dick auch Eingang in die Weltliteratur. Der Titel geht auf einen Wal zurück, der im 19. Jahrhundert große öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit erhielt: „Mocha Dick“ war ein männlicher Pottwal mit eher grauer als brauner Haut und einer weißen Narbe auf seinem Kopf. Seinen Namen verdankte er seiner ersten Begegnung mit Walfängern um 1810 nahe der Insel Mocha vor der chilenischen Küste. 1859 wurde er von einem schwedischen Walfänger erlegt. Melville änderte den Namen des Wals in „Moby“ und verwob in seinem Roman auch die Ereignisse um den Untergang des Walfängers Essex nach den Aufzeichnungen von dessen damaligem Obermaat Owen Chase." (Pottwal)

"Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick is based on a true story about a sperm whale that attacked and sank the whaleship Essex.^[245][246] Melville associated the sperm whale with the Bible's Leviathan.^[246][247] The fearsome reputation perpetuated by Melville was based on bull whales' ability to fiercely defend themselves from attacks by early whalers, smashing whaling boats and, occasionally, attacking and destroying whaling ships." (Sperm Whale)

Rilkes Marien-Leben

 Im Marien-Leben greift Rilke einzelne Episoden aus dem Leben Mariae, wie sie im apogryphen Jakobusevangelium dargestellt werden, heraus.

Ein Gedicht habe ich mir etwas genauer angesehen:

Die Darstellung Mariae im Tempel

Um zu begreifen, wie sie damals war,
musst du dich erst an eine Stelle rufen,
wo Säulen in dir wirken; wo du Stufen
nachfühlen kannst; wo Bogen voll Gefahr
den Abgrund eines Raumes überbrücken,
der in dir blieb, weil er aus solchen Stücken
getürmt war, dass du sie nicht mehr aus dir
ausheben kannst du rissest dich denn ein.
Bist du so weit, ist alles in dir Stein,
Wand, Aufgang, Durchblick, Wölbung -, so probier
den großen Vorhang, den du vor dir hast,
ein wenig wegzuzerrn mit beiden Händen:
da glänzt es von ganz hohen Gegenständen
und übertrifft dir Atem und Getast.
Hinauf, hinab, Palast steht auf Palast,
Geländer strömen breiter aus Geländern
und tauchen oben auf an solchen Rändern,
da dich, wie du sie siehst, der Schwindel fasst.
Dabei macht ein Gewölk aus Räucherständern
die Nähe trüb; aber das Fernste zielt
in dich hinein mit seinen graden Strahlen -,
und wenn jetzt Schein aus klaren Flammenschalen
auf langsam nahenden Gewändern spielt:
wie hältst du's aus?
Sie aber kam und hob
den Blick, um dieses alles anzuschauen.
(Ein Kind, ein kleines Mädchen zwischen Frauen.)
Dann stieg sie ruhig, voller Selbstvertrauen,
dem Aufwand zu, der sich verwöhnt verschob:
So sehr war alles, was die Menschen bauen,
schon überwogen von dem Lob

in ihrem Herzen. Von der Lust
sich hinzugeben an die innern Zeichen:
Die Eltern meinten, sie hinaufzureichen,
der Drohende mit der Juwelenbrust
empfing sie scheinbar: Doch sie ging durch alle,
klein wie sie war, aus jeder Hand hinaus
und in ihr Los, das, höher als die Halle,
schon fertig war, und schwerer als das Haus.

Die Grundsituation ist die, dass die dreijährige Maria dem Tempel geweiht wird. 

Letzter Satz des Abschnitts im Evangelium: 

"Maria aber war im Tempel des Herrn, wie eine Taube mit ganz wenig Speise sich beköstigend, und empfing Nahrung aus der Hand eines Engels"

Das Bild des Gedichtes ist: 

Maria wird Teil des Tempels. Sie akzeptiert das als Dreijährige, merkt aber, dass sie zu Höherem bestimmt ist als zum Tempeldienst.

Das wird in den Schlusszeilen ausgesprochen:

Die Eltern meinten, sie hinaufzureichen, der Drohende mit der Juwelenbrust [Priester] empfing sie scheinbar: 

Doch sie ging durch alle, klein wie sie war, aus jeder Hand hinaus [in Gottes Hand hinein] und in ihr Los, das, höher als die Halle, schon fertig war, und schwerer als das Haus."

Der Tempel drohte, sie zum Teil seines Baus zu machen, wo sie ganz mit dem Stein, aus dem der Tempel gemacht ist, verschmolzen wäre. Doch sie wird nicht dem Tempel dienen wird, sondern geht von Gott erfüllt auf "ihr Los", Gottesmutter zu werden, zu.

Zum Text des gesamten Zyklus: http://www.lyrikrilke.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=97&Itemid=181

mehr zu Rilke in diesem Blog

Die Strickleiter zur Kanzel (Moby Dick, Kapitel 8)

 "Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany color, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste.  Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint.  At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary.  For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec.

I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.  Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage.  No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen.  Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions?  Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the walls."

(Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Chapter 8)

Moby Dick: Die Predigt (Kapitel 9)

 The Sermon Father Mapple rose [...]

"Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah—'And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.'" "Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters— four yarns—is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound! [...] 

Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. [...]

But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that— and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.  [...] See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee worldwide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,—no friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux.  [...]

'Point out my state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep." "Thou look'st like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.' Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards. [...]

That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break. [...] "Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they all-outward to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their questions. 'What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him. "'I am a Hebrew,' he cries—and then—'I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts,— when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah. "And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. [...]

And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, [...]

"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!"

(Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Chapter 9)

Moby Dick: Luv- und Leeseite des Lebens (erweiterte Fassung)

Windzugewandte und windabgewandte Seite, Luv und Lee, der sichere Hafen und die lockende unbegrenzte See mit ihren Versprechungen und ihren Gefahren.

Am Anfang der Walfangfahrt reflektiert Melville in "Moby Dick" über diese Gegensätze.
Wenn wir den Hauptstrang der Handlung des Romans kennen, hat die Lesereise durch diesen Roman damit ihren eigenen Reiz. Was erfahren wir bei dem Kampf zwischen dem Kapitän Ahab und dem weißen Wal, was bei dem Kampf des einen Starken, des Kapitäns, mt seiner Mannschaft?

Aufbruch und Heimkehr, Beginn des Lebens in der Kindheit mit all den Hoffnungen, Versprechungen und Gefahren. Das nahende Ende im Alter. Ein Sich-Zurückziehen von den Überforderungen, die aktives Leben mit sich bringt, in die Reflexion.
Beides verspricht der Roman.

"The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe! [...]

But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

(Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Chapter 23)

"Der Hafen bietet Hilfe Beistand leisten; der Hafen ist mitleidig; im Hafen gibt es Sicherheit, Komfort, einen Herd, Abendessen, warme Decken, Freunde, alles, was für unsere Gebrechlichkeit gut ist. Aber in einem Sturm ist der Hafen, das Land die größte Gefährdung für das Schiff, es muss Annäherungen vermeiden, eine kleine Berührung mit dem Land, auch wenn es nur den Kiel streift, bedeutete größte Gefahr. Mit aller Macht muss das Schiff sich von der Küste fernhalten und gegen genau die Winde ankämpfen, die es gern nach Hause führen würden. Es muss das tobende Meer fern vom Land anstreben, weil Rettung nur darin liegt, die  Gefahr aufzusuchen, den einzigen Freund, den bittersten Feind! [...]

Aber wie in der Weite des Meers allein die höchste Wahrheit zu finden ist, fern von der Küste, im Meer unergründlich wie Gott - so ist es besser, in dieser dräuenden Unendlichkeit umzukommen, als unrühmlich auf das Land geworfen zu werden, selbst wenn das Sicherheit böte! Denn wer wollte, dem Wurme gleich an Land zu kriechen, sich wünschen? Die Schrecken des Schrecklichen! Sind all ihre Qualen so sinnlos? Fass Mut, fass Mut, oh Bulkington*! Beweis deine Standhaftigkeit, Halbgott! Direkt aus den tosenden,  todbringenden Fluten des Ozeans steigst du auf zur Göttlichkeit! "

*Nach Bulkington, einem Mannschaftsmitglied des Walfängers Pequod*, ist der Bulkington-Pass, ein Gebirgspass an Oskar-II.-Küste des Grahamlands auf der Antarktischen Halbinsel in Westantarktika benannt. 

* Unwesentlich verbesserte und mit Links versehene Maschinenübersetzung des Anfangs des englischen Wikipediaartikels:
Pequod ist ein fiktives Nantucket-Walfangschiff aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, das 1851 in dem Roman Moby-Dick des amerikanischen Autors Herman Melville erscheint. Pequod und ihre Crew, befehligt von Captain Ahab, spielen eine zentrale Rolle in dem Roman, der nach den ersten Kapiteln während einer dreijährigen Walfang-Expedition im Atlantik, im Indischen Ozean und im Südpazifik fast ausschließlich an Bord des Schiffes spielt. Die meisten Figuren des Romans gehören zu Pequods Crew, einschließlich des Erzählers Ishmael.

Ishmael trifft auf das Schiff, nachdem er in Nantucket angekommen ist, und erfährt von drei Schiffen, die kurz vor einer dreijährigen Kreuzfahrt stehen. Von seinem neuen Freund, dem polynesischen Harpunier Queequeg (oder genauer gesagt Queequegs Götzengott Yojo), beauftragt, die Auswahl für beide zu treffen, geht Ishmael, ein wie er sich selbst beschreibt "Greenhorn im Walfang", zum Kai und wählt die Pequod.

Es wird mitgeteilt, dass die Pequod nach dem Algonkin sprechenden Pequot-Stamm der amerikanischen Ureinwohner benannt wurde, der Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts durch den Pequot-Krieg und die vorangegangene Epidemie dezimiert und zerstreut wurde. Der Mashantucket-Stamm der westlichen Pequot und der Stamm der östlichen Pequot bewohnen immer noch ihr Reservat in Connecticut.