Moby Dick
Herman Melville, 1851
A sea story that keeps stopping to joke, lecture on whales, and stare into the abyss, led by a captain who has turned grief into a single, ruinous purpose.
Herman Melville
1819–1891
Melville shipped on the whaler Acushnet in 1841 and jumped ship in the Marquesas. Moby-Dick sold poorly, and he was largely forgotten when he died in 1891.
Feels like awe, nature and humor.
The calm island inside you, and the ocean waiting around it.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return! Books by Herman Melville
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