Without Lifting A Finger

From MD Ch. 56. I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale; Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's is far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best. All Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like in its general effect. &&& From Beale's "Natural History" (which I found -- in toto? -- online.

Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; — Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as...

Brown Creeper near Hummock Pond, Nantucket. I was shooting some swans at the edge of  a lawn and when I went back to the road he went from hide and seek in the mossy tree to perfect poses on my side of the tree. Yippie. Lifer. #rlswihart13 #nantucket #hummockpond #birdsofnantucket #birdsofinstagram #browncreeper #nature #beauty #mossytrees #poetry #readmorepoetry2021

 A visit to Nantucket got me start thinking about Melville (we stayed in the Jared Coffin House) -- I've always been a fan of Bartleby -- and now I'm attempting Moby Dick for the second time. So far so good but it's early (Ch. 26): "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.

Every so often I get to give my Kindle Ebooks away (you'll have to spend your $$$ for the paper). Consider this an early Christmas/Holiday gift. From midnight tonight (Friday 12:00 AM) to midnight on Nov. 16, you should be able to download all three books for free @ Amazon.com. Merry Christmas!!! 🧑‍🎄🧑‍🎄🧑‍🎄 #rlswihart13 #frommyhousetoyours #merryxmas #amazon #rlswihart #thelastman #matmanandtestudo #woodhenge #poetrygiveaway #readmorepoetry2021