Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

nature, afford, under probing, new reaches of wonder. The American depreciationof the “explication de texte” may proceed from a characteristicthat I shall discuss later, namely that Americans have a tendency to be farmore interested in wholes than in parts.The passage I am about to read is from Chapter 133. It affords us ourfirst direct view of the White Whale; it is probably the most delayed entranceof a star in all literature—in my edition it is on page 538. 1 During the readingof this page, I wish you to ask yourself a number of questions: What is itsmovement and where have you heard it before? Does its rhythm and orderingof phrase recall you to the Bible of 1611? Or Elizabethan drama? Or SirThomas Browne? Or does it seem to you to sound like a prose translationor adaptation of an epic poem? Does it, indeed, seem to be trying to capturein prose the effects peculiar to poetry? But, above all, are you aware of anyelements that separate it from English literature, the English spirit recountingthe English experience of life?The whale has been sighted, “A hump like a snow-hill!” and theboats of the Pequod have started in pursuit.Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through thesea; but only slowly they neared the foe.Melville’s emotion is gaining on him. The alliterations in n and sbegin to introduce an incantatory tone which will presently be confirmedby constructions employing repetition. But the approach to a state of trancedoes not prevent his marking the rapidity of the boats with monosyllables,and the dragging slowness—as felt by the whalers—with open vowels.As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawinga carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely itspread. At length, the breathless hunter came so nigh his seeminglyunsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible,sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually setin a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast,involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it,far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening whiteshadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfullyaccompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeablyflowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and oneither hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side.196