#MELVILLE

[mossy-rainfrog]

[ID: A digital drawing of Ahab's boat crew on a whalehunt, headed by Fedallah, and oared by several other men. The perspective is right before the bow of the rowboat, in the splash of the water as Fedallah crouches, holding his harpoon, and looking ahead with a focused expression. Several men man the oars, one looking ahead just like Fedallah, and one looking back at Ahab in the back of the boat, who mans the steering and points ahead, crying out for a whale. Behind them, the Pequod can be seen at a distance over the blue ocean against a pink and purple sky.

Character designs: Fedallah is a lean, older Persian man dressed in Zoroastrian white with a wrap over his hair. He has a thin mustache and short beard. Ahab is a chubby middle-aged Persian man with short, curly hair, and wearing a maroon coat. There are three visible oarsmen: all three are younger Filipino men of varying hair lengths, facial hair styles, and skin tones. They are all wearing various shades of purple. End ID.]

CATEGORY TEN FEDALLAH MOMENT. I haven't posted nearly enough Fedallah art on here, so enjoy some boys on a whalehunt :) i love the colors of this one.

designs are, as always, borrowed from the lovely @pocketsizedquasar-3 :3

[itsnightblood]

art by: @my-melville hear my new synthwave track here

[alientitty]

...therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—“Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put up thy gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee!”

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

[burningvelvet]

I finished Moby Dick. So, to continue my former post(s) documenting my thoughts, here we are (spoilers ahead):

captain ahab: i am once again asking hast thou seen the white whale

Narrator, for the 5 millionth time describing captain ahab: "MONOMANIACAL. MONOMANIAC. MONOMANIA."

I was thinking "the homosexual themes everyone talks about are really exaggerated apparently…" and then I got to the chapter about sperm squeezing

Stubb meeting with the French in chap 91 had the exact vibe of a filler episode on a comedy sitcom

there are a lot of moments that reminded me of The Office ngl like i could just imagine stubb in the little interview chair just talking. so much meme material. he's seriously just doing his own thing. the little random characters like the blacksmith and carpenter just talking shit and side-eyeing ahab in the background lmaoooo

Saint George didn't kill a dragon, it was a whale #THETRUTHREVEALED #WHALETRUTHERS

It would have been hilarious if the British people told Ahab that they already killed Moby Dick already before he could get to it. I was so hoping that would happen. Bonus points if it was the Rachel after he'd turned them away.

Ahab discusses the topic of madness a lot. It's almost like he's… mad...

I vote Ahab for the most Byronic hero to ever Byronic… Heathcliff and Rochester have nothing on him… The origin of the Byronic hero, Byron's titular character from the narrative poem Childe Harold, is literally mentioned by name in the novel and had to be a blatant inspiration - it could not be more obvious! (I have yet to encounter the famed Byronic heroes of Russian literature, most notably Eugene Onegin, a work where Byron is also blatantly name-dropped).

Everyone thinking Queequeg was dying and having a coffin made to his measurements and filled with grave goods at his direction and then him literally climbing into the coffin to test it out and then waiting silently to die…. then all of a sudden getting better and saying he chose to recover bc he remembered he had something on his to-do list….. iconic

Ishmael referring to Queequeg as "my Queequeg…" omg. Queerqueg

Queequeg drawing figures like the ones on his tattoos omg… au story where Queequeg is an artist/tattoo artist when???

I was literally saying "AWWWWW" out loud when Ahab and Pip were having their little moments

The irony of Ahab abandoning the Rachel then it coming back for Ishmael… the coffin lifeboat… etc… good stuff…

okay ahab is my man but yeah he was an asshole to the captain of rachel.

also feel bad for tashtego. he wanted that gold doubloon so bad and ahab was like SIKE, MOTHERFUCKER! umm tashtego did not get cut out of a whale by queequeg to deal with ur shit ahab!

Once again wanting a Black Sails/Moby Dick AU… I found this essay about the similarities between Flint/Ahab https://ijms.nmdl.org/article/view/22389/14361

They only have like 2-3 little moments together but like… Starbuck/Ahab kind of outdoing Ishmael/Queequeg there for a moment… chaps 132/134… oh my godddddddddddddd whyyyyyyy

Captain Ahab's moments in chapters 36/37 AAAAAHHHHH you will see me being normal about this

I noted some of my favorite Ahab moments/chapters and they are 36/37/41/70/99/108/109/113/115/116/119/125/129/132/134/135. Like I may seriously just re-read those chapters (no offense to Melville's whale facts, Stubb's jokes, & Pip's insanity)

the end is kind of similar to the great gatsby in the sense that you finally realize the entire novel was actually written for him to cope with his grief-related trauma & then suddenly it all makes sense. the lingering, the sentimentality regarding seemingly insignificant details or people, the meandering/digressing/procrastinating getting to the end, etc.

there are actually several moments -- i don't know if he actually referred to ahab or the others in past-tense specifically, but there were several moments where i felt like i kind of thought he was giving away the end before he did (it wasn't a shock to me bc i read about the end prior, but still)

[priestess-draws]

its 3 am my hand hurts and like maybe 5 people know who this is

[heinrichheineee]

Nathaniel Hawthorne writing about Herman Melville. Journal entry date: November 12, 1856

“It is strange how he persists — and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before”

Source: Jay Leyda, The Melville Log, A Documentary Life of Herman Melville: 1819-1891, vol. II

[empirearchives]

Herman Melville on Napoleon’s love for Ossian

Context: Ossian is the narrator and purported author of a cycle of epic poems published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, originally as Fingal (1761) and Temora (1763), and later combined under the title The Poems of Ossian.

“I am rejoiced to see Hazlitt speak for Ossian. There is nothing more contemptable in that contemptable man (tho' good poet, in his department) Wordsworth, than his contempt for Ossian. And nothing that more raises my idea of Napoleon than his great admiration for him.—The loneliness of the spirit of Ossian harmonized with the loneliness of the greatness of Napoleon.”

Melville wrote this around 1862 in the margins of his copy of Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Comic Writers and Lectures on the English Poets

Source: Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography - Volume 2, p. 436

[stastrodome]

A bit of Melville humor to start the week .

[weil-weil-lautre]

So far tens of millions of Americans can understand Ahab. They have worked under such men. A smaller but not insignificant number have gone through his experiences. The Diesel engine and now atomic energy face the vast majority with the same problem that he faced: the obvious, immense, the fearful mechanical power of an industrial civilization which is now advancing by incredible leaps and bringing at the same time the mechanization and destruction of human personality. Men who are thinking like that, classes of people in a nation who are thinking such thoughts, are being steadily prepared for desperate action. If now there descends upon them a violent catastrophe that ruins them and convinces them that the life they have been living is intolerable and the grave doubts that have previously tormented them are justifiable, then they are going to throw aside all the traditional restraints of civilization. They are going to seek a new theory of society and a program of action and, on the basis of this theory and this program, they are going to act.

CLR James, Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In

[mrsq8geek]

The Talos Principle 2 + cheesy pick up lines ❤️

bonus below the cut:

Mayor ruins environment! Read all about it!

[unteriors]

Fontenot Street, Melville, Louisiana.

[o-link]

Alain Delon, the last emperor of cinema has laid down his arms

A great wild animal has died, who fascinated and divided at the same time. An icon of world cinema, an instinctive actor with incandescent beauty but also an avowed reactionary with a huge ego, Alain Delon died Sunday at the age of 88.

[detournementsmineurs]

Alain Delon dans "Le Samouraï" de Jean-Pierre Melville (1967), août 2024.

[sublecturas]

"Moby Dick", de Herman Melville en la #LíneaH

[onlandandonsea]

Herman Melville writing Moby Dick is like, what if a whale is a fish and a dragon is whale

[the-moby-dick]

─ ; “Heeyy Mister Melville! Since you're here, Have you heard about the members dating each other? Like Ranpo from the Armed Detective Agency and Poe! Then there's Steinbeck and Lovecraft. And the newest couple, Hawthorne and Miss Margaret! They're such a cute couple, aren't they~?”

( @guilds-best-sniper )

I have heard about these things, yes. I'm happy for them.