Saturday, July 21, 2012

...in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges.

This is Mount Greylock, the highest peak in Massachusetts and the view from Melville's window at Arrowhead. Melville allegedly took some of his inspiration for Moby Dick from Greylock, since it looks like a sperm whale...or so they say. I don't really see it, though--do you?
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2 comments:

  1. TonyJuly 26, 2012 at 1:38 PM

    Hmm. Nice photo. Nice hump. But I'm having a hard time seeing a whale too. But whatever it takes to inspire a great book. As long as Melville saw a whale, that's all I need!

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  2. Sara LattaJuly 27, 2012 at 8:08 PM

    I agree, I really don't see the whale in that photo. However, let's go back to the text (Chapter 57): "In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges.
    ...But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point..."

    In other words, we don't recognize the whale in the photograph because we are not whalemen--we don't have the proper points of reference. Is it perhaps, then, Melville's goal to make us whalemen, or at least so far at it is possible to make us poor landlubbers whalemen, so that we can recognize the whale?

    Matt Kish's (Moby Dick in Pictures) interpretation of the passage in a new post.

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