Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.55

Text File | 1994-05-27 | 10.8 KB | 169 lines

.. < chapter lv 7  OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES >

     I shall ere long
paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something like the true form
of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own
absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be
fairly stepped upon there.  It may be worth while, therefore, previously to
advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the
present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman.  It is time to
set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong.  It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures.  For ever
since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of
temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions, cups, and
coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a
helmeted head like St.  George's; ever since then has something of the same
sort of license prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale,
but in many scientific presentations of him.  Now, by all odds, the most
ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found
in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India.  The Brahmins maintain
that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the
trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages
before any of them actually came into being.  No wonder then, that in some
sort our noble profession
.. <p 262 >
of whaling should have been there shadowed forth.  The Hindoo whale referred
to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of
Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar.  But
though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail
of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong.  It looks more
like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true
whale's majestic flukes.  But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great
Christian painter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the

     antediluvian Hindoo.  It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda
from the sea-monster or whale.  Where did Guido get the model of such a
strange creature as that?  Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in
his own Perseus Descending, make out one whit better.  The huge corpulence
of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one
inch of water.  It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked
mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors'
Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower.  Then, there are the
Prodromus whales of the old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as depicted
in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers.  What shall be said
of these?  As for the book-binder's whale winding like a vine-stalk round the
stock of a descending anchor --as stamped and gilded on the backs and
title-pages of many books both old and new --that is a very picturesque but
purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on
antique vases.  Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call
this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended
when the device was first introduced.  It was introduced by an old Italian
publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learning;
and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period, dolphins
were popularly supposed to be a species of the Leviathan.  In the vignettes
and other embellishments of some ancient books you will at times meet with
very curious touches at the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau,
hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his

.. <p 263 >
unexhausted brain.  In the title-page of the original edition of the

     Advancement of Learning you will find some curious whales.  But quitting all
these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those pictures of leviathan
purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by those who know.  In old
Harris's collection of voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from
a Dutch book of voyages, A. D.
, entitled A Whaling Voyage to
Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland,
master.  In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are
represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over their living
backs.  In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the
whale with perpendicular flukes.  Then again, there is an imposing quarto,
written by one Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled

     A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending
the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries.  In this book is an outline purporting to be
a Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed
on the coast of Mexico, August,
, and hoisted on deck.  I doubt not the
captain had this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines.  To
mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied,
according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make
the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long.  Ah, my gallant
captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!  Nor are the
most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the benefit of the
young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake.  Look at that
popular work Goldsmith's Animated Nature.  In the abridged London edition of

, there are plates of an alleged whale and a narwhale.  I do not wish
to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow;

     and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in
this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any

     intelligent public of schoolboys.  Then, again, in
, Bernard Germain,
Count de Lacepede,
.. <p 264 >
a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan.  All these are
not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale
(that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long experienced man as
touching that species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature.  But
the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was reserved for
the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron.  In
, he
published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls a
picture of the Sperm Whale.  Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer,
you had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket.  In a word,
Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash.  Of course,
he never had the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but
whence he derived that picture, who can tell?  Perhaps he got it as his
scientific predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his
authentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing.  And what sort of
lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers
inform us.  As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over
the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them?  They are generally
Richard III.  whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting on
three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their
deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.  but these manifold
mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very surprising after all.
Consider!  Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the
stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship,

     with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all
its undashed pride of hull and spars.  Though elephants have stood for their
full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for
his portrait.  The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is
only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of
him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that
element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist
.. <p 265 >
him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and
undulations.  And, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of
contour between a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan;
yet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's
deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him,
that his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.  But it may be
fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale, accurate hints
may be derived touching his true form.  Not at all.  For it is one of the more
curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea
of his general shape.  Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for
candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea
of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading
personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from
any leviathan's articulated bones.  In fact, as the great Hunter says, the
mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and
padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes
it.  This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of
this book will be incidentally shown.  It is also very curiously displayed in
the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the
human hand, minus only the thumb.  This fin has four regular bone-fingers,
the index, middle, ring, and little finger.  But all these are permanently
lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial
covering.  However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us, said
humorous Stubb one day, he can never be truly said to handle us without
mittens.  For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world
which must remain unpainted to the last.  True, one portrait may hit the mark
much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable
degree of exactness.  So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what
the whale really looks like.  And the only mode in which you can derive even a
tolerable idea of his living contour, is by
.. <p 266 >
going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being
eternally stove and sunk by him.  Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not
be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.
.. <p 266 >