AUG_md-chapter1.txt

CHAPTER 1

Trouble is looming.


Call me Ishmael.  A few years ago - no matter how long exactly - I
thought I would sail around a bit and see the water-rich part of the
world, as I had little or no money in my wallet and would not be very
interested on land.  It's a way of stripping the spleen and
regulating the circulation.  Whenever my mouth becomes grim; whenever
it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I involuntarily
pause before coffin bearings and pull up the back of my head at every
funeral I encounter; and above all, when my hypotheses gain such an
upper hand that a strong moral principle is needed to prevent me from
deliberately taking to the streets and systematically cutting
people's hats off - then I think it is high time to set sail as
quickly as possible.  That's my replacement for the gun and the ball.
With philosophical enthusiasm, Cato throws himself on his sword, and
I quietly board the ship.  This is not surprising.  If they knew,
almost all men of their calibre would at some point harbour the same
feelings about the ocean as I do.

There is now your Manhattan island town, surrounded by quays like
Indian islands surrounded by coral reefs - trade surrounds it with
its surf.  Turn right and left and follow the roads downstream.  Its
outermost center is the battery, in which this noble mole is washed
up by waves and cooled by a breeze that had been out of sight of the
country a few hours earlier.  Look at the crowds of watchers there.

Bypass the city on a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.  Walk from Corlears
Hook to Coenties Slip and then north through Whitehall.  What do you
see? --Like silent guardians all over the city stand thousands upon
thousands of mortal men, fixed in dreams of the oceans.  Some lean on
the overflows, some sit on the pier heads, some look over the
bastions of ships from China, some high up in the rigging, as if they
wanted to have an even better view of the sea.  But these are all
compatriots; of weekdays piled up in slats and plaster - tied to
counters, nailed to benches, clung to desks.  How can this be?  Have
the green fields disappeared?  What are they doing here?

But look! Here come even more crowds, who head directly towards the
water and apparently start to dive.  Strange!  Nothing will satisfy
them except the outermost border of the country; loitering in the
shade of the warehouses there will not be enough.  No.  You need to
get as close to the water as possible without falling in.  And there
they are - miles away from them - in the leagues.  All inhabitants,
they come from alleys and alleys, streets and avenues - from the
north, east, south and west.  But here they all unite.  Tell me, does
the magnetic force of the needles in the circle of all these ships
pull them there?

Again.  Say you are in the country, in some highland with lakes. Take
almost any way you want, and ten to one it leads you down into a
valley, and leaves you there by a pool in a brook.  There's something
magical about it.  Let the most scattered people sink into his
deepest reverence - stand this man on his feet, set his feet in
motion, and he will unfailingly lead you to the water if there is
water throughout this region.  If you ever get thirsty in the great
American desert, try this experiment if your caravan happens to be
supplied with a metaphysical professor.  Yes, as everyone knows,
meditation and water are linked forever.

But here's an artist.  He wants to paint you the most dreamy, shady,
tranquil and enchanting piece of romantic landscape in the whole
valley of the Saco.  What is the main element he uses?  There stand
its trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if there were a hermit and a
crucifix in it, and here sleeps its meadow, and there sleeps its
cattle, and from there ascends a sleepy smoke.  Deep in distant
forests, a muddled path winds its way up to the overlapping foothills
of mountains bathed in the blue of their hills.  But though the image
lies so tranced, and though this pine groans like leaves on the head
of this shepherd, all were in vain unless the eye of the shepherd was
on the magical stream in front of him.  Visit the prairies in June
when you wade knee-high for dozens of kilometres between tiger lilies
- what do you miss about that one charm? - water - there is not a
drop of water!  If Niagara were just a cataract of sand, would you
travel a thousand miles to see it?  Why did the poor Tennessee poet,
when he suddenly received two handfuls of silver, think about buying
him a coat he sadly needed, or investing his money in a stroll to
Rockaway Beach?  Why is it that almost every robust, healthy boy who
has a robust, healthy soul is crazy about going to sea at some point?
Why, on your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such
a mystical vibration when you were first told that you and your ship
were now out of sight of the country?  Why did the ancient Persians
consider the sea sacred?  Why did the Greeks give him his own deity
and brother Joves?  Of course, none of this is without significance.
And even deeper lies the meaning of this story of Narcissus, who,
unable to grasp the torturous, mild image he saw in the well, plunged
into it and drowned.  But we see the same picture in all rivers and
oceans.  It is the image of the inconceivable ghost of life, and that
is the key to everything.

When I say now that I am used to going to sea whenever I start to get
slimy in my eyes and begin to become aware of my lungs, I am not
saying that I will ever go to sea as a passenger.  Because to travel
as a passenger, you have to have a handbag, and a handbag is just a
rag, unless you have something in you.  In addition, the passengers
get seasick, become bickering, do not sleep much at night, generally
do not enjoy themselves, no, I never go as a passenger, and although
I am something of a salt, I never go to sea as a Commodore, captain
or cook.  I leave the glory and distinction of such offices to those
who like them.  For my part, I abhor all honourable efforts, trials
and tribulations of any kind.  It is as much as possible to take care
of myself without worrying about ships, barges, brigades, schooners
and whatever.  And when it comes to cooking - although I admit that
this is a considerable glory, since a cook is a kind of officer on
board a ship - I have somehow never had the feeling of grilling
poultry; even though it was once fried, sensibly buttered, and
judiciously salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more
respectfully, not to say reverently, of poultry than I will.  From
the idolized spots of the ancient Egyptians on fried ibises and fried
hippos, the mummies of these creatures can be seen in their huge
bakeries, the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go down as a simple sailor, right in front of
the mast, into the bow, there up to the head of the royal mast. It is
true, they rather command me something and let me jump from Holm to
Holm, like a grasshopper on a May meadow.  And on the face of it,
this is unpleasant enough.  It touches your sense of honour,
especially if you come from a long-established family in the country,
the Van Rensselaers or Randolphs or Hardicanutes.  And more than
anything, before you put your hand in the tar pot, you guided him as
the schoolmaster of the land and in awe of the greatest boys.  I
assure you that the transition from schoolmaster to sailor is
diligent and requires a strong mixture of Seneca and the Stoics so
that you can grin and bear it.  But even that wears off with time.

What if an old sea captain orders me to fetch a broom and sweep the
decks?  What does this humiliation mean, which I think is weighed in
the scales of the New Testament?  Do you think that the Archangel
Gabriel thinks a little less of me because, in this particular case,
I obey promptly and respectfully?  Who is not a slave?  Tell me.
Now, however much the old sea captains may instruct me - however much
they may beat and beat me, I have the satisfaction of knowing that
everything is fine; that all others are served in one way or another
in the same way - either physically or metaphysically, that is; and
thus the universal blow is passed around, and all hands should rub
their shoulder blades and be satisfied.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor because they are intent on
paying me for my problems, while they never pay passengers a single
penny that I have ever heard of.  On the contrary, passengers have to
pay for themselves.  And there is a big difference between pay and
reward all over the world.  The act of paying is perhaps the most
inconvenient punishment inflicted on us by the two fruit-tree
thieves.  But BEING PAID - what does it compare to?  The urban
activity with which a man receives money is truly wonderful,
considering that we so sincerely believe that money is the root of
all earthly evil and that a monetary man cannot go to heaven under
any circumstances.  Oh! How merrily we surrender to perdition!

After all, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the healthy
movement and the clean air on the forecourt deck.  Because just as
headwinds are far more common in this world than winds from the
roller coaster (so if you never break the Pythagorean maxim), the
Commodore on the aft deck gets its atmosphere mostly second-hand from
the sailors on the bow.  He thinks he's breathing it first, but not
like that.  Similarly, the community guides its leaders in many other
things, while the leaders hardly suspect it.  But why, having
repeatedly smelled the sea as a merchant seaman, should I now put it
in my head to go whaling; this is answered better than anyone by the
invisible policeman of destiny who is constantly monitoring me,
secretly keeping dogs and influencing me in some irresponsible way.
And there is no doubt that my participation in this whaling voyage
was part of the great providential program that was established long
ago.  It came as a kind of short interlude and solo between larger
performances.


"BIG TOTAL SELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES." CHOOSE
OF AN ISHMAEL. "BLOOD BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."


Although I cannot say exactly why these stage managers, the
destinies, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling trip, while
others were put up for great roles in high tragedies and short and
light roles in posh comedies and funny roles in farces - although I
cannot say why that was exactly the case - now that I remember all
the circumstances, I believe that looking a little into the sources
and motives cunningly presented to me under various guises has led me
to perform the role I was playing and to indulge in the illusion that
it was a choice arising from my own unbiased free will and
discriminatory judgment.

One of these main motifs was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
itself.  Such a sinister and mysterious monster aroused all my
curiosity.  Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
mass; the undamaged, nameless dangers of the whale; these, with all
the accompanying wonders of thousands of Patagonian sights and
sounds, helped me to fulfill my wish.  For other men, such things
might not have been an incentive, but for me, an eternal itch for
things that are far away torments me.  I love sailing forbidden seas
and landing on barbaric shores.  Since I do not ignore the good, I
quickly recognize a horror and could still deal with it socially - if
you will allow me - because it is only good to be friendly with all
the occupants of the place where you are housed.

For this reason, the whaling journey was thus welcome; the great
flood gates of the Wonderworld opened, and in the wild pretensions
that moved me to my purpose, two and two floated in my innermost
soul, endless processions of the whale and, in the middle of all, a
great hooded ghost, like a mound of snow in the air.