Hermann Melville "Moby Dick"

1.3 The Ocean as Heterotopia

When we hear the word narcissism today, we probably most often think of the personality disorder characterized by an excess of self-consciousness, selfishness, and lack of empathy. In fact, the first documented use of the word narcissism is attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote it in an 1822 letter now quoted under the Oxford English Dictionary‘s first definition of the word: ―Excessive self-love or vanity; self- admiration, self-centredness‖ (―Narcissism,‖ def. 1). It was 1914, however, before Freud appropriated and popularized the word to use in the psychological sense. Before Freud, narcissism would have been understood to allude to the classical Greek myth of Narcissus, a young man who becomes fascinated with his own reflection in a fountain.

There are several versions of the myth, but at the end of each, Narcissus suffers for his self-obsession. In the version that Melville reanimates in ―Loomings,‖ we are told that Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned‖ (5). Ishmael widens the scope of the myth to include ―we ourselves,‖ or all of humanity, and insists that we are all inherently obsessed with the pursuit of ―that same image‖ that we ―see in all rivers and oceans.‖ Furthermore, Ishmael adds that this universalized reflection is ―the ungraspable phantom of life‖ and the key to it all‖ (5). While it is clear that Ishmael expects to come to a better understanding of himself through the whaling voyage on which he is about to embark, he is ultimately more interested in discovering and portraying something much larger than his own isolated ego. He sets out to better understand the enduring mysteries of life itself through his observations of the universe as seen reflected through the largest natural looking-glass in the world: the ocean. The concept of ―cosmic narcissism‖ is one of the intriguing theories on how man interacts with nature put forth by Gaston Bachelard in his book Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter. Bachelard focuses on the ways in which our collective imagination relates to the material elements of the universe and how we share that imaginative relationship through poetic language. Although Bachelard makes no mention of Melville, he does use excerpts from the writing of many of Melville‘s Romantic precursors and contemporaries (Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and Poe) as examples. Employing Bachelard‘s theory of our collective imagination of water as a framework, I will show how Moby-Dick moves beyond the all-too-limiting ego-reflection that is the downfall of the classical Narcissus toward an infinitely more inclusive and meaningful reflection of the world as a whole.

Mystical as it may seem, Bachelard argues there is an enduring truth in the classical notion that the four fundamental elements have influence on a person‘s imagination and that each person is drawn towards a dominant element. He explains that all four of these elements ―have their faithful followers – or more exactly, each is profoundly and materially a system of poetic fidelity‖ (5). A poet may think he is ―being faithful to a favorite image,‖ Bachelard posits, but ―in reality‖ he is ―being faithful to a primitive human feeling, to an elemental organic reality, a fundamental oneiric temperament‖ (5). Considering this description of poetic fidelity, is there really any question as to Melville‘s dominant element? The vast majority of Melville‘s writing, and certainly his most memorable and successful works (with the exception of ―Bartleby‖), are set upon and include meditations on water.

In his discussion of Typee and Omoo, D. H. Lawrence muses on Melville‘s inclination towards the watery element. Lawrence writes that Melville ―is the greatest seer and poet of the sea,‖ having ―the strange, uncanny magic of sea-creatures, and some of their repulsiveness‖ (122). Lawrence even establishes a link between Melville‘s physical appearance and his propensity for writing about the ocean. He draws attention to Melville‘s eyes, writing that ―About a real blue-eyed person there is usually something abstract, elemental,‖ part of a ―sea-born people‖ who are compelled to ―go back to the fierce, uncanny elements: the corrosive vast sea‖ (122-3). When we couple these observations with Melville‘s expressed belief (in his annotations on Milton‘s Paradise Lost) that ―[h]e who thinks for himself never can rema[i]n of the same mind‖ and his rejection of ―any settled articles of belief‖ (Parker 2: 405), we cannot deny that Melville is a ―being dedicated to water [. . .] a being in flux‖ (Bachelard 6). It seems only natural that Melville approaches writing as a reflection upon the same water that is at the very core of his elemental self.

Through the language, allegorical themes, and complex system of symbols within Moby-Dick, Melville comes the closest to his goal of reflecting a larger truth of life in his writing. Matteson describes the complex relationship between Melville and his partially self-reflective writing: ―The cetological chapters of the novel derive only partly from Ishmael‘s experience; they are the work of a researcher and artist of language intent upon reconstruction of the whale neither as commodity nor as mythic antagonist, but as a mirror of the ungraspable phantom of life. As the poet of whaling, Ishmael merges with the author Melville‖ (179). This mirror of life extends from the whale to the ocean, which, like the fluid language both Ishmael and Melville employ, connects and unifies all the elements of the novel and the world.

In Moby-Dick, Melville elaborates time and again upon this elemental difference between our perceptions of life based upon the stable element of earth, and the more complete possibility for discovery of truth available to us at sea. From Bulkington‘s desperate escape from restrictive life on shore (Moby-Dick 117) to Ishmael‘s declaration that man is incomplete without an exploration of his inner ocean, his dark, mysterious soul (465), Melville insists upon the value of the sea as the only setting that allows for unlimited insight. While the uncertain and even chaotic life at sea may seem frightening, to Melville and Ishmael life on land is much more terrifying because of the apparent certainty and stability of that terror. One example of this seemingly certain apprehension of a fearful object occurs early in the novel before Ishmael gets to sea. In ―The Spouter- Inn,‖ Ishmael rummages through his future roommate‘s belongings, trying to discover what kind of person this mysterious harpooner might be. He carefully examines what appears to be some sort of a garment, but cannot imagine what it is until he tries it on and sees himself wearing it in the mirror. Ishmael narrates, ―I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck‖ (22). Through his stable land vision, Ishmael only confirms his preconceived notions about the frightful qualities of a man he has yet to actually meet. This reflection of himself and the objects that surround him are reinforced by the stable ―bit of glass stuck against the wall.‖ In order to really understand his relationship to the world, he must learn to see himself and the rest of the world as reflected and challenged by the vision that the ocean affords.

This passage certainly embodies ―permanence in change, with emphasis on the permanence‖. But unlike so many of the pleasant poems about fountains that preceded it, Melville‘s Moby-Dick holds up a mirror of such a grand scale that it refuses to be ignored.