The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda- indeed, by some supposed to be indirectly derived from it- is that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.
Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists; and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that honorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowers we are much better entitled to St. George's decoration than they.
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit Carson- that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I claim him for one of our clan.
But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the prophet?
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;- Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?
Melville is making leaps here, including saints and prophets and demigods in the ranks of whalemen. He is doing what all poets and writers do--drawing lines, making comparisons, providing a new way of looking at some aspect of the world/universe. Thus, St. George's dragon was a whale. Perseus uses Medusa's head to slay a whale. Vishnu transforms into a whale to read mystical books at the bottom of the sea. The whale becomes the beginning and the end. Alpha and omega.
Allow me this evening to make some leaps, as well. Today would have been my sister's 57th birthday. Now, I am greatly opposed to retrospective falsification. That is the act of looking at the past with blinders on. Seeing only the golden times and forgetting everything painful and negative. I suppose some people would use the term "nostalgia," which sort of has the same meaning.
My sister was not a saint. She could swear like a whaleman, and she frequently did. She was a workaholic, which probably was a factor in her early death. She refused to recognize that she was getting sick. Kept working long days because she was afraid of losing her job, which she eventually did. When she was lying in a hospital bed, suffering from undiagnosed lymphoma of the brain, she received her termination letter in the mail.
I honestly think that, if Sally were able to talk to me today, she would tell me that her greatest regret in life is the fact that she wasted so much of it at her desk in her office, worrying over insignificant problems. She loved her family more than anything else. Spent most of her adult life making other people happy. At Christmas, she made sure that Santa was good to every person. The presents spilled across the floor in a Himalayan heap. Her generosity really was boundless. I'm not kidding. When I suffered financial setbacks with my family, Sally always bailed me out.
So, if you will allow me, I want to make a leap here. This afternoon, I went to the cemetery to visit my sister. It was sunny but cool. Someone was mowing grass nearby. When I got out of my car, I looked over at the trees along the far gates, behind my sister's cremation stone. And, for an instant, I swear I saw her standing there, in her teal blue hoodie and Hawaiian shorts.
It was momentary, a swimming vision that was gone as soon as I blinked. She was there, and then she wasn't. I walked over to her grave marker, stood looking down. Someone had left a dime near her name. It sort of caught the sun and sparked.
I would love to say that I felt Sally's presence. That she was standing beside me, smiling, wanting to ask about my daughter and son, because she loved them more than anything. However, I can't say that. She wasn't there anymore, if she had been there at all in the first place. She was gone.
Yet, ever since my trip to the cemetery, she's been with me, swimming around in my head, like some great white whale. Like Bigfoot in the treeline, just out of sight. It's almost as though she wants to tell me something. Maybe that's why I saw her this afternoon. Or maybe it's just my tired mind, grasping at some optical illusion. I'm not sure.
All I can say is that I miss her. Swearing like George Carlin. Smiling her huge smile.
Saint Marty is thankful tonight that he had such a wonderful sister who is still teaching him how to live a good life.
