The Guardian - Gregory Peck in John Huston's Moby Dick (1956). Photo: Kobal.
Stephen Kinzer - "Call me Bush: Moby Dick is an eerily prophetic allegory of 21st-century America. It should be named as the nation's epic novel" (December 8, 2008, The Guardian). Wikipedia - Hubert Dreyfus:
Hubert Lederer Dreyfus (born October 15, 1929) is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His main interests include phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of both psychology and literature, as well as the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. Dreyfus is known for his exegesis of Martin Heidegger, which critics labeled "Dreydegger".Title: Moby Dick, Existentialism, Heroic Nihilism, Polytheism - Herman Melville (Hubert Dreyfus lecture). YouTube Video Description - [Channel: pangeaprogressredux. Uploaded on August 20, 2011]:
"Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing." — Herman Melville
"Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!"
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
"...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
"With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."
"Possibly, if you do answer it, and direct it to Herman Melville, you will missend it -- for the very fingers that now guide this pen are not precisely the same that just took it up and put it on this paper. Lord, when shall we be done changing? Ah! it's a long stage, and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with you for a passenger, I am content and can be happy. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality."
Melville letter to Hawthorne
