Loomings

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul...then I account it high time to get to sea....

So Ishmael. More prosaic, I, at the first damp and drizzly November day of each year, account it high time to plunge once more into the pages of Melville's enduring masterpiece, there for a time to sweetly perish deep sunk in its overrich language, crowded detail and incident, and mystic, metaphysical loomings, as would Tashtego, falling head first into the great Heidelburgh Tun of a beheaded sperm whale, have sweetly perished deep sunk in its sweetly fragrant spermaceti but for the circumstance of that leviathan's capacious case having been almost completely baled of its unctuous contents.

Melville's epic yarn of crazy old Ahab's monomaniacal, God-and-Heaven-challenging quest for vengeance against the inscrutable but reasoning thing behind the pasteboard mask of the visible object that was its agent, which visible object was Moby Dick, never fails to engage and enthrall no matter how many times revisited. Most now will aver, as do I, that if there be such a thing as The Great American Novel, Moby-Dick is hands down it, pace Mr. Twain and his Huckleberry.

How, then, to explain the prominent coming on stage of that quintessential American tale that most strikingly un-American, un-Christian, "muffled mystery," Fedallah? And how to explain the quintessentially American Ahab's singular, trusting, and dependent intimacy with him?

Stubb, "wise Stubb," seems all but convinced that Fedallah is the very Devil himself in disguise, with his tail tucked up and coiled away in his pocket so as not to give himself away, and there on board the Pequod to conduct a bargain with mad Ahab concerning the finding and killing of the White Whale. Most modern views agree with Stubb's assessment, preferring, however, to explain Fedallah in less literal, more symbolic terms as a representation of the demonic in the world.

But, surely, that's not entirely sufficient as explanation as Fedallah would then be but a mere superfluity in the context of the tale as one need do nothing more than clap an eye on crazy old Ahab for a surfeit of the demonic enough for several worlds.

Good and necessary reason there must be, however, for the prominent place given this sinister, un-American character in this most American of tales. Nothing in Moby-Dick is there without good and necessary reason, and Fedallah no exception.

Melville himself, through Ishmael, is not parsimonious with his clues touching this spectral Parsee, two of which pretty much give it to us outright:

• Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's.

• But though his [Ahab's] whole life was now become one watch on deck; and though the Parsee's mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these two never seemed to speak - one man to the other - unless at long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one word; by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.

Just so. Fedallah as Ahab's inmost spirit and animating principle, and Ahab as Fedallah's American avatar. What need has Ahab to speak aloud in words to his inmost spirit and animating principle, or it with its American incarnation?

No need. None at all.

Melville puts Fedallah aboard the Pequod not for the tale's benefit, but for ours, by making flesh in the Parsee's unsavory presence that sinister, un-American spirit — that "cruel, remorseless emperor ... that against all natural lovings and longings ... recklessly [makes one] ready to do what in [his] own proper, natural heart [he] durst not so much as dare" — the better for us to grasp and understand just how coolly and unconcernedly it drives mad and consigns to perdition all whom it possesses.

Possessed by such a horror, wonder ye, then, at mad Ahab's anguished cry, "Is Ahab, Ahab?" And would ye not cry as much thyself for thyself were thee so possessed?