Windchimes

just in time

Finally. Finished reading page 726 of Moby Dick. Much as I enjoyed some parts of it, I think, if I ever read it again, I will go either straight to those parts or straight to the last 36 pages. I feel like having read the 689 and a half pages that come before them entitles me to skip around in it from now on. I'll admit, however, that the Lowell poem (A Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket) I memorized last semester has come more alive than ever for me after reading this, especially those last 36 pages. There was also a paragraph starting on page 571 and continuing to 572 I'd like to revisit. I'm sure there are others worth revisiting. I'm sure most problems people have with reading the book are all the paragraphs that beg for revisiting. But this particular one describes vines growing over a whale skeleton:
Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging--a gigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mightly idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories. (p. 571-72 of the 2004 Castle Books of Edison, NJ edition)

Hmmm...just read the copyright dealie behind the title page. I wonder if anyone would consider this a critical article or review? Well, as long as the few people who read these entries don't tell on me, everthing should be all right. I suppose it wasn't so much that paragraph as the last sentence of that paragraph that caught my attention so much. It's so...almost personification, or not quite personification, or something. You have human characteristics attributed to an inanimate object, but its not like the Greek myth of Persephone and the god of Hades (I can't remember his name right now). The proximity of "wived" to "Life"...that voicing of the 'f' sound the next time a similar sound repeats...life/ wived... 'f'/'v' (may my phonetics and linguistics professor forgive me). /f/, /v/ or f , v? It's been a while since that class.

Then there's the verb "trellised." I love to see unusual verbified nouns like that. Once bought a book of poetry because of one poem that used the word "saffron" as a verb. Happily, it turned out I liked the other poems a lot as well. I liked some of them more than just a lot.

There, now that at least sounded vaguely (except for all my memory lapses and rabbit chasing at the end) like the beginning of a critical article or review. So WAKE UP NOW!

I started this book at the beginning of summer break, and tomorrow is the first day of fall semester classes. Between reading the beginning and the end of this book, I've been to France, taken a summer course on Mark Twain and worked on various other projects. I probably still can't speak very intelligently (as I have probably just proven) about the novel since I took so long to read it and interrupted the reading with so many other things. However, if someone asks me from this point in time on if I've read it, I can truthfully slay yes. Thought about editing that 'l,' but I think I like the way it looks there.


J.H. Larrew
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