I have been re-reading Moby-Dick lately – very slowly and not for the plot. An early critic of the novel (in a very negative review, of which there were many) said that Melville tried to combine two books – a work of tragic fiction and an informational text about whales and whaling. I would suggest that Melville actually gives us three books and I’m grateful for it: 1) the fictional, 2) the informational, and 3) the philosophical. Almost every chapter contains some nugget of wisdom, some spiritual musings, some explanation of the inexplicable, that makes rereading worthwhile.
Contrary to general belief, Moby-Dick does not start with the narrator saying, “Call me Ishmael.” It begins with a brief section on etymology and a longer section entitled “extracts,” wherein Melville gives us a multitude of passages that he says were provided by a “Sub-Sub-Librarian.” In this spirit, I will share some “extracts” from Melville over the next few months. In the days before digital books and search engines, readers often kept a “commonplace book, wherein they wrote ‘extracts’ of anything they read that they wanted to remember, and thoughts about the same.” So, here are some notations relating to old age from by commonplace book on Moby-Dick.
The first “golden nugget” is from Chapter 11, “Nightgown,” wherein Queequeg and Ishmael are cuddled up in bed trying to keep warm; it is December in New Bedford and there is no central heating. Having just moved back to New England after many years, I can sympathize. At least I have a mattress warmer (and central heating!). Anyway, buried among the bed clothes was this little explanation of why we need to have a point of hardship to enjoy pleasure:
The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable anymore. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason, a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich.
“There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.” Is this why assisted living homes cloy? Why retirement isn’t always the unmitigated joy that we thought it would be? Is this why many people look at the poverty of their youth as a “good time”? Oh, to have wandered the Berkshire Hills with Melville and Hawthorne (to whom Moby-Dick was dedicated) and discuss such subjects!
Here is a second little gleaning from Moby-Dick. This one comes from Chapter 29, “Enter Ahab; To Him, Stubb.” (Note that the chapter titles sometimes read as stage directions – Melville thinks he is writing a Shakespearean tragedy, and he is right.) This one is about Ahab’s age and sleeplessness:
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. “It feels like going down into one’s tomb,” – he would mutter to himself, – “for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle [hatchway], to go to my grave-dug berth.”
Do we resist sleep in old age because it is too much like its “near enemy” death? Or is it just that we are not living so hard during the day, not wrung out by the pace of life? For myself, going to bed is not the biggest problem. After dinner, an hour of television, and a couple of chapters of a good book, I turn into protoplasm. But I cannot stay asleep, and those early morning hours are brutal. (If this is you, try reading Philip Larkin’s “Aubade” to know that you are not alone.) Soon I am up and roaming the decks like Ahab, and congratulating myself that the night is over, and I have made it to another day.
As a last note, Melville wrote a whole chapter on whiteness: “The Whiteness of the Whale.” He talks about whiteness as a source of horror (think ghosts and albino monsters like the whale), purity (think brides), beauty (think pearls), and as a symbol of the “benignity of old age.” This got me thinking about the “white hairs” among us.
White hair used to carry the air of wisdom or power; white wigs were worn by powerful men during the 17th and 18th centuries. “White hairs” is also sometimes used as a derogatory term, a term of generational resentment. Our politicians (I refrain from calling them statesmen) have gotten old and older – but often blonder rather than whiter. When I go to church or classical music concerts, I am often amazed at the sea of white hair and pale skin. Melville did, later in his life, write a poem about old age in which the last image compares the white of skim milk (old age), with the rich color of cream (youth):
Old Age in his ailing
At youth will be railing
It scorns youth’s regaling
Pooh-pooh it does, silly dream;
But me, the fool, save
From waxing so grave
As, reduced to skimmed milk, to slander the cream.
I guess it just matters where you are in time’s continuum. Melville only lived to 72; he is fairly white-haired in his last portrait, taken at the time of his retirement from the custom house at age 66. Like Hardy, he mostly abandoned novels for poetry in his old age, and the reading public almost completely abandoned him. It was their loss, but it doesn’t have to be ours. Pick up Moby-Dick (you probably have a copy in the house!) and open it anywhere. You will be rewarded.
When I Come To Be Old 