Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 13 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American
The glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp -- all others but liars!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true -- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity”. ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave-yards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly; -- not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line, -- they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and away they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage -- and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here, -- three peaks as proud as Lucifer.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path -- he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales -- happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“And to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?”
So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colors, bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a huzzar's surcoat.
“Hast seen the White Whale?”
“See you this?” and withdrawing it from the fold that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and milling round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and wrinkles.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick -- as some call him -- and then I knew it was he.”
“Did'st thou cross his wake again?”
“Twice.”
“But could not fasten?”
“Didn't want to try to: ain't one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?” -- glancing at the ivory leg.
“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
They were all trumps—every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
During my researches in the leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Wherefore all these ceaseless toilings?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Thursday, May 27, 2010
“The Leopard and the Deer”
Chapter 19 of *The Book of Lies, Which Is Also Falsely Called Breaks, The Wanderings or Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo, Which Thought Is Itself Untrue, A Reprint with an additional commentary to each chapter*
Aleister Crowley
1875-1947 English
The spots of the leopard are the sunlight in the glade; pursue thou the deer stealthily at thy pleasure.
The dappling of the deer is the sunlight in the glade; concealed from the leopard do thou feed at thy pleasure.
Resemble all that surroundeth thee; yet be Thyself—and take thy pleasure among the Living.
This is that which is written—Lurk!—in The Book of The Law.
Commentary
19 is the last Trump, “The Sun”, which is the representative of God in the Macrocosm, as the Phallus is in the Microcosm.
There is a certain universality and adaptability among its secret powers. The chapter is taken from Rudyard Kipling's “Just So Stories”.
The Master urges his disciples to a certain holy stealth, a concealment of the real purpose of their lives; in this way making the best of both worlds. This counsels a course of action hardly distinguishable from hypocrisy; but the distinction is obvious to any clear thinker, though not altogether so to Frater P.
“Hot, hot sex.”
Steff
The space between my legs smells of sex,
Hot and sticky telling stories of a long goodnight
With a man I already miss.
My thighs, no longer coltish have grown thicker,
The enticing gap of youth that once crowned my innocence
Has filled out with gained weight.
I was once slim, scrawny almost,
My breasts were small, nipples protruding beneath a bra
I did not yet need but wore to enhance what little I had in a
Whore’s game.
Now I am what some may call festively plump,
My sexuality more overt and obvious
Now that my breasts meet in beautiful round circles in corsets
And my hips flare beneath hooped skirts and netting.
I do not call myself plump,
Instead I revel in my pleasant pot belly,
I push it out as I walk and do not breathe in to hide it.
I am proud, the dimples in my buttocks
Remember grabbing hands and carpet burns
That love gave me, something I never got when
I was thin.
It should seem ironic, I looked how the world said I should
But now I am rounder and more curved I ooze hot, hot sex
And he roars delight in my ears as I push my pot belly into his
Flat tattooed stomach.
We do not match on the outside, he is dark, entrancing, mysterious,
I am sexual, strong and pale from hiding in shadows to add to my desire,
But the sweat on my brow whispers to me
That we do, we do.
He held me once, and did not need to speak it,
I am beautiful, I know.
I am beautiful.
Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 14 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American
The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
According to my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals, and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist after all humane ages are over.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
They keep a Whale's Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back.
—John Leo, as quoted in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Whether owing to the almost omniscient look-outs at the mast-heads of the whale-ships, now penetrating even through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.
Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
If ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
In the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft-cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
The above hinted casualty -- remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab -- invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures; -- he called the carpenter.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might have originally pertained to him?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Here he comes, or it's somebody else, that's certain.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what's made in fire must properly belong to fire; and so hell's probable.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Or would'st thou rather work in clay?”
“Sir? -- Clay? clay, Sir? That's mud; we leave clay to ditchers, Sir.”
“The fellow's impious!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was the world's); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! I'll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one small, compendious vertebra. So.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life's howling gale?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“The Bombed and the Bombardier”
Andi with an introduction by Art Kramer
1967- German
On April 20 1945 we (the 344th Bomb Group) attacked the Bavarian city of Straubing. I was one of the bombardiers on that mission. I recorded our bomb hits and after the war placed the photograph on my website where it can be seen today. Recently I began to receive letters from a Straubing resident who’s family went through our bombing. Here is their story.
(The letters have been slightly edited for brevity and relevance.)
--Art Kramer
Dear Mr. Kramer,
Today I found your picture of Straubing in the Internet. I am 37 years old and I grew up in Straubing. I think I have a story for you belonging to this picture. But because my last English lesson is 20 years ago it is hard for me to write in English. I can try to tell the story to you if you are interested in it.
Greetings from Bavaria
* * *
Hallo Arthur,
I hope it’s no problem for that I call you Arthur. Your name sounds German, doesn’t it?
Yes I want to tell you the story -- and it will be an emotional story for me. But it will take me a lot of time to write in English language. I am not used to write in English. So I hope you excuse my mistakes.
By finding your picture I get really scared. If you have released your bombs over Straubing seconds earlier or later I would not be alive. Somewhere on this picture is my Grandmother with her little baby (my mother) and I want to tell you here story. She told it to me in the early 90s and died in 1996 at 83 years old -- her body was as a matter of a lot of illness in a really bad constitution but her brain was still very alive -- but in 1996 she hasn't lost her power.
Please give me some days to write her story. At the moment I have a lot of work for my job and at the evenings when I have time to write emails I am tired.
Some years ago I bought a book about the bomb raid over Straubing. There are pictures in it. I will look for it. Maybe there are some pictures in it which you want to see.
Have you contact to people from Straubing?
Greetings from snowy Straubing
Andi
* * *
Well now Arthur,
I try my best in English.
I was born in 1967. Straubing has been grown at that time and I grew up at the place I signed with the red point on your picture. You will find this picture as a detached file to this mail. I still remember the damage your bombs have done around the train station. At the beginning of the 80s the last prints of the bombs has been cleaned up. But sometimes still streets are close by construction works when they find by digging in the ground blind bombs of the bomb raid.
In the early 90s I lived in Munich while I was studying at the Ludwigs Maximilians Universität. Every weekend I went home to Straubing to meet my family and my girlfriend.
It was summer when I visited my Grandmother. We were sitting outside in the garden -- while she was telling her old stories I read the newspaper. After a little while she told me about the “Amerikaner” and how she survived the bomb raid. I stopped reading the newspaper and started to listen to her story. It was not a fantastic story but when there would have been a bad end I would have not been alive.
Here is her little life story:
In 1913 she was born in a little village about 10 miles outside of Straubing. Her family was a poor farmer's family. Her mother has borne 17 babies. But at that time a lot of little children died because there were no antibiotics on pneumonia. So in her family: 5 children died.
She grew up in the poor time of World War 1 by having no luxuries and feeling hungry every day. It must haven been in the early 1920s when she lost most of her possibility to hear. (I still don’t know the reason I have never asked but I feel now that I have to ask my mother very soon about this.)
14 years old she learned how to be a tailor. At the time she finished to become a tailor it was very hard to find a job in Germany. So she did what every people in Bavaria did when they were poor: She went from farm to farm to work in the farmer’s family as a tailor as long as the work in the family was done. She got paid very poor but at every farm she had a roof over her had and something to eat. It must have been the late 1930s when she met the man she married.
I remember her telling me stories about the voting and the Nazis. She had tears in her eyes. She said she voted for Hitler because he promised a better life. But not really a lot for her situation changed with Hitler and she had not the possibility to inform herself because of her fight to survive and her handicap in hearing.
She believed in Hitler until he has stolen her husband.
I also remember that we had only one TV in our family. It was in my Grandmother’s room. I once went to her room to watch TV -- I made her a construction with a strong amplifier and a headset so she could manage to follow the words. She was sitting in her room watching a documentation film about Dachau while she was praying with tears in her eyes.
With her husband she rented a little room. But they could not meet each other very often because they had to go to work. She as a tailor every week at another farm. He as a carpenter at other farms.
When 1939 the war started her husband had to go to the army. He was in the 6th Army (Do you know the story of the 6th Army in WW2?)
At the end of spring 1941 her husband -- his name was Johann Singer -- got front vacation. He was stationed in Russia. And while the time he was at home my Grandma got pregnant.
She still has to work a lot. End of December her husband was lucky to get again vacation from the war. He was waiting to join the birth of my mother. But on 2nd of January 1942 he has to go back to the front again. One day later my mother was born. He has never seen his daughter. In January 1943 he got missed in Stalingrad. He never came back again.
(If you will find information about the Germans and the Russians fighting in Stalingrad you will stop to ask what missed in action means at that time. To be honest I believe that he was butchered by the Russians.)
My mother has never seen her Daddy and the Daddy had never seen his daughter. But there are letters from him out of Stalingrad. By reading that letters I started to cry myself: They had nothing to eat at Stalingrad but my Grandfather sent a little piece of chocolate to my baby mother. He wrote in the letter how he joins to imagine my mother by eating this piece of chocolate with all the brown color around her mouth.
My Grandma still believed that her husband will be found alive one day. But while having a baby she had to change her life. It was no longer possible for her to move from one farm to another. So she shared a little room with her sister Lea in Straubing. Now she tried to find work in Straubing by families to make their tailor work. It was not easy for her because it was very hard for her to hear.
So in April 1945 she was working at a family which has a house next to the train station. She was lucky to take her little daughter with her. While she was sewing the little daughter was playing at the floor.
On April the 20th she was doing her work. Because she was not able to hear she could not hear the siren, which tells that the bombers are coming. And nobody remembers her working at the house. So she was still working while the first bombs were falling. When the house got the first shakes of the bomb explosions she got very frightened. But she could manage to fetch her little daughter and find a way out of this house. She runs between the bomb explosions with her little daughter in front of her chest for her life. And she made it. By knowing my Grandma I am sure that she would have made all just to survive.
Soon the war was over after the bomb raid over Straubing -- and the Americans for the poorer people had been very welcome. The GIs occupied Straubing. And hunger and fear starts to be over. But at the next years after the war it was still a hard fight for life for my mother and Grandma.
First things my mother remembers about the GIs was fear. She has never seen colored people. But: They throw chocolate out of their tanks and Jeeps. And so the little kid after a little while went very lucky by seeing American soldiers. They also brought food to the schools.
At the time the Americans are still loved by the Germans because of the help they brought to them.
I have been to the USA for vacation after I graduated from school in 1987. I met a man in my age in Oklahoma. We got friends. One year later he came over the ocean to visit me in Germany. My Grandma was full of luck to meet a real American. She also was full of thanks to your nation. So my mother. You brought them peace and help in very hard times.
And the life of my Grandma? It was going on for her to be hard. She got a bad tumor spinal column in 1966. She made it also the doctors said: no chance. Later she got hard rheumatism and gout. She made it.
In the 1980s she got poisoned by medicine in a hospital. She made it.
1987 I had to be a soldier at the German Army for 15 months. I had been a “Gebirgsjäger” that’s a soldier in the mountains. My Grandmother always was in worry about me. She always was in fear that I once have to go to war. But for God's thank there was no war at that time. With all her worries about me she made it.
Some years later she went blind. No problem for her.
All the way she joined life very lucky. She never thought about dying. She was waiting for every new day what it will bring funny and lucky things. She was too lucky with life and too curious what in life was still waiting for her.
But every people have a reservoir of power. And it gets used up. She used that reservoir more than up by having no pity for herself and waiting positively on every new day. I still miss her with all the power she had.
That’s the little story I had to think about by finding that old picture in the Internet. Not a very exciting story -- but it’s my story which holds me from sleeping the last night.
Now it’s late in the evening here in Straubing. This mail took me nearly 2 hours. But to find sleep this night I had to do it today also I am very tired.
I hope you got not bored with this mail.
Greetings from Straubing
Andi
* * *
Dear Art,
I now found the book which describes the bomb run to Straubing.
It is written in German. I thought about buying the book and send it to you.
But it seems to be not easy to get t his book once more. It is sold out. There might be a way to contact the author of the book to get an exemple. But it’s all in German and I don’t know anything about your German knowledge.
But if you want me to get the book for you I can try it and send it to you. It will not cost you anything.
What I read in the book:
The raid started on 18th of April. Around 9.30 o’clock reached -- 5000 feet high -- the English Channel to cross it. When they arrived 3 hours later the German controlled air they were in 20000 feet high because of the German flak. No German fighters around. Some time before the bombers had to cross dangerous territory 259 P-51 fighters came to assist the bombers. Altogether now the task force over Bavaria includes 518 airplanes.
The main target was Tabor/Budweis.
Secondary target was Pilsen. Both targets were in Czech Republic.
But short before the bombers took off they brought another secondary target on the map for briefing. This was Straubing.
Half an hour after midday the scout planes came from Czech Republic back to the task force. They reported deep clouds over Tabor/Budweis and Pilsen. But over Straubing there were only a partly and less cloudy sky.
Now 174 B-17 Bombers and 99 P-51 Fighters started their run to Straubing. The 93rd Squadron keeps on flying to Tabor/Budweis. Which was really luck for Straubing because 352000 kg of bombs were not falling on the town.
The 93rd Squadron bombed Kolin. They got flak fire and German Me 262 fighters came up to fight against them. They had been too fast for the P-51 because of their jet engine.
Over the Bavarian Forest around the mountains Arber and Lusen the bomb targeting run started.
With the target picture the pathfinder planes showed the bombers the way. After a while: “Bombs away.”
2000 detonations let the town Straubing tremble.
The bombing started at 1.07 pm and ended at 1.49 pm. 480800 kg of blasting bombs and 33800 kg of firebombs came down on Strabing. 2 planes -- one of the 390 BG and one of the 388 BG -- through down notes for the people. For the helping people in the town it took nearly 2 days to fight the fires and save people in the bury cellars. More than 300 death people. A lot more people died as a follow of their injuries.
In 1952 they digged out the last broken down cellar. They found 30 more bodies.
Now in the book are following stories about what happened to people and how they died. I don’t want to translate this.
30% of Straubing was damaged.
The bombers flight back to England took more time then the pilots thought. The fuel got less. But all the planes made it home. From the 1650 crew members nobody had to die at this raid. No plane was shot down. Only one plane had damage at his propellers and it made an emergency landing in Brüssel.
In my last story I told you about my mother’s side of the family. Here is a little story about my father’s side.
My father was the youngest of four brothers. He was lucky because he was too young to fight as a soldier at WW 2. He is born in 1932. But his brothers had been old enough. One was at the Uboats, one was infantry in Russia and the oldest was Sergeant at the German Luftwaffe. He was a mechanic at the German Bomber HE 111. He had to share the Battle over Britain. Some years ago, maybe in the late 80s when my Grandfather died, I talked to him.
He said:
During the war we were flying our bomb raids. Nobody thought about the people living down under us. We wanted to hit our targets and that was the success we had to have. So we were glad if we hit our targets and didn’t even think about the evil we cause at the ground.
I think that makes war a lot easier to accept: Fighting the targets by not seeing how people die. It was the same at the Uboats.
The uncle of me who was at the infantry in Russia had to fight against other men. He had to do and see really bad things at war. He is the one who has problems to sleep at night because of these experiences. And to say that: He was a only conventional soldier, not SS or things like that. But he to recognize war as that what it is.
I did my military service because I had to do it. I am so glad that I never had to fight in a war. I am really thankful for the chance to grown up and live in peace.
And what I want to say also:
The Americans did a lot to make Germany free from the Nazis and help people to come on their feet after the war again. So when older people tell from their experiences with war and the Americans they do it with a respect and gratitude.
Greetings from Bavaria
Andi
PS:
By the way: Unbelievable, but all the brothers of my father survived the war more or less healthy.
As the brother at home my father had to pray with his mother every day for his brothers. He had to do it near a cross with Jesus on it in his kitchen. Seems that it helped. As a man later he moved from his hometown Landshut to Straubing. He does not believe very much in God but this cross is still hanging in his office.
Friday, April 30, 2010
“Who Made the Law?”
Leslie Coulson
1889-1916 English
Who made the Law that men should die in meadows?
Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes?
Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards?
Who spread the hills with flesh, and blood, and brains?
Who made the Law?
Who made the Law that Death should stalk the village?
Who spake the word to kill among the sheaves,
Who gave it forth that death should lurk in hedgerows,
Who flung the dead among the fallen leaves?
Who made the Law?
Those who return shall find that peace endures,
Find old things old, and know the things they knew,
Walk in the garden, slumber by the fireside,
Share the peace of dawn, and dream amid the dew --
Those who return.
Those who return shall till the ancient pastures,
Clean-hearted men shall guide the plough-horse reins,
Some shall grow apples and flowers in the valleys,
Some shall go courting in summer down the lanes --
THOSE WHO RETURN.
But who made the Law? the Trees shall whisper to him:
"See, see the blood -- the splashes on our bark!"
Walking the meadows, he shall hear bones crackle,
And fleshless mouths shall gibber in silent lanes at dark.
Who made the Law?
Who made the Law? At noon upon the hillside
His ears shall hear a moan, his cheeks shall feel a breath,
And all along the valleys, past gardens, crofts, and homesteads,
HE who made the Law,
He who made the Law,
He who made the Law shall walk along with Death.
Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 15 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American
Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Of all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
This tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg -- “Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
This mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
With one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
In his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, “Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick blood!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulence did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it was. -- Most miserable!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him easier to harvest.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—“Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put up thy grave-stone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee!”
Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sun-rise, and by fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went a-whaling.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“How can’st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can’st not go mad?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“What wert thou making there?”
“Welding an old pike-head, Sir; there were seams and dents in it.”
“And can’st thou make it all smooth, again, blacksmith, after such hard usage as it had?”
“I think so, Sir.”
“And I suppose thou can’st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?”
“Aye, Sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”
“Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning with both hands on Perth’s shoulders; “look ye here—here—can ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across his ribbed brows; “if thou could’st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can’st thou smoothe this seam?”
“Oh! that is the one, Sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?”
“Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale?”
“For the white fiend!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“The Storm”
Kate Chopin
1850-1904 American
I
The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain. Bobinôt, who was accustomed to converse on terms of perfect equality with his little son, called the child's attention to certain sombre clouds that were rolling with sinister intention from the west, accompanied by a sullen, threatening roar. They were at Friedheimer's store and decided to remain there till the storm had passed. They sat within the door on two empty kegs. Bibi was four years old and looked very wise.
"Mama'll be 'fraid, yes," he suggested with blinking eyes.
"She'll shut the house. Maybe she got Sylvie helpin' her this evenin'," Bobinôt responded reassuringly.
"No; she ent got Sylvie. Sylvie was helpin' her yistiday," piped Bibi.
Bobinôt arose and going across to the counter purchased a can of shrimps, of which Calixta was very fond. Then he retumed to his perch on the keg and sat stolidly holding the can of shrimps while the storm burst. It shook the wooden store and seemed to be ripping great furrows in the distant field. Bibi laid his little hand on his father's knee and was not afraid.
II
Calixta, at home, felt no uneasiness for their safety. She sat at a side window sewing furiously on a sewing machine. She was greatly occupied and did not notice the approaching storm. But she felt very warm and often stopped to mop her face on which the perspiration gathered in beads. She unfastened her white sacque at the throat. It began to grow dark, and suddenly realizing the situation she got up hurriedly and went about closing windows and doors.
Out on the small front gallery she had hung Bobinôt's Sunday clothes to dry and she hastened out to gather them before the rain fell. As she stepped outside, Alcée Laballière rode in at the gate. She had not seen him very often since her marriage, and never alone. She stood there with Bobinôt's coat in her hands, and the big rain drops began to fall. Alcée rode his horse under the shelter of a side projection where the chickens had huddled and there were plows and a harrow piled up in the corner.
"May I come and wait on your gallery till the storm is over, Calixta?" he asked.
"Come 'long in, M'sieur Alcée."
His voice and her own startled her as if from a trance, and she seized Bobinôt's vest. Alcée, mounting to the porch, grabbed the trousers and snatched Bibi's braided jacket that was about to be carried away by a sudden gust of wind. He expressed an intention to remain outside, but it was soon apparent that he might as well have been out in the open: the water beat in upon the boards in driving sheets, and he went inside, closing the door after him. It was even necessary to put something beneath the door to keep the water out.
"My! what a rain! It's good two years sence it rain' like that," exclaimed Calixta as she rolled up a piece of bagging and Alcée helped her to thrust it beneath the crack.
She was a little fuller of figure than five years before when she married; but she had lost nothing of her vivacity. Her blue eyes still retained their melting quality; and her yellow hair, disheveled by the wind and rain, kinked more stubbornly than ever about her ears and temples.
The rain beat upon the low, shingled roof with a force and clatter that threatened to break an entrance and deluge them there. They were in the dining room—the sitting room—the general utility room. Adjoining was her bed room, with Bibi's couch along side her own. The door stood open, and the room with its white, monumental bed, its closed shutters, looked dim and mysterious.
Alcée flung himself into a rocker and Calixta nervously began to gather up from the floor the lengths of a cotton sheet which she had been sewing.
"If this keeps up, Dieu sait if the levees goin' to stan it!" she exclaimed.
"What have you got to do with the levees?"
"I got enough to do! An' there's Bobinôt with Bibi out in that storm—if he only didn' left Friedheimer's!"
"Let us hope, Calixta, that Bobinôt's got sense enough to come in out of a cyclone."
She went and stood at the window with a greatly disturbed look on her face. She wiped the frame that was clouded with moisture. It was stiflingly hot. Alcée got up and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the distant wood in a gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant. A bolt struck a tall chinaberry tree at the edge of the field. It filled all visible space with a blinding glare and the crash seemed to invade the very boards they stood upon.
Calixta put her hands to her eyes, and with a cry, staggered backward. Alcée's arm encircled her, and for an instant he drew her close and spasmodically to him.
"Bonté!" she cried, releasing herself from his encircling arm and retreating from the window, "the house'll go next! If I only knew w'ere Bibi was!" She would not compose herself; she would not be seated. Alcée clasped her shoulders and looked into her face. The contact of her warm, palpitating body when he had unthinkingly drawn her into his arms, had aroused all the old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh.
"Calixta," he said, "don't be frightened. Nothing can happen. The house is too low to be struck, with so many tall trees standing about. There! aren't you going to be quiet? say, aren't you?" He pushed her hair back from her face that was warm and steaming. Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a glimpse of her full, firm bosom disturbed him powerfully. As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire. He looked down into her eyes and there was nothing for him to do but to gather her lips in a kiss. It reminded him of Assumption.
"Do you remember—in Assumption, Calixta?" he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now—well, now—her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.
They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon. Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world.
The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.
When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery.
He stayed cushioned upon her, breathless, dazed, enervated, with his heart beating like a hammer upon her. With one hand she clasped his head, her lips lightly touching his forehead. The other hand stroked with a soothing rhythm his muscular shoulders.
The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away. The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield.
III
The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening green world into a palace of gems. Calixta, on the gallery, watched Alcée ride away. He turned and smiled at her with a beaming face; and she lifted her pretty chin in the air and laughed aloud.
Bobinôt and Bibi, trudging home, stopped without at the cistern to make themselves presentable.
"My! Bibi, w'at will yo' mama say! You ought to be ashame'. You oughtn' put on those good pants. Look at 'em! An' that mud on yo' collar! How you got that mud on yo' collar, Bibi? I never saw such a boy!" Bibi was the picture of pathetic resignation. Bobinôt was the embodiment of serious solicitude as he strove to remove from his own person and his son's the signs of their tramp over heavy roads and through wet fields. He scraped the mud off Bibi's bare legs and feet with a stick and carefully removed all traces from his heavy brogans. Then, prepared for the worst—the meeting with an over-scrupulous housewife, they entered cautiously at the back door.
Calixta was preparing supper. She had set the table and was dripping coffee at the hearth. She sprang up as they came in.
"Oh, Bobinôt! You back! My! but I was uneasy. W'ere you been during the rain? An' Bibi? he ain't wet? he ain't hurt?" She had clasped Bibi and was kissing him effusively. Bobinôt's explanations and apologies which he had been composing all along the way, died on his lips as Calixta felt him to see if he were dry, and seemed to express nothing but satisfaction at their safe return.
"I brought you some shrimps, Calixta," offered Bobinôt, hauling the can from his ample side pocket and laying it on the table.
"Shrimps! Oh, Bobinôt! you too good fo' anything!" and she gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek that resounded, "J'vous réponds, we'll have a feas' to-night! umph- umph!"
Bobinôt and Bibi began to relax and enjoy themselves, and when the three seated themselves at table they laughed much and so loud that anyone might have heard them as far away as Laballière's.
IV
Alcée Laballière wrote to his wife, Clarisse, that night. It was a loving letter, full of tender solicitude. He told her not to hurry back, but if she and the babies liked it at Biloxi, to stay a month longer. He was getting on nicely; and though he missed them, he was willing to bear the separation a while longer—realizing that their health and pleasure were the first things to be considered.
V
As for Clarisse, she was charmed upon receiving her husband's letter. She and the babies were doing well. The society was agreeable; many of her old friends and acquaintances were at the bay. And the first free breath since her marriage seemed to restore the pleasant liberty of her maiden days. Devoted as she was to her husband, their intimate conjugal life was something which she was more than willing to forego for a while.
So the storm passed and every one was happy.
“Chingis Khan”
Kevin Brady
American
I
He is still alive:
whirling about in the spring dust-winds;
astride a hobble-less horse on the river bank.
A drunk Kazakh insists
no Mongol could terrorize the world
as he did. Russian, yes, Chinese, yes,
maybe a bit of Irish in Him, he laughs,
slapping me hard on my back, and I fall
from my drunkenness into a Russian 469 jeep,
my head sore, my body shaken,
the sun heating the jeep unbearable.
We stop beside a river where I wash
my hands and face with the mountain snow-cold water.
The driver tells me that on the way to, returning from
conquest He stopped at this very river
just like me now. We
are all brothers, he says solemnly,
looking across the rushing water and into
the endless steppe rolling away before us.
II
The noble blood-sons of Chingis,
smelling of milk and meat,
assault some street dog with rocks,
weave drunk homewardly,
wait on their haunches as the sun sets,
hold out their cups
waiting for their women to fill them
with salty Chinese tea. They
ask me if we eat meat in America.
III
Conquer this world and, centuries later,
your sons invoke your name,
though in the stupor of drink,
in the throws of historical despair:
Great Father, lift us up! O
Great Father, why
do our women laugh at us?;
and then run outside into the faceless cold
to vomit in the outhouse,
their curse-ridden breath
freezing in the air before them,
suspended, heard by no one.
IV
Now, wherever he is buried,
sheep and goats graze.
A small girl tending the animals
whistles a song
as old as the grasses of her country.
Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 16 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American
“Make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.
“No, no -- no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered.
“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
This done, pole, iron, and rope -- like the Three Fates -- remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his cabin, a light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and mocked it!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
You almost swear that play-wearied children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye, -- though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life, -- in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: -- through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? in what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.
The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colors were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Come aboard, come aboard!” cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air.
“Hast seen the White Whale?” gritted Ahab in reply.
“No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all,” said the other good-humoredly. “Come aboard!”
“Thou are too damned jolly. Sail on.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“He turns and turns him to it, -- how slowly, but how steadfastly, his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a flooded world. “I have dreamed it again,” said he.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean's immeasureable burning-glass.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
“The Imposter Fantasy”
Jules Feiffer
1929- American
I felt like a fraud.
So I learned to fly an airplane.
At 50,000 feet I thought:
“A fraud is flying an airplane.”
So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.
I docked at Cherbourg and thought:
“A fraud has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.”
So I took a space shot to the moon. On the trip home I thought:
“A fraud has circled the moon.”
So I took a full page ad in the newspaper and
confessed to the world that I was a fraud!
I read the ad and I thought:
“A fraud is pretending to be honest.”
Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 17 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American
“Where is Moby Dick?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
In these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teter over to a seething sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that in here that still remains indifferent.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”
Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat's bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm--“God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! t'is an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”
Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the braces--though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:--
“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.
As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Didn't you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I've part changed my flesh since that time, why not my mind?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.”
“I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 18 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American
“Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and doom,--that's fair for Moby Dick.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together? -- And would I be a murderer, then, if” -- and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's end against the door.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“The wind has gone down and shifted, Sir; the fore and main topsails are reefed and set; she heads her course.”
“Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!”
Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak.
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
“He's too sound asleep, Mr Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“To him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
He had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard -- a cry and a rushing -- and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground; that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the time.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
In the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Thou art as unprincipled as the gods.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Faith, Sir, I've -- ”
“Faith? What's that?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I Hated Tonto (Still Do)”
Sherman Alexie
1966- Spokane/Coeur d'Alene
I was a little Spokane Indian boy who read every book and saw every movie about Indians, no matter how terrible. I'd read those historical romance novels about the stereotypical Indian warrior ravaging the virginal white schoolteacher.
I can still see the cover art.
The handsome, blue-eyed warrior (the Indians in romance novels are always blue-eyed because half-breeds are somehow sexier than full-blooded Indians) would be nuzzling (the Indians in romance novels are always performing acts that are described in animalistic terms) the impossibly pale neck of a white woman as she reared her head back in primitive ecstasy (the Indians in romance novels always inspire white women to commit acts of primitive ecstasy).
Of course, after reading such novels, I imagined myself to be a blue-eyed warrior nuzzling the necks of various random, primitive and ecstatic white women.
And I just as often imagined myself to be a cinematic Indian, splattered with Day-Glo Hollywood war paint as I rode off into yet another battle against the latest actor to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
But I never, not once, imagined myself to be Tonto.
I hated Tonto then and I hate him now.
However, despite my hatred of Tonto, I loved movies about Indians, loved them beyond all reasoning and saw no fault with any of them.
I loved John Ford's "The Searchers."
I rooted for John Wayne as he searched for his niece for years and years. I rooted for John Wayne even though I knew he was going to kill his niece because she had been "soiled" by the Indians. Hell, I rooted for John Wayne because I understood why he wanted to kill his niece.
I hated those savage Indians just as much as John Wayne did.
In the movies, Indians are always accompanied by ominous music. And I've seen so many Indian movies that I feel like I'm constantly accompanied by ominous music. I always feel that something bad is about to happen.
I am always aware of how my whole life is shaped by my hatred of Tonto. Whenever I think of Tonto, I hear ominous music.
I walk into shopping malls or family restaurants, as the ominous music drops a few octaves, and imagine that I am Billy Jack, the half-breed Indian and Vietnam vet turned flower-power pacifist (now there's a combination) who loses his temper now and again, takes off his shoes (while his opponents patiently wait for him to do so), and then kicks the red out of the necks of a few dozen racist white extras.
You have to remember Billy Jack, right?
Every Indian remembers Billy Jack. I mean, back in the day, Indians worshipped Billy Jack.
Whenever a new Billy Jack movie opened in Spokane, my entire tribe would climb into two or three vans like so many circus clowns and drive to the East Trent Drive-In for a long evening of greasy popcorn, flat soda pop, fossilized licorice rope and interracial violence.
We Indians cheered as Billy Jack fought for us, for every single Indian.
Of course, we conveniently ignored the fact that Tom Laughlin, the actor who played Billy Jack, was definitely not Indian.
After all, such luminary white actors as Charles Bronson, Chuck Connors, Burt Reynolds, Burt Lancaster, Sal Mineo, Anthony Quinn and Charlton Heston had already portrayed Indians, so who were we to argue?
I mean, Tom Laughlin did have a nice tan and he spoke in monosyllables and wore cowboy boots and a jean jacket just like Indians. And he did have a Cherokee grandmother or grandfather or butcher, so he was Indian by proximity, and that was good enough in 1972, when disco music was about to rear its ugly head and bell-bottom pants were just beginning to change the shape of our legs.
When it came to the movies, Indians had learned to be happy with less.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians never had jobs.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were deadly serious.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were rarely played by Indian actors.
We made up excuses.
"Well, that Tom Laughlin may not be Indian, but he sure should be."
"Well, that movie wasn't so good, but Sal Mineo looked sort of like Uncle Stubby when he was still living out on the reservation."
"Well, I hear Burt Reynolds is a little bit Cherokee. Look at his cheekbones. He's got them Indian cheekbones."
"Well, it's better than nothing."
Yes, that became our battle cry.
"Sometimes, it's a good day to die. Sometimes, it's better than nothing."
We Indians became so numb to the possibility of dissent, so accepting of our own lowered expectations, that we canonized a film like "Powwow Highway."
When it was first released, I loved "Powwow Highway." I cried when I first saw it in the theater, then cried again when I stayed and watched it again a second time.
I mean, I loved that movie. I memorized whole passages of dialogue. But recently, I watched the film for the first time in many years and cringed in shame and embarrassment with every stereotypical scene.
I cringed when Philbert Bono climbed to the top of a sacred mountain and left a Hershey chocolate bar as an offering.
I cringed when Philbert and Buddy Red Bow waded into a stream and sang Indian songs to the moon.
I cringed when Buddy had a vision of himself as an Indian warrior throwing a tomahawk through the window of a police cruiser.
I mean, I don't know a single Indian who would leave a chocolate bar as an offering. I don't know any Indians who have ever climbed to the top of any mountain. I don't know any Indians who wade into streams and sing to the moon. I don't know of any Indians who imagine themselves to be Indian warriors.
Wait--
I was wrong. I know of at least one Indian boy who always imagined himself to be a cinematic Indian warrior.
Me.
I watched the movies and saw the kind of Indian I was supposed to be.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to climb mountains.
I am afraid of heights.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to wade into streams and sing songs.
I don't know how to swim.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to be a warrior.
I haven't been in a fistfight since sixth grade and she beat the crap out of me.
I mean, I knew I could never be as brave, as strong, as wise, as visionary, as white as the Indians in the movies.
I was just one little Indian boy who hated Tonto because Tonto was the only cinematic Indian who looked like me.
