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CECIL M. BROWN
dominates the world of the novel; Ahab would have resented
this;
he even resented the sun because it had the power to see Moby
Dick
when he, with his human eye, could not. Ahab's
gripe
with the
whale is precisely the fact that the whale is supernatural; the old
man hated
everything
that was not human; and conversely he loved
that which was human, that which was vulnerable. "Let me look into
a human eye," he said to Starbuck, "it is better than to gaze into
sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God." Moments before he offs
the white whale, Ahab speaks: "I grow blind; hands! stretch out
before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night?" This is very
heavy. The (human) eye goes out. Night comes, Blackness comes.
This is blind Lear.
This
is Blackness. This is the Truth. For all
of
us who need to survive. "Dark Ahab" "disappears" with his pagan
crew. But Ishmael's "eye" remains open,
it
cannot close, like a dead
man's eye cannot close; Ishmael's "eye" is the eye of the omniscient,
the glossy eye of the white whale. Ishmael is like that ancient mariner
in Coleridge's poem "whose eye is bright." (Reread, for example, the
last part of that poem and Ishmael's opening monologue; both
Ishmael and the mariner are compelled to retell their tales, endlessly,
and without sleep, without any moment of blackness.)
Ishmael is the Norman Mailer of the
Pequod,
~nd
mad Ahab
the LeRoi Jones ,and, dig this, James Baldwin is Pip. Wow! Ishmael
dug on Queequeg because Queequeg, despite the fact of them
tattoos and South Sea origins, was black and beautiful. That's why
Ishmael wanted to go to bed with him. He dug on Queequeg be–
cause the dude was a real savage, but understand what Ishmael
means by "savage." For Ishmael savagery is essentially an artistic
thing; he speaks, for example, of "that fine old Dutch savage, Al–
brecht Diirer." But Queequeg is a
real
savage, an ever flowing
source of savagery. And like white people today who fancy them–
selves a little black, so Ishmael speaks to his own "white sailor–
savagery." And like white experts on Blackness are very outspoken,
so
is
Ishmael: "No man can ever feel his own identity aright ex–
cept his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper ele–
ment of our essences...." He
is
even foresighted enough to look
to Blackness for salvation: "I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since
Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy." Ishmael is right
on time.
When Queequeg dives into the ocean and saves a man whom he
