Moby Dick or Whale ( full novel two Volumes)
🐳 Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.
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| Moby Dick or Whale |
by Herman Melville
Originally published 1851 · This edition 1922
About the Book
This is the story told by the sailor Ishmael — of Captain Ahab and his all-consuming obsession. Aboard the whaling ship Pequod, Ahab chases one creature above all others: Moby Dick, the legendary giant white sperm whale that, on an earlier voyage, bit off his leg at the knee. What begins as a hunt becomes a quest for vengeance — wild, relentless, and fateful.
EXTRACTS
(Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian)
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird’s-eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness — Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye forever go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together — there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!
📖 Details
- Author: Herman Melville
- First Published: 1851
- This Edition: 1922
- Narrator: Ishmael
- Central Figure: Captain Ahab
- The Whale: Moby Dick