Even though it is not a retelling of Moby Dick but a
new story told through the eyes of someone who can barely be called a character
of the original book, still, when throughout the entire novel one is supposed
to imagine that Naslund’s Ahab is the original Ahab and that her story takes
place within the “universe” of Melville’s original, the virtue of Naslund’s
book seems dubious, both in artistic and feminist terms, even if one imagines
that the derivativeness is meant to symbolize a kind of “marriage” between Moby
Dick and Ahab’s Wife.
A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves serves
feminism much better, in my opinion. A great classic in its own right, it does
not derive from Moby Dick in any obvious way, yet, I think, shares much
with it, while being emphatically less “masculine” in its poetics:
“I am clouded and bruised with the print of minds and faces
and things so subtle that they have smell, colour, texture, substance, but no
name. I am merely "Neville" to you, who see the narrow limits of my
life and the line it cannot pass. But to myself I am immeasurable; a net whose
fibres pass imperceptibly beneath the world. My net is almost indistinguishable
from that which it surrounds. It lifts whales--huge leviathans and white
jellies, what is amorphous and wandering; I detect, I perceive. Beneath my eyes
opens--a book; I see to the bottom; the heart--I see to the depths. I know what
loves are trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and
thither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally
tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart.”
The unity which Moby Dick only hopes for is at the heart of The Waves.
both the Dickinson poem and this excerpt from the Waves are hugely suggestive.
ReplyDeleteDickinson would have read MD (what's the date of the poems?) - with this Neville/Melville connection, I'm very curious to know whether or not Woolf has.
Unfortunately I don't know what the dates of the poems are. I might try looking it up next time I'm in the library (next week, perhaps).
ReplyDeleteWith Woolf, one would probably have to read her diaries to get any clues, or search the book carefully for subtle allusions. I don't know of any direct references to Moby Dick. Professor Wirth-Nesher might know.