2 The Epic Librarian

Before Melville begins, he must first begin.  The great epic poets—Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton—invoke the muses before they start to sing, begging inspiration from those goddesses of song.  Melville is no different.  (In fact, is Moby-Dick our best candidate for an American epic?)  Every great author must begin in this way, introducing his art before his art starts.  Thus, “Extracts” appears at the beginning of Melville’s text.

“Extracts” does not invoke the muses; still it might be read as an invocation.  In this introduction, Melville draws from a vast literary sea as many quotes and verses touching on whales as he can find: roughly ten pages worth.  He does not introduce himself as a poet, but rather as a

“mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a [Sub-Sub-Librarian].” 

Melville, therefore, casts himself not as a singer, as the epic poets do, but rather as a librarian, a reader of shelves and shelves of others’ books.  In other words, he is a reader of humanity.

(Read these quotes.  They give depth to the text, heightening the drama of Ahab’s bout with the whale and his boat’s with the sea.  Note: he begins with the Bible; he ends with a common sailor’s song.)

So what do these “extracts” mean?  Why does Melville include them in his text at all?  How do they serve as an introduction and a replacement for an invocation?  Melville tells us in a small paragraph introducing the “Extracts.”

            “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.”

Three observations about this passage:

 

First, in his efforts as a librarian, Melville scorns cetology—the scientific study of whales.  He is by no means a scientific observer or a mere expert on whales.  The full significance of this becomes apparent later in the text.  For now, Melville simply points out that his “extracts” are not derived from the whale itself, its presence in nature, scientific observation or dissection, but rather from literature.  Melville is a reader. 

So, secondly, take note of his objects of study, “the ancient authors” and “poets.”  Here Melville subtly indicates his implication among the ranks of the great literary giants of the past, while yet cheekily maintaining his humility as a “sub-sub.”  While he does not claim to write epic poetry, still he wants us to know he has read it, and concerns himself with equally weighty subject matter in his master-text.  

Thirdly, we can now identify this subject matter.  Melville calls his introduction “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.”  Melville does not concern himself with real whales so much as he does with the whale’s massive presence in the human imagination.  He does not invoke the muses, but rather the great imaginative power of humankind.  This, like the muses, inspires great works of art.  Melville finds in this great catalogue the crucial elements of being human.  He records in his novel that grave impression left by Leviathan on our mortal selves.  The whale, Moby Dick, finds its being in fiction; and we find in the whale a self-knowledge necessary to real life.