"Melville, Herman - Moby-Dick or The White Whale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Melville Herman)

voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a
long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more
extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
something like this: Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the
United States. Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael. Bloody Battle in
Affghanistan. Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage
managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage,
when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short
and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces --though I
cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which
being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set
about
..

performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was
a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity.
Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the
undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending
marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my
wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements;
but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I
love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what
is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with

it--would they let me --since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all
the inmates of the place one lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the
whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung
open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two
there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid
most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
..

.. < chapter ii 24 THE CARPET-BAG >

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old
carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the
Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New
Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed
upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and
that no way of reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday. As
most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling
..

stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as
well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine,
boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island,
which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been
gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor
old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original
--the Tyre of this Carthage; --the place where the first dead American whale