Elinor Nauen

It is hard to be finite on an infinite subject, & all subjects are infinite.

~ Herman Melville

 

Melville has the great quality of opening endless lines of thought in his writing while containing them completely. What a great trick! It proves that he's a poet. Alice Notley does the same thing. 

It is hard to be finite on an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.

~ Herman Melville

 

And what else do you want or need to know about Melville? One great thing about him is that Moby-Dick is kind of like the I Ching or the Bible—you can open it anywhere & find a great line, one that speaks to what you need right that minute. How does he do that? And why is his prose so much more poetic than his poetry? 

If Melville had written only Typee (& Omoo, I suppose), what would we think of him now? An entertaining writer who gave us an intriguing peep at 19th-century life in Polynesia? But a writer of no especial promise, not someone who would blow our minds a few years later with Moby Dick. What the hell happened?  Read More