![]() ![]() He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.” Windup. Who could write a grander sentence than this (about Ahab): “All that most maddens and torments all that stirs up the lees of things all truth with malice in it all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain all the subtle demonisms of life and thought all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. ![]() Even when readers feel lost in the symbolic labyrinth of “Moby-Dick” or the mad psychological oscillations of “Pierre, or the Ambiguities,” rhythms worthy of concertos, symphonies and grand opera bear them along. When gripped by what he called “the blasts resistless,” Melville’s prose rose quickly and powerfully to the status of music. ![]() Everyone knows that Herman Melville was a great poet. ![]()
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