"...for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!"

One of the wonderful things I love about the internet, is, of course, the sheer volume of material and information you can find. What I hate about it, though, is that sometimes this information is inaccurate, or incomplete.

Last night I was in discussion with my darling Heathcliff about some plot points in Limbus Company, and we got around to the topic of Carl Jung, and his essay Wotan. I cannot even express to you how angered I got when I found said essay, online, and started reading it. I barely got two paragraphs in before the arm I was leaning upright on the bed with started to shake from extension and rage. I do not want to read about those poor, shiny, Aryan youths, and I don't think I really need to, simply to understand The One Who Grips.

I also found a copy of Phaedon by Mendelssohn, the first result of which (if one were to simply Give It A Googs,) is a scan by Google Books. I must warn you! This free online PDF is FUCKED UP! Page 12 is replaced with a repeat of page 10, and page 14 is simply a blurry spot of nothing. It was supremely irritating that the first thing you can find of this book (the scan is of the 1770 edition, from what I understand of Roman numerals) isn't even properly complete, and it seems that nobody cares enough to correct it.

I did end up finding a better copy so I can read it later, from 2007, translated by Patricia Noble. This seems to be a fully intact version, plus a foreward from the translator, and an introduction and foreward about the text, additional words about the life of Mendelssohn, and a bibliography! All wonderful things for a book to have. I imagine I will still be reading it at a snail's pace.

In either case I can finally gain additional context to a.... single line.... in chapter 35 of Moby-Dick....

Did you know that Moby-Dick was written and published before time zones were introduced in the United States? I can never remember what time zone I'm in, so I know this thanks to Wikipedia. The book was published in 1851, and (according to Wikipedia) time zones were introduced in the US in the 1880s. Later in the 1920s, nautical time was used aboard ships, with differences by an hour according to 15 degrees of longitude. This is all after Herman Melville's time aboard ships and his books, so it really isn't anything more of a curious fun fact to me.

The nature of time is something we all routinely struggle with, from front switching, to the dark annals of history, stretching far into the windblown future fathoms away from us. The thought of things being lost or destroyed to the ravages of time is something we struggle with, though through mental fortitude and unintentional disassociation we find that perhaps sometimes it doesn't matter. That the tide of time will drag all into the depths, and we are no better a man than any other at resisting it. That maybe I can let go from time to time.

In other notes, as it is on my mind, in Chapter 35, "The Mast-Head," Ishmael says this:

"Let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such a one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer."

This is, in truth, my first maritime novel in many years! When I was younger I read such classics as Emily Windsnap, or the first book of The Wave Walkers series, or the first three or four of Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow. I was not enamoured with Captain Nemo, or Treasure Island, and I certainly thought Moby-Dick was much too intimidating. So, of course, I had no idea what Ishmael meant by Phaedon or Bowditch.

Phaedon, I can only guess, is in reference to a philosophy book by Moses Mendelssohn, about, quote, "the simplicity and immortality of the soul." Bowditch is likely in reference to Nathaniel Bowditch's The American Practical Navigator, as that is the colloquial term for it. One could easily guess that Phaedon is some sort of philosophy by its juxtaposition against Bowditch, with Bowditch being the ideal for a man at the masthead ("...Phaedon instead of Bowditch...") and reference to Plato and Descartes later on.

As I have yet to fully read Phaedon, I don't know if there is further reasoning to him bringing it up (I suspect there is, from the summary given, and from Melville's careful referencing throughout Moby-Dick) but the summary, combined with this passage close to the end of the chapter, I imagine there is great meaning.

"In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover."

For my own peace of mind (actually, for another alter's) I must dispell an misattribution. On Goodreads, this quote is attributed to Franz Kafka: “I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” While it is true that this quote is indeed from Kafka, I have seen many people say this line is from The Metamorphosis. I am here to tell you: IT IS NOT IN THERE!!

I read the entirety of The Metamorphosis one morning last winter, looking for this damned quote, only to realize it was never in there! It's from his Letters to Milena!! This quote is still misattributed to The Metamorphosis on Goodreads, but seeing as how I do not have an account there, I don't know how to fix this untruth other than writing about it here. I hope you are now a bit more learned.