CHAPTER 42
The Whiteness of The Whale
What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he
was to me, as yet remains unsaid.
Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick,
which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm,
there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning
him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest;
and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of
putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that
above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here;
and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these
chapters might be naught.
Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as
if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and
pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain
royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu
placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other
magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam
unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the
Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the
great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the
imperial color the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it
applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over
every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even
made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a
joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this
same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things— the
innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of
America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of
honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in
the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and
queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of
the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine
spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked
flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies,
Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though
to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was
by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature
being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the
annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin
word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their
sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though
among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in
the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John,
white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand
clothed in white before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth
there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with
whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive
something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to
the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.
This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when
divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object
terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the
white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their
smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are?
That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even
more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that
not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the
white-shrouded bear or shark.*
*With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who
would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness,
separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that
brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said, only rises
from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature
stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by
bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear
frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be
true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified
terror.
As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the same
quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly hit by the
French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish mass for the
dead begins with “Requiem eternam” (eternal rest), whence Requiem
denominating the mass itself, and any other funeral music. Now, in allusion
to the white, silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness of
his habits, the French call him Requin.
Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual
wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all
imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God’s great,
unflattering laureate, Nature.*
*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale,
in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I
ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches,
I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked,
Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as
if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it.
Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king’s ghost in
supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I
peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I
bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those
for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of
traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot
tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I
awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied.
Goney! never had heard that name before; is it conceivable that this
glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time
after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s name for albatross. So that by
no possibility could Coleridge’s wild Rhyme have had aught to do with
those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our
deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an
albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the
noble merit of the poem and the poet.
I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly
lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a
solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I have
frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I beheld the
Antarctic fowl.
But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will tell;
with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea. At last the
Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck,
with the ship’s time and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt not,
that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven, when the white
fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking, and adoring cherubim!
Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the
White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed,
small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in
his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of
wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky
Mountains and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westward trooped
it like that chosen star which every evening leads on the hosts of light. The
flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him
with housings more resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have
furnished him. A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that
unfallen, western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters
revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as
a god, bluff-bowed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching
amid his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly
streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient
subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly
reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness; in
whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the bravest Indians he was
the object of trembling reverence and awe. Nor can it be questioned from
what stands on legendary record of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual
whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him with divineness; and that this
divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same
time enforced a certain nameless terror.
But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that accessory
and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and Albatross.
What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks
the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is that
whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The
Albino is as well made as other men— has no substantive deformity—and
yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely
hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so?
Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but not the
less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this crowning
attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of the
Southern Seas has been denominated the White Squall. Nor, in some
historic instances, has the art of human malice omitted so potent an
auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart,
when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperate White
Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-place!
Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all
mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue. It cannot
well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead which
most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there; as if indeed that
pallor were as much like the badge of consternation in the other world, as of
mortal trepidation here. And from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the
expressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our
superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our
phantoms; all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog—Yea, while these terrors
seize us, let us add, that even the king of terrors, when personified by the
evangelist, rides on his pallid horse.
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious
thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to
account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then, by the
citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of whiteness—though
for the time either wholly or in great part stripped of all direct associations
calculated to impart to it aught fearful, but nevertheless, is found to exert
over us the same sorcery, however modified;— can we thus hope to light
upon some chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek?
Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety, and
without imagination no man can follow another into these halls. And
though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions about to be
presented may have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were
entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may not be able to
recall them now.
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare mention of
Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless processions
of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded with new-fallen snow? Or
to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States,
why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun, evoke such
an eyeless statue in the soul?
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and
kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Tower of
London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled
American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors— the Byward
Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers, the White
Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods, comes that
gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of that name, while
the thought of Virginia’s Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy, distant
dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes, does the
name of the White Sea exert such a spectralness over the fancy, while that
of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild
afternoons on the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of
sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to
the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does “the
tall pale man” of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrestingly
glides through the green of the groves— why is this phantom more terrible
than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling
earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of
arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires,
wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of
anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon
each other, as a tossed pack of cards;— it is not these things alone which
make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou can’st see. For Lima has
taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her
woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not
the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts
the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.
I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness
is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects
otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in
those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely consists
in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under any form at all
approaching to muteness or universality. What I mean by these two
statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the following
examples.
First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by
night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just enough
of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely similar
circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his ship sailing
through a midnight sea of milky whiteness— as if from encircling
headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him, then
he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded phantom of the whitened
waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the lead assures him he is
still off soundings; heart and helm they both go down; he never rests till
blue water is under him again. Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee,
“Sir, it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that
hideous whiteness that so stirred me?”
Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the
snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the
mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast
altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose
oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the
backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an
unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to
break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery
of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain
in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of
rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems a
boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and
splintered crosses.
But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about whiteness is but a
white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo,
Ishmael.
Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of
Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey— why is it that upon the
sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that he
cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness—why will he
start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies of affright?
There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild creatures in his
green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he smells cannot recall
to him anything associated with the experience of former perils; for what
knows he, this New England colt, of the black bisons of distant Oregon?
No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the
knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of miles from
Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring bison
herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, which this
instant they may be trampling into dust.
Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of the
festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the windrowed
snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo
robe to the frightened colt!
Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic
sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere those
things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems
formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.
But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned
why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more
portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of
spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be
as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and
immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought
of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it,
that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of
color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons
that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of
snows—a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when
we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other
earthly hues—every stately or lovely emblazoning— the sweet tinges of
sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the
butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually
inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified
Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing
but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider
that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great
principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if
operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips
and roses, with its own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe
lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to
wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel
gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the
prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the
symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? ..
