Messianic power and satanic decay: Milton in Moby-Dick.
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The Miltonic Try-Works
Miltonic allusion in Moby-Dick, particularly the links between Ahab and the Satan of Paradise Lost, has long been recognized. During the Melville "revival" of the 1920s, John Freeman sensed that "man's first disobedience [and the] loss of Eden" constitute one of the whaling adventure's central themes:
The never-to-be-ended combat typified by Milton's Lucifer and Archangels is typified as boldly by Melville's Moby Dick and Captain Ahab. Vindicating his pride against almightiness, Lucifer is overthrown but unsubdued; by vindicating his perverted spirit against a malignity not less perverse, Ahab is slain by the White Whale. (1)Most subsequent discussions of Melville's artistic response to Paradise Lost have been similarly suggestive and generalized; in Guttmann's view, for example, the equation is simple, involving a broad stoke of the brush: "Milton's fable is used to supplement Melville's own." (2) The drawing of Miltonic connections in the criticism is, furthermore, often associated with the contention that Melville interpreted the epic in a primarily "Romantic" and "Satanic School" way, attributing to Milton (as did Blake), (3) an unconscious "sympathy for the Devil," a view apparently given some support by the recently discovered marginalia in Melville's personal copy of Milton's poetry. (4) Fifty years ago, Henry A. Murray claimed that "Melville's Satan is the spitting image of Milton's hero ... the stricken, passionate, indignant, and often eloquent rebel angel of Paradise Lost, whose role is played by Ahab" (5) And as recently as 1998, Paul Giles similarly noted that Ahab's "desire for revenge on the white whale is as anguished as Satan's quest in Milton's poem for vengeance against God." (6)
Critical study over the past eighty years has not, however, focused on the identification of the numerous (and specific) verbal, thematic and imagistic echoes and parallels which one might expect to underpin any putative and pervasive "lower layer" of Miltonic association and major artistic indebtedness. This article will demonstrate that the topoi, characters, and imagery of Paradise Lost engaged Melville more elaborately than has previously been appreciated, a substantive artistic indebtedness especially evident in Ahab's gam with the Samuel Enderby ("Leg and Arm," ch. 100) and in the novel's climactic "Chase" section (chs. 133-135).
Melville knew well the literary details of "the Miltonic contests of archangels" (7) depicted in Book VI of Paradise Lost, most notably the description of the "Triumphant" (8) Messiah, and of his climactic rout of the Satanic army beyond the "Crystal wall of Heav'n ... Into the wasteful Deep" (VI.860-62). The sequence and structure of Melville's imagery in chapters 133-135 of the novel draw deliberate parallels between the final scenes of Ahab's "fiery hunt" (9) and the Battle in Heaven, with particularly detailed connections associating the White Whale and the Messiah. Melville had clearly perused the portrayal of the Son in the epic, and links the latter's might (as celestial warrior) with the "predestinating" White Whale evincing "Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice ... in his whole aspect" (NN MD 571). The purpose of these echoes is, I believe,...
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A92724959
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA92724959&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=15256995&p=LitRC&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Eedce9ba1&aty=open-web-entry
