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    Call Me Ishmael
    Call Me Ishmael
    Call Me Ishmael
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Call Me Ishmael

    By Charles Olson

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    First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences—especially Shakespearean ones—on Melville’s writing of Moby-Dick. One of the first Melvilleans to advance what has since become known as the “theory of the two Moby-Dicks,” Olson argues that there were two versions of Moby-Dick, and that Melville’s reading King Lear for the first time in between the first and second versions of the book had a profound impact on his conception of the saga: “the first book did not contain Ahab,” writes Olson, and “it may not, except incidentally, have contained Moby-Dick.” If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the “theory of the two Moby-Dicks,” it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy. Passionate in his poetry, Olson was no less passionate in his reading of Melville. Impatient with what he regarded as traditional forms of literary criticism, Olson engaged his own creativity to write a book as robust, original, and compelling as Melville’s masterpiece.

    “Not only important, but apocalyptic.”—New York Herald Tribune

    “One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby-Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it.”—San Francisco Chronicle

    “Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville’s dispersed library.”—Lewis Mumford, New York Times

    “Records, often brilliantly, one way of taking the most extraordinary of American books.”—W. E. Bezanson, New England Quarterly

    “The most important contribution to Melville criticism since Raymond Weaver’s pioneering contribution in 1921.”—George Mayberry, New Republic
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherValmy Publishing
    Release dateDec 5, 2018
    ISBN9781789126235
    Call Me Ishmael
    Author

    Charles Olson

    George F. Butterick was the editor of the complete Maximus Poems and author of A Guide to the Maximus Poems (California, 1978). He served as Curator of the Literary Archives at the University of Connecticut, which houses Charles Olson's papers.

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      Book preview

      Call Me Ishmael - Charles Olson

      This edition is published by Valmy Publishing – www.pp-publishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – valmypublishing@gmail.com

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      Text originally published in 1947 under the same title.

      © Valmy Publishing 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      CALL ME ISHMAEL

      BY

      CHARLES OLSON

      O fahter, fahter

      gone among

      O eeys that loke

      Loke, fahter:

      your sone!

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 4

      FIRST FACT—IS PROLOGUE 5

      PART ONE—IS FACT 8

      Call me Ishmael 8

      What lies under 11

      Usufruct 17

      PART TWO—IS SOURCE: SHAKESPEARE 21

      Shakespeare, or the discovery of Moby-Dick 21

      American Shiloh 25

      Man, to man 27

      Lear and Moby-Dick 29

      A Moby-Dick manuscript 32

      Ahab and his fool 36

      Shakespeare, concluded 39

      FACT # 2 DROMENON 45

      PART THREE—Moses 46

      THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF THE BLOOD 46

      PART FOUR—CHRIST 49

      Christ 50

      A LAST FACT 60

      PART FIVE—NOAH—for Constance 61

      The conclusion: Pacific man 61

      REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 65

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

      I wish to acknowledge the grant of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to do this book.

      FIRST FACT—IS PROLOGUE

      Herman Melville was born in New York August 1, 1819, and on the 12th of that month the Essex, a well-found whaler of 238 tons, sailed from Nantucket with George Pollard, Jr. as captain, Owen Chase and Matthew Joy mates, 6 of her complement of 20 men Negroes, bound for the Pacific Ocean, victualled and provided for two years and a half.

      A year and three months later, on November 20, 1820, just south of the equator in longitude 119 West, this ship, on a calm day, with the sun at ease, was struck head on twice by a bull whale, a spermeceti about 85 feet long, and with her bows stove in, filled and sank.

      Her twenty men set out in three open whaleboats for the coast of South America 2000 miles away. They had bread (200 lb. a boat), water (65 gallons), and some Galapagos turtles. Although they were at the time no great distance from Tahiti, they were ignorant of the temper of the natives and feared cannibalism.

      Their first extreme sufferings commenced a week later when they made the mistake of eating, in order to make their supply last, some bread which had got soaked by the sea’s wash. To alleviate the thirst which followed, they killed turtle for its blood. The sight revolted the stomachs of the men.

      In the first weeks of December their lips began to crack and swell, and a glutinous saliva collected in the mouth, intolerable to the taste.

      Their bodies commenced to waste away, and possessed so little strength they had to assist each other in performing some of the body’s weakest functions. Barnacles collected on the boats’ bottoms, and they tore them off for food. A few flying fish struck their sails, fell into the boats, and were swallowed raw.

      After a month of the open sea they were gladdened by the sight of a small island which they took to be Ducie but was Elizabeth Isle. Currents and storm had taken them a thousand miles off their course.

      They found water on the island after a futile search for it from rocks which they picked at, where moisture was, with their hatchets. It was discovered in a small spring in the sand at the extreme verge of ebbtide. They could gather it only at low water. The rest of the time the sea flowed over the spring to the depth of six feet.

      Twenty men could not survive on the island and, to give themselves the chance to reach the mainland before the supplies they had from the ship should be gone, seventeen of them put back to sea December 27th.

      The three who stayed, Thomas Chapple of Plymouth, England, and William Wright and Seth Weeks of Barnstable, Mass., took shelter in caves among the rocks. In one they found eight human skeletons, side by side as though they had lain down and died together.

      The only food the three had was a sort of blackbird which they caught when at roost in trees and whose blood they sucked. With the meat of the bird, and a few eggs, they chewed a plant tasting like peppergrass which they found in the crevices of the rocks. They survived.

      The three boats, with the seventeen men divided among them, moved under the sun across ocean together until the 12th of January when, during the night, the one under the command of Owen Chase, First Mate, became separated from the other two.

      Already one of the seventeen had died, Matthew Joy, Second Mate. He had been buried January 10th. When Charles Shorter, Negro, out of the same boat as Joy, died on January 23rd, his body was shared among the men of that boat and the Captain’s, and eaten. Two days more and Lawson Thomas, Negro, died and was eaten. Again two days and Isaac Shepherd, Negro, died and was eaten. The bodies were roasted to dryness by means of fires kindled on the ballast sand at the bottom of the boats.

      Two days later, the 29th, during the night, the boat which had been Matthew Joy’s got separated from the Captain’s and was never heard of again. When she disappeared three men still lived, William Bond, Negro, Obed Hendricks, and Joseph West.

      In the Captain’s boat now alone on the sea, four men kept on. The fifth, Samuel Reed, Negro, had been eaten for strength at his death the day before. Within three days these four men, calculating the miles they had to go, decided to draw two lots, one to choose who should die that the others might live, and one to choose who should kill him. The youngest, Owen Coffin, serving on his first voyage as a cabin boy to learn his family’s trade, lost. It became the duty of Charles Ramsdale, also of Nantucket, to shoot him. He did, and he, the Captain and Brazilla Ray, Nantucket, ate him.

      That was February 1, 1821. On February 11th, Ray died of himself, and was eaten. On February 23rd, the Captain and Ramsdale were picked up by the Nantucket whaleship Dauphin, Captain Zimri Coffin.

      The men in the third boat, under the command of Owen Chase, the first mate, held out the longest. They had become separated from the

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