“Nearly two centuries ago , Melville showed us how easy it is to welcome as our own the touches of others, their equivalent colors, customers, and beliefs; their journeys, their transitions. And to remember those who, unwelcome, suffered. How much could have been avoided, and embraced, had we heeded. Melville feverishly scribbled a diagnosis, prognosis and prescription for the human condition. We are all Ishmael the ingenue and Starbuck the pragmatist and Ahab the maniac, stuck on a ship driven by winds we cannot predict, helmed by a mind not fully comprehensible, whose compulsions we don’t control. The world is an elusive whale; we might choose coexistence or destruction. And though we do not decide the outcome, the hands on the oars are ours. It’s no coincidence that Leviathan, the sperm whale, is Melville’s chosen vehicle. No other candidate qualifies. To face real quotidian madness we must have at stake real blood and real will on both sides. Only this creature comes to us as quickened flesh and immortal metaphor, tangling us with our own pursuits, profane, bleeding, sacred,free. Only Leviathan could do it. Could win.”
