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Gnostic Mythos in Moby-Dick

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Thomas Vargish
Thomas Vargish*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H.
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Extract

In moby-dick, Melville alluded to various eastern religions in addition to Christianity. Scholars noticing these allusions have tended to group without much discrimination Zoroastrianism (the fire worship of the Persians), Manicheism (belief in a universal duality of good and evil as coeternal principles), Hindu myths (such as that of Vishnu in Chapter lxxxii of Moby-Dick), and, less frequently, Gnosticism (without indicating how the particular doctrines apply to the novel). In proposing to treat chiefly of Gnostic influences on Moby-Dick, I shall contend that Melville applied Gnostic myths and doctrines more specifically and consistently than has been recognized, that he carefully distinguished between Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism, and that certain passages in Moby-Dick require familiarity with the Gnostic mythos to be understood. But only when discussing the most obscure of these passages would I claim that the Gnostics alone were in Melville's mind. No influence on his great book was exclusive. In proving the influence of Gnostic thought upon it, I have no wish to minimize the importance of, let us say, Zoroaster, Milton, or the Hindus. Thus in demonstrating one eastern religion's influence upon Melville, it is not my intention to unseat another's.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , June 1966 , pp. 272 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 See, for example, Dorthee M. Finkelstein, Melville's Orienda (New Haven, 1961), pp. 153, 191. Howard B. Franklin, in The Wake of the Gods (Stanford, 1963), handles his material with care, but does not discuss Gnostic influences.

2 Lawrance Thompson, Melville's Quarrel with God (Princeton, 1952), p. 430.

3 But perhaps Norton cannot be completely identified with the ship's chaplain, whom Melville satirically calls a “transcendental divine” (Ch. xxxviii). In A Discourse on the Latest Forms of Infidelity (1839), Norton laid down unmistakable lines of demarcation between himself and transcendentalists foreign and domestic. Of course, this would not necessarily exempt him from Melville's satire.

4 Clarel iii.v.39–60.

5 Andrews Norton, The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels (Cambridge, Mass., 1844), ii, 220.

6 Ibid., ii, 21–23. In Clarel iii.v.39–63, Melville demonstrates his knowledge of two Gnostic doctrines summarized in this passage from Norton: that Jehovah was author of evil and its God, and that Christ was his contrary. He compares this divine opposition with the “less frank” modern “dismission civil” between a rod-wielding Jehovah and Jesus as the “indulgent God.” The idea that the God of the Jews was the imperfect Creator-God rather than the Supreme Being is also of interest in the interpretation of Bartleby, especially in connection with the view suggested by John Gardner, “Bartleby: Art and Social Commitment,” PQ, xliii (Jan. 1964), 87–98.

7 Norton, Evidences, ii, 53. However, the “principal occasion of the existence of Gnosticism,” Norton goes on to say, “is to be found in the hereditary aversion of Gentiles to Judaism” (ibid.).

8 Melville mentions the Gnostics explicitly in Chapter clxx of Mardi. Professor Sealts has traced this reference to Melville's reading of Proclus. See “Melville's ‘Neoplatonical Originals’,” MLN, lxvii (Feb. 1952), 82, nn. 6 and 8.

9 Thompson, pp. 147–242. How else explain Ahab's reference to the sinking Pequod's “god-bullied hull,” and such remarks as “be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man … ”?

10 Chapter xxxvi. Stubb prepares us for Ahab's assertion when he says, “there's a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member—that makes the living insult, my little man” (Ch. xxxi). In Ahab's speech to Starbuck, Stubb's common sense opinion is elevated to metaphysics, and “the living member” becomes “the living act.”

11 Evidences, iii, 116–117. Chapter lxxxii of Moby-Dick concludes with a jocular account of Vishnu's transformation into a whale in pursuit of the Vedas.

12 Evidences, iii, 159–160. Millicent Bell in “Pierre Bayle and Moby-Dick,” PMLA, lxvi (Sept. 1951), 639–640, incorrectly takes the “dark Hindu half of Nature” to be an “evil divinity of the sea.” She fails to realize that the darkness of the female principle, in Ahab's thought, is a virtue: he has been betrayed by the god of fire, as will be shown.

13 C. C. Walcutt, “The Fire Symbolism in Moby-Dick,” MLN, lix (May 1944), 306. D. M. Finkelstein in Melville's Orienda follows Newton Arvin in believing that fire represents evil. Mrs. Finkelstein and Mrs. Bell, however, both ignore Ahab's use of the past tense in the “Candles” chapter—“I as Persian once did worship”—and consider him as a practicing fire-worshipper.

14 “Pierre Bayle and Moby-Dick,” p. 648.

15 Collected Poems, ed. Howard P. Vincent, (Chicago, 1947), p. 234. The second stanza runs:

Indolence is heaven's ally here,
And energy the child of hell:
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear,
But brims the poisoned well.

16 Evidences, iii, appendix, p. xxxvi.