Thunderstorm of the whalers Dick crossword puzzle. What the sailors who actually met Moby Dick experienced: the whole truth about the white avenging whale

Sometimes there comes a moment when you get tired of reading modern fiction, even interesting ones, and begin to gravitate towards the classics. Usually this results in watching some film adaptation, but this time I decided to take on Moby Dick. It was this choice that inspired me to watch In the Heart of the Sea, which tells about the incident that inspired Herman Melville to write his Opus Magnum.
The end result was something strange. I can say in advance that this is a rare case when a real story turned out to be much more dramatic and exciting than its embellished literary version.

The novel at one time was completely ignored by the public and critics, who considered Moby Dick some kind of incomprehensible crap, in contrast to his previous works, which were more or less known. How did this happen? Well, then the genre of romanticism was popular in the Land of Opportunity, and Melville really liked social criticism and did not want to write in the mainstream genre. Although, as it seemed to me, there was just a lot of romanticism in Moby Dick and Herman caved in to the times, but only half and that’s why people didn’t like it. The rediscovery happened 50 years later, when prominent people began to look for deep meanings in this Opus, and then shout everywhere about the genius of the novel, making it absolutely top among American novels in general. Yes, yes, even Gone with the Wind took a bite. Unfortunately, by that time Melville had already glued his flippers together in poverty as a customs officer. Even in the obituary they made a mistake in the last name.


Actually, what is this work about? From the first third it may seem that this is a story about a young man, tired of life (come on, who among us hasn’t been moping for several months at least once in his life?), who is hired on a whaling ship and sets off on a voyage around the world, and the ship’s obsessed captain along the way trying to track down a huge white sperm whale to exact his revenge.

But after the first third you realize that this is actually a book about how Melville once decided to write about whales. Write so much and in such detail that after reading just the mention of the sea leviathan you will feel sick. By God, 60% of the entire book are detailed descriptions of what whales look like, how they are built, what is inside them, what is outside them, how they were depicted by artists, how they were depicted by modern artists, how they were depicted in encyclopedias, in the Bible, in poems and stories of sailors, what species there are, what they get from them... and that’s not even all, you can continue if you wish. Melville's editor should have hit him on the head and told him that he was not writing a textbook or a script for release on the Discovery Channel (if this happened in our time). There is only one consolation in this educational hell - sometimes the author, through descriptions of whales and near-whale stories, mocks the society of that time. The only problem is that now all this is no longer relevant, it’s quite difficult to understand, and sometimes these jokes of his are so complex that you can only understand them if you know Melville’s biography. Also in this layer of the novel it’s fun to read about things that have now been studied in much more detail. For example, in one of the chapters the author proves that whales are fish, and all innovators who claim that they are mammals are assholes and degenerates.
Another big problem with Moby Dick, which makes it seem rather bland, is the characters. Initially, everything is fine with this item. We have a main character, let's call him Ishmael, on whose behalf the story is told. His attitude to life, motivation, and character are described in great detail. He interacts with other people and conducts dialogues. However, after joining the crew of the Pequod ship, Ishmael disappears somewhere. That is, until the very end, he does not interact with any hero at all, simply dissolving among the faceless team. The same fate befalls Queequeg. An absolutely gorgeous (again, at first) hero: a Polynesian prince of a cannibal tribe, who carries around a dried head and on any matter consults with his deity - the black man Yojo, whom he places on his head every now and then. At the same time, he is a very humane and kind character, almost the most sympathetic of all. And even he disappears after the first third, returning only once again to the “plot” closer to the end.


Who is the book about then? Of course, about Captain Ahab, who appears just at the end of the successful part of the book and remains the only bright ray in the dark kingdom of the encyclopedia about whales. This is a completely crazy old man, obsessed with revenge on the White Whale, who once bit off his leg, and constantly reads killer speeches, mixing them with quotes from the Bible and his own nonsense. “I am ready to slay the Sun itself if it dares to insult me!” Pathos worthy of Warhammer. Despite the fact that the author himself more than once says that Ahab is gone, nevertheless, both Ishmael and the whole team become infected with his passion and begin to consider his revenge on Moby Dick to be their revenge.

The rest of the team is described, alas, rather schematically. There are first, second and third mates - Starbeck, Stubb and Flask. There are three harpooneers - the already mentioned Queequeg, Daggu and Tashtigo. Sometimes a blacksmith with a cabin boy and a couple of other guys appear, but, having fulfilled their role, they immediately disappear. If we look at them in a little more detail, then almost all of them can be described in just one or two words. Daggoo is a black man, Tashtigo is an Indian, Flask is always hungry, Stubb is a kind of cheerful cattle. That's all. At that time, Melville was a man with a hell of a lot of broad views, especially in relation to religion, and he wanted to show his tolerance with his assorted harpooners (he’s generally a big fan of telling how cool small nations are and how all the white snickering goats are), but they could have just... Write down the character a little! But no. The only more or less written side character is First Mate Starbuck. From the very beginning of the voyage, he stands out from the others, since he is not affected by Ahab’s speeches, listening to them with a facepalm, and is the only one (except for the narrator) who realizes that their captain needs to go crazy, and not chase whales. But since they were great friends in the past, he tolerates it. The weak interaction between the characters is aggravated by the manner in which Melville writes his dialogues. It looks something like this - one person speaks direct lines, and everyone else answers vaguely and in general terms, “behind the scenes.”


And do you know why Moby Dick is so amazing? The fact that after wading through 4/5 of the novel (which took me a month and a half), cursing at the next chapter about whale guts and the way Leonardo da Vinci described them, the final part comes... and it’s gorgeous! Suddenly, the plot returns from somewhere, the characters again begin to somehow interact with each other, the pretentious Ahab is already pushing Roboute Guilliman and Beowulf off the throne, and something is constantly happening around the ship. As icing on the cake, there is a battle with the White Whale, which stretches over three days and is described simply brilliantly. I never thought I’d say this about a figure of classical literature, but Melville has some cool action. The finale turned out to be so hair-raising and dramatic that at the end you sit, wipe away a tear and think “wow.” But tears come not only from the ending, but also because you realize that Melville’s talent is through the roof, but he reveals it only at the beginning and at the end, leaving the reader rubbing his eyes from the rolling sleep for most of the book.


So is Moby Dick worth reading? I would say no. Only if the classics suit you well now, and even then the whale encyclopedia can unsettle even Dostoevsky’s admirers. And this despite the fact that this book is called the best novel of the 19th century. Take a bite, Tolstoy, yeah.

But if you are interested in the story itself, I advise you to watch the film adaptation of 2010 (somewhere they say 2011). Because in the film format this story looks perfect, since everything unnecessary is thrown overboard, and what remains is only much better developed characters and the journey itself. Starbuck, played by Ethan Hawke, is truly wonderful, and Ishmael is played by “Daredevil” Charlie Cox and his huge eyes. Plus, in the Russian voice acting, the voice of Ahab is answered by the great and terrible Vladimir Antonik, from whose lips the speeches of the mad captain can inspire you right through the monitor and make you feel like a member of the Pequod team. Just don’t accidentally confuse it with Asylum’s masterpiece, which came out around the same time.

Well, that seems to be it. Well done to those who read to the end.

Notes

Links

• Moby Dick in Maxim Moshkov's library

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In the literary history of the United States, the work of Herman Melville is an outstanding and original phenomenon. The writer has long been ranked among the classics of American literature, and his wonderful creation “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” is rightfully considered one of the masterpieces of world literature. Melville's life, his writings, correspondence, and diaries have been thoroughly studied. There are dozens of biographies and monographs, hundreds of articles and publications, thematic collections and collective works devoted to various aspects of the writer’s work. And yet Melville as a person and as an artist, the lifetime and posthumous fate of his books continue to remain a mystery, not fully solved or explained.

Melville's life and work are full of paradoxes, contradictions and inexplicable oddities. For example, he did not have any serious formal education. He never studied at university. Why is there a university? The harsh necessities of life forced him to leave school at the age of twelve. At the same time, Melville's books tell us that he was one of the most educated people of his time. The deep insights in the fields of epistemology, sociology, psychology, and economics that the reader encounters in his works presuppose not only the presence of acute intuition, but also a solid stock of scientific knowledge. Where, when, how did he acquire them? One can only assume that the writer had an amazing ability to concentrate, which allowed him to absorb a huge amount of information and critically comprehend it in a short time.

Or let's take, say, the nature of the genre evolution of Melville's work. We are already accustomed to a more or less traditional picture: a young writer begins with poetic experiments, then tries himself in short prose genres, then moves on to stories and, finally, having reached maturity, takes on the creation of large canvases. For Melville, it was the other way around: he started with stories and novels, then took up writing stories and ended his career as a poet.

There was no student period in Melville's creative biography. He did not make his way into literature, he “broke into” it, and his first book – “Typee” – brought him wide fame in America, and then in England, France and Germany. Subsequently, his skill increased, the content of his books became deeper, and his popularity inexplicably fell. By the beginning of the sixties, Melville was “deadly” forgotten by his contemporaries. In the seventies, an English admirer of his talent tried to find Melville in New York, but to no avail. To all questions he received an indifferent answer: “Yes, there was such a writer. What happened to him now is unknown. He seems to have died." Meanwhile, Melville lived in New York and served as a cargo inspector at customs. Here is another mysterious phenomenon that can be called “Melville’s silence.” In fact, the writer “fell silent” in the prime of his strength and talent (he was not yet forty years old) and remained silent for three decades. The only exceptions are two collections of poems and a poem, published in scanty quantities at the expense of the author and completely unnoticed by critics.

The posthumous fate of Melville's creative legacy was equally extraordinary. Before 1919, it seemed to not exist. They forgot about the writer so completely that when he actually died, they couldn’t even correctly reproduce his name in a short obituary. 1919 marked the hundredth anniversary of the writer’s birth. There were no solemn meetings or anniversary articles on this occasion. Only one person remembered the glorious date - Raymond Weaver, who then began writing the first biography of Melville. The book came out two years later and was called “Herman Melville, Sailor and Mystic.” Weaver's efforts were supported by the famous English writer D.H. Lawrence, whose popularity in America during these years was enormous. He wrote two articles on Melville and included them in his collection of psychoanalytic articles, Studies on Classical American Literature (1923).

America remembered Melville. Yes, how I remembered! The writer’s books began to be republished in mass editions, unpublished manuscripts were retrieved from archives, films and performances (including operas) were made based on Melville’s writings, artists were inspired by Melville’s images, and Rockwell Kent created a series of brilliant graphic sheets on the themes of “The White Whale.” .

Naturally, Melville’s “boom” extended to literary studies. Literary historians, biographers, critics, and even people far from literature (historians, psychologists, sociologists) got down to business. The thin stream of Melville studies turned into a torrent. Today this flow has subsided somewhat, but has not yet dried up. The latest sensational splash occurred in 1983, when two suitcases and a wooden chest containing Melville's manuscripts and letters from members of his family were accidentally discovered in an abandoned barn in upstate New York. One hundred and fifty Melville scholars are now busy studying new materials, with a view to making the necessary adjustments to Melville's biographies.

Let us note, however, that Melville’s “revival” has only a distant connection with his centenary. Its origins should be sought in the general mentality that characterized the spiritual life of America in the late tenths and early twenties of the 20th century. The general course of the socio-historical development of the United States at the turn of the century, and especially the first imperialist war, gave rise in the minds of many Americans to doubt and even protest against the bourgeois-pragmatic values, ideals, and criteria that guided the country throughout its century and a half of history. This protest was realized at many levels (social, political, ideological), including literary. It was laid as an ideological and philosophical foundation in the works of O’Neill, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Anderson, Faulkner, Wolfe - writers who are traditionally classified as the so-called lost generation, but who would be more correctly called the generation of protesters. It was then that America remembered the romantic rebels who affirmed the greatest value of the human personality and protested against everything that suppresses, oppresses, and reshapes this personality according to the standards of bourgeois morality. Americans rediscovered the works of Poe, Hawthorne, Dickinson, and at the same time the forgotten Melville.

Today it would no longer occur to anyone to doubt Melville’s right to be placed on the literary Olympus of the United States, and in the Pantheon of American Writers, being built in New York, he is given a place of honor next to Irving, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne and Whitman. He is read and revered. An enviable fate, great glory, which the writer could not even imagine during his lifetime!

Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819 in New York in the family of a middle-class businessman engaged in import and export operations. The family was large (four sons and four daughters) and, at first glance, quite prosperous. Today, when we know how closely Melville’s personal and creative fate is intertwined with the historical destinies of his homeland, the very fact of his birth in 1819 seems significant. It was this year that the young, naive, full of patriotic optimism and faith in “divine destiny” experienced a tragic shock: an economic crisis broke out in the country. The Americans' complacent belief that in America “everything is different from what they have there in Europe” received its first tangible blow. However, not everyone was able to read the fiery writings on the wall. Melville's father was among those who did not heed the warning and were severely punished. The business of his trading company fell into complete decline, and in the end he was forced to liquidate his enterprise, sell his house in New York and move to Albany. Unable to withstand the nervous shock, he lost his mind and soon died. The Melville family fell into “noble poverty.” The mother and daughters moved to the village of Lansingburg, where they somehow made ends meet, and their sons scattered around the world.

A young American with the biblical name Ishmael (in the book of Genesis it is said about Ishmael, the son of Abraham: “He will be among men like a wild ass, his hand against everyone and the hand of everyone against him”), bored with being on land and experiencing difficulties with money, accepts decision to set sail on a whaling ship. In the first half of the 19th century. the oldest American whaling port, Nantucket, is no longer the largest center of this fishery, but Ishmael considers it important for himself to hire a ship in Nantucket. Stopping on the way there in another port city, where it is not unusual to meet on the street a savage who has joined the crew of a whaler who visited there on unknown islands, where you can see a buffet counter made of a huge whale jaw, where even a preacher in a church climbs to the pulpit on a rope ladder - Ishmael listens to a passionate sermon about the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed up by Leviathan, trying to avoid the path assigned to him by God, and meets the native harpooner Queequeg at the inn. They become bosom friends and decide to join the ship together.

In Nantucket, they are hired by the whaler Pequod, which is preparing to set out on a three-year voyage around the world. Here Ishmael learns that Captain Ahab (Ahab in the Bible is the wicked king of Israel who established the cult of Baal and persecuted the prophets), under whose command he will go to sea, on his last voyage, fighting with a whale, lost his leg and has not been out since then out of gloomy melancholy, and on the ship, on the way home, he was even out of his mind for some time. But Ishmael does not yet attach any importance to this news or to other strange events that make one think about some secret connected with the Pequod and its captain. He takes a stranger he meets on the pier, who makes vague but menacing prophecies about the fate of the whaler and everyone enlisted in his crew, for a madman or a swindler-beggar. And the dark human figures, at night, secretly, ascending to the Pequod and then seeming to dissolve on the ship, Ishmael is ready to consider as a figment of his own imagination.

Only a few days after sailing from Nantucket, Captain Ahab leaves his cabin and appears on deck. Ishmael is struck by his gloomy appearance and the inescapable inner pain imprinted on his face. Holes were drilled in the deck boards in advance so that Ahab could, by strengthening a bone leg made from the polished jaw of a sperm whale, maintain balance during the rocking. Observers on the masts were ordered to look especially vigilantly for white whales in the sea. The captain is painfully withdrawn, demands unquestioning and immediate obedience even more harshly than usual, and sharply refuses to explain his own speeches and actions even to his assistants, in whom they often cause bewilderment. “The soul of Ahab,” says Ishmael, “during the harsh blizzard winter of his old age hid in the hollow trunk of his body and there sullenly sucked the paw of darkness.”

Having gone to sea for the first time on a whaler, Ishmael observes the features of a fishing vessel, work and life on it. The short chapters that make up the entire book contain descriptions of tools, techniques and rules for hunting a sperm whale and extracting spermaceti from its head. Other chapters, “whale studies” - from the book’s prefabricated collection of references to whales in a wide variety of literature to detailed reviews of a whale’s tail, a fountain, a skeleton, and finally whales made of bronze and stone, even whales among the stars - throughout the novel complement the narrative and merge with it, imparting a new, metaphysical dimension to events.

One day, by order of Ahab, the Pequod crew assembles. A gold Ecuadorian doubloon is nailed to the mast. It is intended for the first person to spot the albino whale, famous among whalers and nicknamed Moby Dick. This sperm whale, terrifying with its size and ferocity, whiteness and unusual cunning, carries in its skin many harpoons that were once aimed at it, but in all fights with humans it remains the winner, and the crushing rebuff that people received from it has taught many to the idea that that hunting him threatens with terrible disasters. It was Moby Dick who deprived Ahab of his legs when the captain, finding himself at the end of the chase among the wreckage of whaleboats broken by a whale, in a fit of blind hatred rushed at him with only a knife in his hand. Now Ahab announces that he intends to pursue this whale across all the seas of both hemispheres until the white carcass sways in the waves and releases its last fountain of black blood. In vain does Starbuck's first mate, a strict Quaker, object to him that taking revenge on a creature devoid of reason, striking only by blind instinct, is madness and blasphemy. In everything, Ahab answers, the unknown features of some rational principle are visible through the meaningless mask; and if you must strike, strike through this mask! A white whale floats obsessively before his eyes as the embodiment of all evil. With delight and rage, deceiving their own fear, the sailors join in his curses on Moby Dick. Three harpooners, having filled the upside-down tips of their harpoons with rum, drink to the death of a white whale. And only the ship's cabin boy, the little black boy Pip, prays to God for salvation from these people.

When the Pequod first encounters sperm whales and the whaleboats are preparing to launch, five dark-faced ghosts suddenly appear among the sailors. This is the crew of Ahab’s own whaleboat, people from some islands in South Asia. Since the owners of the Pequod, believing that a one-legged captain could no longer be of any use during a hunt, did not provide rowers for his own boat, he brought them onto the ship secretly and still hid them in the hold. Their leader is the ominous-looking middle-aged Parsi Fedallah.

Although any delay in searching for Moby Dick is painful for Ahab, he cannot completely give up hunting whales. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope and crossing the Indian Ocean, the Pequod hunts and fills barrels with spermaceti. But the first thing Ahab asks when meeting other ships is whether they have ever seen a white whale. And the answer is often a story about how, thanks to Moby Dick, one of the team died or was mutilated. Even in the middle of the ocean, prophecies cannot be avoided: a half-mad sectarian sailor from a ship stricken by an epidemic exhorts one to fear the fate of the sacrileges who dared to fight the embodiment of God’s wrath. Finally, the Pequod meets an English whaler, whose captain, having harpooned Moby Dick, received a deep wound and as a result lost an arm. Ahab hurries to get on board and talk to the man whose fate is so similar to his. The Englishman does not even think about taking revenge on the sperm whale, but reports the direction in which the white whale went. Again Starbuck tries to stop his captain - and again in vain. By order of Ahab, the ship's blacksmith forges a harpoon from especially hard steel, for the hardening of which three harpooners donate their blood. The Pequod heads out into the Pacific Ocean.

Ishmael's friend, the harpooner Queequeg, having become seriously ill from working in a damp hold, feels the approach of death and asks the carpenter to make him an unsinkable coffin-shuttle in which he could set off across the waves to the starry archipelagos. And when unexpectedly his condition changes for the better, it is decided to caulk and tar the coffin, which was unnecessary for the time being, in order to turn it into a large float - a rescue buoy. The new buoy, as expected, is suspended from the stern of the Pequod, quite surprising with its characteristic shape of the team of oncoming ships.

At night, in a whaleboat, near the dead whale, Fedalla announces to the captain that on this voyage he is not destined to have either a coffin or a hearse, but Ahab must see two hearses at sea before he dies: one - built by inhuman hands, and the second, made of wood, grown in America; that only hemp could cause Ahab's death, and even in this last hour Fedallah himself would go ahead of him as a pilot. The captain doesn’t believe it: what does hemp and rope have to do with it? He is too old to go to the gallows.

The signs of approaching Moby Dick are becoming more and more clear. In a fierce storm, the fire of St. Elmo flares up on the tip of a harpoon forged for a white whale. That same night, Starbuck, confident that Ahab is leading the ship to inevitable death, stands at the door of the captain's cabin with a musket in his hands and still does not commit murder, preferring to submit to fate. The storm remagnetizes the compasses, now they direct the ship away from these waters, but Ahab, who noticed this in time, makes new arrows from sailing needles. The sailor falls off the mast and disappears into the waves. The Pequod meets the Rachel, who had been pursuing Moby Dick just the day before. The captain of the "Rachel" begs Ahab to join the search for the whaleboat lost during yesterday's hunt, in which his twelve-year-old son was, but receives a sharp refusal. From now on, Ahab climbs the mast himself: he is pulled up in a basket woven from cables. But as soon as he gets to the top, a sea hawk rips his hat off and carries him out to sea. There is a ship again - and on it, too, the sailors killed by the white whale are buried.

The golden doubloon is faithful to its owner: a white hump appears from the water in front of the captain himself. The chase lasts three days, three times the whaleboats approach the whale. Having bitten Ahab's whaleboat in two, Moby Dick circles around the captain, thrown aside, not allowing other boats to come to his aid until the approaching Pequod pushes the sperm whale away from his victim. As soon as he is in the boat, Ahab again demands his harpoon - the whale, however, is already swimming away, and he has to return to the ship. It gets dark, and the Pequod loses sight of the whale. The whaler follows Moby Dick all night and catches him again at dawn. But, having tangled the lines from the harpoons pierced into it, the whale smashes two whaleboats against each other, and attacks Ahab’s boat, diving and hitting the bottom from under the water. The ship picks up people in distress, and in the confusion it is not immediately noticed that there is no Parsi among them. Remembering his promise, Ahab cannot hide his fear, but continues the pursuit. Everything that happens here is predetermined, he says.

On the third day, the boats, surrounded by a flock of sharks, again rush to the fountain seen on the horizon; a sea hawk again appears above the Pequod - now it carries away the torn ship’s pennant in its claws; a sailor was sent up the mast to replace him. Enraged by the pain that the wounds received the day before cause him, the whale immediately rushes onto the whaleboats, and only the captain’s boat, among whose rowers Ishmael is now, remains afloat. And when the boat turns sideways, the rowers are presented with the torn corpse of Fedalla, fastened to Moby Dick’s back with loops of a tench wrapped around the giant body. This is the first hearse. Moby Dick is not looking for a meeting with Ahab, he is still trying to leave, but the captain’s whaleboat is not far behind. Then, turning around to meet the Pequod, which had already lifted people from the water, and having guessed in it the source of all its persecution, the sperm whale rams the ship. Having received a hole, the Pequod begins to dive, and Ahab, watching from the boat, realizes that in front of him is a second hearse. There is no way to escape. He aims the last harpoon at the whale. The hemp line, whipped up in a loop by the sharp jerk of the stricken whale, wraps itself around Ahab and carries him into the abyss. The whaleboat with all the rowers falls into a huge funnel on the site of an already sunken ship, in which everything that was once the Pequod is hidden to the last chip. But when the waves are already closing over the head of the sailor standing on the mast, his hand rises and nevertheless strengthens the flag. And this is the last thing that is visible above the water.

Having fallen out of the whaleboat and remaining behind the stern, Ishmael is also dragged towards the funnel, but when he reaches it, it has already turned into a smooth foamy pool, from the depths of which a rescue buoy - a coffin - unexpectedly bursts to the surface. On this coffin, untouched by sharks, Ishmael stays for a day on the open sea until an alien ship picks him up: it was the inconsolable "Rachel", which, wandering in search of her missing children, found only one more orphan.

“And I alone was saved, to tell you...”

Retold

The short history of American literature is full of tragedies. There are many examples of this. The “savior of America,” Thomas Paine, forgotten by his compatriots, died in poverty and neglect. At the age of forty, Edgar Allan Poe passed away amid the hooting of literary bigots. At the same age, Jack London died, broken by life. Scott Fitzgerald drank himself to death. Hemingway shot himself. There are countless of them, hunted, tortured, driven to despair, to delirium tremens, to suicide.

One of the most cruel tragedies of writers is the tragedy of non-recognition and oblivion. Such was the fate of the greatest American novelist of the 19th century, Herman Melville. His contemporaries did not understand or appreciate his best works. Even his death did not attract attention. The only newspaper that notified its readers of Melville's death misstated his last name. In the memory of the century, if such exists, he remained as an unknown sailor who was captured by cannibals and wrote an entertaining story about it.

However, the history of literature does not consist only of tragedies. If Melville's human and literary fate was bitter and sad, then the fate of his novels and stories turned out to be unexpectedly happy. In the twenties of our century, American literary historians, critics, and after them readers “discovered” Melville anew. Works published during the writer’s lifetime were republished. Stories and poems that were once rejected by publishers saw the light of day. The first collected works were published. Melville's books were made into films. Painters and graphic artists began to be inspired by his images. The first articles and monographs about the forgotten author appeared. Melville is recognized as a classic of literature, and his novel “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” is the greatest American novel of the 19th century.

In the modern attitude of American criticism towards Melville there is a shade of “boom”, with the help of which it seems to be trying to compensate for half a century of neglect of the work of the outstanding prose writer. But that doesn't change things. Melville is truly a great writer, and Moby Dick is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of American literature of the last century.

Melville first put pen to paper in 1845. He was twenty-six years old. By the age of thirty, he had already become the author of six large books. In his previous life, nothing seemed to foreshadow this explosion of creative activity. There were no “youthful experiences”, literary dreams, or even a reader’s passion for literature. Perhaps because his youth was difficult and his spiritual energy was exhausted by constant worries about his daily bread.

Melville was born in 1819 into the family of a relatively prosperous New York merchant. However, the prosperity did not last long. The business of the trading company went from bad to worse, and its debts grew. In 1830, Melville's father was forced to close his office in New York and move to the small town of Albany. This did not save him from complete bankruptcy. Two years later, unable to withstand the nervous shock, he went crazy and soon died.

Melville's childhood was gloomy and ended early. At thirteen, he dropped out of school and became a delivery boy for a New York bank. Having not yet reached adulthood, he tried a number of professions: he served as a clerk in a fur company, taught, sailed as a sailor on the St. Lawrence,” which made regular voyages on the New York–Liverpool line, again taught and, finally, unable to find another job, set off on a four-year voyage on the whaling ship “Acushnet.” That’s right: not out of a passion for romance, as some literary historians claim, not out of a love of adventure, but simply because he couldn’t find another job.

Going on this voyage, Melville already knew that maritime romance is a very relative concept, especially the romance of whaling. The basis of the life of the whaler sailors was exhausting work, mortal risk, discipline with sticks, lack of food and fresh water, illness and the tedious monotony of ship life. Desertion was a widespread phenomenon among the sailors of the whaling fleet. It was not for nothing that captains who went to sea for several years tried to enter the harbor as little as possible to replenish water and food supplies.

The Akushnet flight was no exception. When this ship returned to New Bedford three and a half years later, less than half the sailors who set sail remained on board. Melville was not among them, who deserted while the ship was stationed near one of the Marquesas Islands.

The adventure has begun. After leaving Akushnet, Melville found himself a captive of the cannibal Taipi tribe who lived on the island of Nukuhiwa. A month later, he managed to escape from the hospitable cannibals on the Australian whaler Lucy Ann. Two months later, the crew of the Lucy Ann mutinied while stationed off the coast of Tahiti. Melville, along with other sailors, went to prison. About a month later, Melville escaped. Having moved to the neighboring island of Eimeo, he enlisted on the Australian whaler Charles and Henry. Six months later, he was decommissioned from a ship in the Hawaiian Islands, where he wandered for several months, living off odd jobs. In August 1843, Melville joined the military frigate United States as a sailor, which called at Honolulu. Sailing on a frigate, Melville visited Valparaiso, Callao, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, then returned to New York in October 1844, and the Navy Department released him in peace.

Melville returned home penniless, but with a huge supply of impressions. The sea was finished forever. Melville was twenty-five years old. I had to start life on land. He had no means, no profession, no prospects. His only assets were the experience of past years and his talent as a storyteller. Melville took up his pen.

His first book, Typee, based on the “cannibal episode,” was a resounding success. The second one (“Omu”) was also favorably received. Melville became famous in literary circles. Magazines commissioned articles from him. American publishers, who rejected the writer’s first books (“Typee” and “Omu” were originally published in England), asked him for new works. Melville worked tirelessly. His books were published one after another: “Mardi” (1849), “Redburn” (1849), “The White Peacoat” (1850), “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” (1851), “Pierre” (1852), “Israel” Potter" (1855), "Charlatan" (1857), novellas, short stories.

However, Melville's creative path was not a climb up the ladder of success. Rather, it resembled an endless descent. Critics' enthusiasm for Typei and Omu gave way to disappointment when Mardi was published. "Redburn" and "White Peacoat" received a warmer, but not enthusiastic, reception. Moby Dick was neither understood nor accepted. "Strange book!" - this was the unanimous verdict of the reviewers. They were unable and unwilling to understand the “oddities.” The only person who seemed to understand and appreciate this novel was Nathaniel Hawthorne. But his lonely voice was not heard or picked up.

In the fifties, interest in Melville's work continued to decline. By the beginning of the Civil War, the writer was completely forgotten.

Burdened with family and debt, Melville could no longer survive on literary earnings. He gave up writing and joined the New York Customs House as a cargo inspection officer. Over the last thirty years of his life, he wrote only one short story, three poems and several dozen poems that did not see the light of day during the author’s lifetime.

Perhaps there is some logic to the fact that America did not notice Melville's death in 1891. A minor customs official died. Melville, a brilliant writer, passed away from American life thirty years earlier.