{"id":"01KJNXJR0DCAYD8DHXKC9PBRXV","cid":"bafkreih3qhgsevghi3uoynbc4xgmkngdsv4jkbl6ie6dot3tbayesquvdy","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":605427,"char_start":597453,"chunk_index":84,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1994,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out\r\nof sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element\r\nit is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily\r\ninto the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations.\r\nAnd, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of contour\r\nbetween a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan;\r\nyet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a\r\nship’s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying\r\nshape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself could not\r\ncatch.\r\n\r\nBut it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded\r\nwhale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at\r\nall. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,\r\nthat his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though\r\nJeremy Bentham’s skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of\r\none of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed\r\nutilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal\r\ncharacteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any\r\nleviathan’s articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the\r\nmere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully\r\ninvested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so\r\nroundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the\r\nhead, as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is\r\nalso very curiously displayed in the side fin, the bones of which\r\nalmost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand, minus only the\r\nthumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring,\r\nand little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy\r\ncovering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering. “However\r\nrecklessly the whale may sometimes serve us,” said humorous Stubb one\r\nday, “he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens.”\r\n\r\nFor all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs\r\nconclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world\r\nwhich must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the\r\nmark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very\r\nconsiderable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding\r\nout precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in\r\nwhich you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by\r\ngoing a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of\r\nbeing eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you\r\nhad best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this\r\nLeviathan.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True\r\nPictures of Whaling Scenes.\r\n\r\nIn connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly\r\ntempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them\r\nwhich are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern,\r\nespecially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass\r\nthat matter by.\r\n\r\nI know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;\r\nColnett’s, Huggins’s, Frederick Cuvier’s, and Beale’s. In the previous\r\nchapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins’s is far\r\nbetter than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale’s is the best. All\r\nBeale’s drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in\r\nthe picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second\r\nchapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no\r\ndoubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is\r\nadmirably correct and life-like in its general effect. Some of the\r\nSperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour;\r\nbut they are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though.\r\n\r\nOf the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they\r\nare drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has\r\nbut one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency,\r\nbecause it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you\r\ncan derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by\r\nhis living hunters.\r\n\r\nBut, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details\r\nnot the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be\r\nanywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed, and\r\ntaken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent\r\nattacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble\r\nSperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath\r\nthe boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the\r\nair upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of\r\nthe boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the\r\nmonster’s spine; and standing in that prow, for that one single\r\nincomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the\r\nincensed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping, as if\r\nfrom a precipice. The action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and\r\ntrue. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea; the wooden\r\npoles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads of the\r\nswimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions\r\nof affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing\r\ndown upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical\r\ndetails of this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I\r\ncould not draw so good a one.\r\n\r\nIn the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside\r\nthe barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his\r\nblack weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the\r\nPatagonian cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so\r\nthat from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there\r\nmust be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are\r\npecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and\r\nmaccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent\r\nback. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through\r\nthe deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and\r\ncausing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh\r\nthe paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all\r\nraging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the\r\nglassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the\r\npowerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered\r\nfortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole\r\ninserted into his spout-hole.\r\n\r\nWho Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he\r\nwas either practically conversant with his subject, or else\r\nmarvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the\r\nlads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe,\r\nand where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing\r\ncommotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the\r\nbeholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great\r\nbattles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern\r\nLights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a\r\ncharge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that\r\ngallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.\r\n\r\nThe natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of\r\nthings seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings\r\nthey have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England’s\r\nexperience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the\r\nAmericans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only\r\nfinished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the\r\nwhale hunt."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.789Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.789Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}