Moby Dick Chapter 2. The Carpet-Bag

[Chris OConnor]

I too am confused about the references to "Lazarus, Euroclydon, Dives and Moluccas."

Can someone explain?

[DWill]

Not to be a scold Robert

Well guess what? Jumping ahead to Chapter 16, Melville says the Pequod Indians, source of the name of Captain Ahab's famous vessel, were from Massachussets. As any school boy knows, the Pequod Indians were from Connecticut!!!

Okay we know its over there somewhere. The furthest east I have ever been is Winnipeg Manitoba. I find those tiny eastern states a cluster of confusion.

And to this day I am confused! No wonder.

[DWill]

I too am confused about the references to "Lazarus, Euroclydon, Dives and Moluccas."

Can someone explain?

HM's wit and erudition goes a bit past me, I'm afraid. I can look up the Lazarus and Dives parable and understand that this poor guy is the beggar Lazurus (not the man who rose from the dead) and someone else is being compared to the rich man known as Dives, who ignored Lazurus and wound up in hell with a "redder," or quite hot, scarf around his neck. And that's about as far as I get with this allegory.

Euroclydon is apparently just a mythic name for a strong wind. It nearly capsized Paul's boat in the NT. I assume that Ishmael quotes himself as the authority on this, since he says he owns the only copy extant.

[Robert Tulip]

I really didn't know what all the ranting was about with Lazarus, Euroclydon, Dives and Molucca

Here is the text in question, and my interpretation. These references are Biblical. You can ignore them as asides, but they do add to the story in a context where American society was rather seized by Christian heritage.

Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee. It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft.

This description of his lodgings as a sort of spasticated hovel aims to set the scene for the harsh roughness of whaling.

Euroclydon, as I mentioned above, is a Biblical reference from Acts 27:14, translated as the "Northeaster" in this version: "The Storm: 13 When a gentle south wind began to blow, they saw their opportunity; so they weighed anchor and sailed along the shore of Crete. 14 Before very long, a wind of hurricane force, called the Northeaster, swept down from the island. 15 The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along. 16 As we passed to the lee of a small island called Cauda, we were hardly able to make the lifeboat secure, 17 so the men hoisted it aboard. Then they passed ropes under the ship itself to hold it together. Because they were afraid they would run aground on the sandbars of Syrtis, they lowered the sea anchor and let the ship be driven along. 18 We took such a violent battering from the storm that the next day they began to throw the cargo overboard. 19 On the third day, they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands. 20 When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved. 21 After they had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said: “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. 22 But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. 23 Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me 24 and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ 25 So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. 26 Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island.”

Melville assumes familiarity with the Bible. And the Bible itself, in the New Testament, was written with assumed familiarity with the Old Testament. Here, as Melville will return to soon, the Euroclydon wind makes us think of the prophet Jonah who, the story relates, spent three days and three nights in the belly of a whale (or large fish). Saint Paul seems to do better than Jonah because Paul is travelling to do the will of God, whereas Jonah travelled to escape from God's specific instruction. Anyway, this Euroclydon gives us the image that the Spouter Inn is like a storm tossed whaling ship.

Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier."

My hunch is that Melville is just making up his claim to have the only surviving copy of an ancient book of wisdom, this being a rather standard trope, much exploited by religious charlatans such as the Mormons, whom Melville is laughing at. It is one of those homely Ben Franklin style pieces of spun wisdom that are just platitudes - 'better warm before a fire than shivering in a howling gale'. And yet, Melville seems here to also have a dig at Saint Paul, who said that now we see Christ through a glass darkly but in the second coming he will appear face to face. Melville observes that a glass window is much to be appreciated in the observation of gales.

True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well.

A dig at Biblical fundamentalists who regard the written text as inerrantly correct in every respect. There is a faint air of the ridiculous in imagining Franklin's almanac as contradicting the message of Saint Paul, if that be the idea just below the surface of this innocuous writing.

Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago.

Now Melville's sermonizing against Christianity is getting into gear, with his observation that Paul's description of the body as the temple of the holy spirit shows that God made some mysterious mistakes as a designer, and in fact finished his work well before the literal story of Adam and Eve. Interesting that before Darwin's Origin of Species was even written this evolutionary debate was already in the air.

Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

The well known Bible story of Dives and Lazarus is told only at Luke 16. It says the poor go to heaven and the rich go to hell, so serves as an important proto-Marxist consolation for the envious resentment of those who lack material goods in this life. Dives sits before the warm fire inside where he makes his own coal summer while Lazarus shivers like the little match girl starving and freezing in the snow. Dives will be even warmer when Satan roasts him for all eternity

But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost? Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

This constant inversion of Bible stories opens the question of whether people are happier in the warm climates of Indonesia (Sumatra and the Moluccas are whaling destinations), or in the freezing north. The image of Dives the rich Christian is a sort of Calvinist Quaker oppressor, indifferent to human suffering (and may it be said, whale suffering). Traditionally of course, Dives was a Roman pagan, while Lazarus was the pious poor Christian Egyptian, whose name had mutated from the old fertility god Osiris. Now Melville sees everything topsy turvy, the first are last and the last first, and Dives has converted to the One True Faith so he can subsist on orphan tears rather than alcohol. The futility of religion is illustrated by the idea that poor people can warm themselves by the light of the aurora borealis. This whole cryptic rant questions the hypocritical morality of established religion, but it seems, in such obscure Cervantean language that Melville will need fear no inquisition.

Dives and Lazarus from the Book of Hours

Lazarus and Dives. The parable of Lazarus and Dives was an appropriate story to illustrate the Office of the Dead because it emphasized one's damnation or salvation after death. In the miniature, the rich man Dives feasts while a leper called Lazarus holds a clapper to warn of his approach. Dives refuses to give Lazarus even the scraps from the table. The second part of the story is depicted in the background. Lazarus and Dives are dead, and while Lazarus is taken to heaven, Dives burns in the flames of hell.

[heledd]

Thanks Robert, very illuminating. Damifino - am shamed to say I often just skip passages I don't understand.

[lindad_amato]

New Bedford isn't in my native state of Connecticut

ouchiwawa. Thank you. Well at least Connecticut would be a connecting path, he pleads aimlessly? If I can share some personal history, in 1977 my father taught English at Yale University for a year, and we lived as a family in Hamden for 8 months. It is a beautiful part of the world. We drove to Mystic, and I confess in the weakness of my memory I had mixed up Mystic with New Bedford, so I gratefully stand corrected. The cup of clam chowder I had for lunch in Mystic has grown in the recollection into one of the most fantabulous pieces of sustenance a human being could dream of.

Maybe the clam chowder would be for you like Proust's madeleine cake, if you were to have it again. My family lived on Long Island Sound, in Guilford, where my father was a veterinarian. I went to Hopkins Grammar School in New haven for a year in eighth grade, before we moved inland to Storrs, where Dad got a job teaching at UConn. I took several school field trips to Mystic Seaport and can still recall especially the smells of the place.

Coffin is an old New England name, as in William Sloane Coffin the 60's minister at Yale. New England clam chowder (or Mystic) is truly the best. Also, I'll take Guilford over New Bedford any day. My family, the Parmelees, settled it in the 1600s.
Thanks to both of you for your input. I'm thoroughly enjoying this reading.

[Penelope]

Oh but Nantucket, Clam Chowder, New England.....all sounds so thrilling to my ears.

New England is the part of the US I would really most like to visit. Was it in the film 'Driving Miss Daisy'? I remember being entranced by the autumnal scenery. I hadn't imagined a bitterly cold night like the one described in Chapter 2. Now I know to bring my longjohns.

[lindad_amato]

Driving Miss Daisy was supposed to have taken place in the South, but I don't know where it was filmed.

[Penelope]

I'm rubbish at US Geography. I do a daily quiz on Facebook, called 'Are you as smart as a 5th Grader' and it is American so those Geography questions always let me down.

Still I have seen and heard a lot about Cape Cod and thereabouts. It looks amazing.

[lindad_amato]

I'm rubbish at US Geography. I do a daily quiz on Facebook, called 'Are you as smart as a 5th Grader' and it is American so those Geography questions always let me down.

Still I have seen and heard a lot about Cape Cod and thereabouts. It looks amazing.

Yes, New Bedford would look much more like what you've seen of Cape Cod and Nantucket is off the coast.