Billy Budd and Other Stories. Герман Мелвилл

      

      BILLY BUDD AND OTHER STORIES

      Herman Melville

       Copyright

      William Collins

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      This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2014

      Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd Gerard Cheshire asserts his moral right as author of the Life & Times section Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from Collins English Dictionary

      Cover by e-Digital Design

      Cover image: On deck of a Man-of-War, Eighteenth Century. Engraving, 1878 © duncan1890/iStock

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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      Source ISBN: 9780007558193

      Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007558209

      Version: 2014-07-31

       History of Collins

      In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

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      Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly “Victorian” in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

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       Life & Times

       Moby Dick

      On the face of it, Moby Dick is simply a story about a whaleboat captain intent on killing a white whale that had previously maimed him and destroyed his ship. As a result, Herman Melville’s masterpiece was underestimated when first published in 1851.

      In truth, Melville was exploring themes relating to belief systems and moral and ethical topics; the story itself was merely a vehicle by which Melville could address his philosophy. To that extent, Melville viewed the novel as a means of accessing the minds of people who might not ordinarily pick up a book about the kinds of issues he felt driven to discuss. Ironically, those same people entirely missed the allegory, and Moby Dick was perceived as nothing more than an adventure novel.

      As a consequence, Moby Dick, although initially successful, was quickly forgotten, and Melville reached old age an unsung talent. Today the novel is hailed as one of the greats, after the book was resurrected in the wake of World War I. The story was seen as timely and illustrated what can happen when desire for vengeance is allowed to take control. By the close of World War II, the book had become symbolic of the struggle for power between nations.

      Melville is now described as a romantic novelist, because Moby Dick evokes a bygone and masculine age, when men risked their lives on the oceans in the procurement of whale products. The eponymous whale, Moby Dick, is an albino male sperm whale. Sperm whales are toothed whales specialized to feed on giant squid, making them extremely dangerous to harpoon and kill. To a whaler, the male sperm whale was the ultimate adversary. Sailors used to carve designs and pictures into sperm whale teeth as trophies, which were sold as pieces of scrimshaw.

      Sperm whales were particularly prized by whalers because their heads contain reservoirs of a substance called spermaceti oil, creating their bulbous foreheads. This oil was used by humans as fuel oil and many other substances used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The oil had a high value until similar substances were derived from crude oil instead, thereby sounding the death knell for whaling.

      For the whales themselves, the oil assists with their ability to dive to great depths in search of prey. It was this behavior that made the confrontation scenes in Moby Dick so thrilling, as the whale would dive for long periods, leaving the whalers in tense anticipation of what might happen next. Then the whale would suddenly erupt from beneath to wreak havoc on the wretched humans.

      The whale, of course, was in its own environment, while the people were entirely reliant on technology to remain alive. At that time in history, the high seas were the most challenging places for people to live, so Moby Dick was the ultimate “man against the elements” tale.

      While the main characters in Moby Dick are Christian Americans, the others comprise a world population in microcosm, encompassing many races and creeds. This has been interpreted as Melville juxtaposing Christian mores alongside those of a non-Christian mindset.

      In the end, the narrating voice Ishmael is the sole survivor,