Linnaeus

a letter from Herman Melville to Nate Hawthorne:

'Dear Nathaniel,

Again I fully take the blame for indulging in the descriptions of the whale's anatomy. Indeed, can I but not help it? - I have by now developed a science, as complete as Aristotle's metaphysics, and just as weighed to proportion. To continue with my comparison, like metaphysics followed physics in the noble Greek's works, so my depiction of the whale's head and tail is followed, in the narrowing focus, by ambergris - the marrow of the whale's life. Perhaps you are right to note that some of my accounts are naturalistic to a degree of moral insult. I, on my side, believe that the line 'squeeze the sperm' will be one of the novel's fortes exactly in its realistic truthfulness, for what did my poor whalers do during their three-year long voyages but that? But, taking your point into consideration, I will limit myself only to those episodes where the sperm they squeezed was only the whale's.
Please find Chapter 95 enclosed his his letter. I can easily foresee more arguments from you, dear Nate, but when you have said 'A', can you avoid saying 'B'? Neither can I, having spoken about heads and tails, and all in between, avoid concluding my dissection with the description of what sailors call 'the grandissimus'. Can you hear the awe in this name, and the longing, and wondrous admiration, and envy? I imagine the scene to run like this:

"The Pequod - noon - the deck, bloody under the bright sunshine. Enter Ishmael, with a long ruler in hand [he has preserved it from his schooling days]. He walks among heaps of blubber towards an enormous horizontally lying cone, sleek and black as ebony. As he settles to measure the cone, more and more sailors are distracted from their work. Among them are: Ahab, Queequeg, your noble savage, and the three Captain's mates. They watch the ruler gauging first the thickness, then the length in Ishmael's skilful hands, who all the while keeps a strictly scientific mien. The results, which Ishmael jots down in his secret diary, produce different reaction in the observers:

Mr. Stubb is trying to estimate how many menu items those feet and inches would translate into;

Mr. Flask is sighing sadly, for, having glanced into Ishmael's diary, he knows there is a table in there for such measurements, and knowing Ishmael's classification mania he suspects that his position there has just shifted a few more pegs down to the bottom.

Mr. Starbuck is worried about the fact that if this leviathan, being merely an unintelligent brute, is thus richly endowed by the creator, his Captain might prove very poorly equipped for a duel with God. He even suspects God Himself is standing behind Ahab's shoulder, laughing his ass off.

Ahab faces the formidable sight like a man, only wishing that it were white.

And finally, Queequeg is calmness himself, since he knows perfectly well where Ishmael's skilfulness in measuring the length and girth has come from."

Dear Nathaniel, please compare the two versions and tell me which you like more, though I can easily divine your answer (after all it was you who advised me the title 'Moby Dick'). I will obey your decision, but bear in mind that I do not plan to become an American Richardson.'

[a/n: Ch. 95 of 'M. D.', if you haven't guessed it yet, describes a whale's penis. Yeah, really :D']