Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul;whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
E-texts of Melville’s works from Project Guttenberg
A portion of Melville’s passport application
I offer the following comment in light of the description of your blog, “Sailing the frontier of modern resolution,” and taking this phrase in its most literal sense; the page from Melville’s passport application was both horrifically foreign and eerily familiar. It was familiar in the very intimate sense that… I recognized Melville’s signature! Having graced the cover and back of many a book, I recognized Melville’s signature as his own, but this very time it had been used by him and not by some publisher in a well designed office in New York. I both was warmed by this recognition (ah! I know something of this man! I know his signature!) and silently taken aback knowing that here, for the first time, I was seeing him sign a document as a signature should be employed.
On a less personal level, I immediately felt slightly aghast at the description of features, which, to my politically sensitized ears (eyes?) sound like a frightening form of phrenology. But then I reconsidered. How else to describe a person… for there was no picture! There was no photograph! These descriptions are in place of of an image.
Reflections on the quality of resolution from my modern life…