Moby Dick Aphorisms
Fire and Hearth Quotes
in Moby Dick
By Herman Melville
During the years I was writing The Magic of Fire I was particularly attentive to hearth references in the books I was reading. Moby Dick is, of course, the tale of a fish. But it was fire that rendered the fish into oil, fire that burned in Ahab’s soul, and it was as exiles from the hearth that the whalers traveled the seas.
It is comparatively easy to recreate the literal world of hearth cooking — master the technique of the hearth. But there is something that will always elude us — and this is the pre-modern relationship between the fireplace and daily life. Firelight was the focus of life — and the literal focus of the room. When the day grew dark we didn’t rush to add light. We often sat there, thinking, as the room grew dim but for the glow of the fire. Melville provides us glimpse into the multiplicity of meanings that was the pre-modern hearth.
As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low in that mild stage when, after its first intensity it has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a – melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.
But why same more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the middle of solitary seas, you find him kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if were a hearth.
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at leas gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp–all others but liars!