Which type is the big Squid in Moby-Dick?

[MobyDick]

I read some news items on the web on the Colossal Squid, all saying that the species was first discovered in 1925 and that the new find is only the second capture of this squid at all (no article provides information on the first encounter).

I am wondering whether this could be the type of squid that is depicted by Herman Melville in chapter 59 of Moby-Dick, simply called "Squid." You can easily find the chapter online by using "Melville" and "Squid" as keywords. Going by the size of the squid being described in the chapter, I would guess that it must either be the Colossal or the Giant Squid. This should be of some interest to Melville scholarship, since it appears to me that not much scientific knowledge was available to Melville when he wrote the book, so if his description is accurate, he may have seen a Squid himself when he was whaling.

In chapter 59, the crew almost forgets Moby Dick, as they now gazed "at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach."

[Melissa]

Moby Dick, this is so exciting! and makes me want to reread Moby Dick. I named an enormous, deaf, white cat Moby after the whale. He never did answer.

The chapter describes whale egest including 20 foot arms!

"At times, when closely pursued, he will disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length."

Can Tintenfisch and Steve tell us whether squid arms have been found this way? Do whales vomit? :yuck:

Melissa

[WhiteKiboko]

i believe the first confirmed knowledge of the giant squids came from whalers because in their death throes, the whales do indeed vomit up squid pieces.... i dont know if they do it other times.. but i think getting harpooned would probably make me lose my lunch too....

[Tintenfisch]

Do whales vomit? :yuck:

They do. Under duress of being harpooned / thrashing about in their death throes, sperm whales frequently disgorge their stomach contents, which have on many occasions included recently ingested giant squid (and possibly colossals) in reasonable condition.

[Melissa]

Thank you both, White Kiboko and Tintenfisch.

WK is right, being stuck with a harpoon would make me sick too.

Melissa

[Octomatt]

Don't whales vomit something called "Ambergriss" (pardon the spelling) that is actually used in some perfumes?

No kidding, a book I read in grade school made reference to this point, and it's always stuck with me. Anyone know for sure?

Octomatt

[Clem]

It's true. Ambergris is a grey, waxy substance that forms in the gastro-intestinal tract of sperm whales (sometimes around clumps of squid beaks). It was used as a fixative in cosmetics. I don't know which end of the whale it comes out of.

Somebody around here will hopefully give you a better, more detailed explantion of the stuff's composition and function.

:yuck: <feeling some ambergris coming on

Clem

[Melissa]

Matt,

Ambergris was used in perfumes, but I don't remember it being vomited. I don't think it is used this way any longer, but I'm unsure. There is a section of Moby Dick in which Melville describes flensing and other procedures, including a description of ambergris. I don't remember more but now I'm going back to the original to find it! You may get a more scientific answer, but I'll post where to look for the literary clues too.

Melissa

[Melissa]

Here is a url for chapter 92 of Moby Dick,

http://www.literaturepage.com/read/mobydick-425.html

which describes ambergris and says

"Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is."

Matt, literature says you are right, and I'm going to keep looking for the vivid descriptions of blubber.

Melissa

[MobyDick]

Talking about "a more scientific answer," Melissa, it seems that Melville's answers are just about as scientific as they could get in 1851. His information on whaling is usually correct.

The most important books about whales and whaling that Melville used as sources are discussed in Howard P. Vincent, The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick, still the major book on the subject despite being half a century old.

[MobyDick]

Hey, I just noticed the topic is moved to the section on Pop Culture, but Moby-Dick really is a great work of literature which hardly fits the description Pop Culture, so it is not less misplaced here than in the former section.

[tonmo]

:) Hmm... I'm not so sure I agree! While I do believe that another forum or two may be needed here to ensure there's a home for everything (and int he meantime The Octopus' Den is in part the repository for all things lost), I do believe this forum is the most appropriate place for this discussion...

Doing a search on Google for +"pop culture" +"moby dick" yields about 900 responses... that might not be worth much, because of course they're not all in context... and I wasn't able to find a link worthy of making my point.

I don't think pop culture necessarily is "trendy", but trendy is a subset of pop culture... The definition of pop culture seems a bit elusive, but here's one take on it:

http://www.ucdsb.on.ca/athens/popculture/whatdef.htm

I believe that great works such as Moby Dick can be considered pop culture, at the same time as the Spice Girls. I guess it would be any form of entertainment (and Moby Dick is indeed a form of entertainment, is it not?) that has mass appeal / exposure / recognition.

Still, I'm sorry that I moved the discussion without your knowing. Going forward I'll try to be more sensitive to the thread authors when moving a thread, by sending a private message informing them of the move.

Thanks!

[Fujisawas Sake]

Thanks Tony,

An interesting sidenote (keep in mind that it has been almost ten years since I last read Moby Dick: I noticed that they kept referring to the "physeti" (the Sperm Whale's scientific name is Physeter catodon) as a fish, even though the whalers knew that they produced milk. They even described the taste of the milk as that of "strawberries" (I doubt we'll be producing any whale dairies soon). I swear that they really didn't consider them mammals, even though they probably had the idea that they were.

Great novel, BTW.

Sushi and Sake,

John

[Clem]

Some interesting notes on the history of ambergris as a commodity can be found here:

http://www.hellomaldives.com/maldives/sea/contents.htm

[MobyDick]

Thank you for your reply, Tony. Yes, Moby-Dick is indeed a form of entertainment, as all literature is (no matter how pretentious some critics may want to talk about it). The funny thing about it being placed in Pop Culture here is that one guide to Melville studies contains an essay about the influence of the novel in pop culture. It is probably this kind of studies that accounts for your 900 hits. But if the novel itself were part of pop culture, the world would surely look different, since the effort and concentration it takes to read the whole book are not activities usually associated with the term.

[WhiteKiboko]

the novel may not be pop culture now, but for the 19th century, id have to say that it was...

[Clem]

Good points, Moby. Effort and concentration are not exclusive to "high" art and its appreciation, though. On the evidence, plenty of people put lots of effort and concentration into incorporating "pop" culture: "Star Trek" conventions, pilgrimages to Graceland and "Harry Potter" reading groups come to mind.

"Moby Dick" wasn't exactly a best-seller when it was first published, and I suspect that most subsequent readers were exposed to it in classrooms, when it was a chore. You're right, it's always been more influential than popular.

Maybe TONMO should consider losing the word "Pop" in it's forum title, and simply call it "Culture."

:?:

Clem

[tonmo]

Maybe TONMO should consider losing the word "Pop" in it's forum title, and simply call it "Culture."

:?:

Clem

Yeah, I don't disagree there, in fact that's what I was originally going to suggest before I went off and tried to find a good definition of pop culture. Regardless, I am definitely giving this area some thought -- thanks to Moby and the rest for your input!

[tonmo]

OK, I've been pushed over the edge due to an [Old Board Archive] note I'm about to post -- so I'm changing the name of this forum to "Culture and Entertainment"... Strange bedfellows, perhaps, but here we are. Thanks!

[MobyDick]

Moby-Dick indeed was not popular in the nineteenth-century. During his lifetime, Melville's most popular books were those about the South Seas. Moby-Dick was rediscovered in the early 1920s.

To get back to the squid matter here, since Melville was in the whaling business for some time, I was thinking that he may have seen squid. But now I read the notes to the Hendricks House edition to the novel, it says that Melville most likely used a book by Bennett as a source.

[WhiteKiboko]

i wasnt suggestung about the popularity of melville's work in his own time...i knew nothing about it.... i was merely trying to say that reading was a more integral part of culture... plus since it was fiction, it was for pleasure, and (at least in my mind) similar to what passes for pop culture today.... however this seems like a moot point since the forum was already renamed... :|

[MobyDick]

But to get back to the issue, is there any clue in the chapter that Melville did write on a Colossal Squid? And how long have Giant Squid been identified?

[Clem]

Moby,

There's little in Chapter 59, "Squid" to indicate which species of teuthid Ishmael and the crew of the Pequod observe. "A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length" is all we get for measurements, and what measurements: a furlong is 1/8 of a mile, or 201 meters. The squid's color is described as being "a glancing cream-color," which may be said of any squid whose skin has been rubbed off. No details of the arms or tentacles are to be had, other than their being "innumerable" and prone to "curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach." (That Melville/Ishmael makes no mention of a giant squid's dramatic eyes is peculiar. The mega-squid described must have lost them in whatever struggle deprived it of its skin and diving capability.) As for locale, the squid is spotted by Daggoo as the Pequod sails north-east towards Java (Indonesia) from the Crozet Islands, placing the encounter in the middle of the Indian Ocean. That's the right latitude for the giant squid (Architeuthis) but too far north of the known range of the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis).

Melville/Ishmael cites the whalemen's belief that these mega-squid use their arms to root themselves "to the bed of the ocean; and that the sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it." The image of the squid as a benthic tree was likely suggested by the belief that the word "kraken" derived from an old Norwegian word for "uprooted tree." Some squid, such as Histioteuthis and Mastigoteuthis have been filmed "standing" on the sea-bed, but we've no reason to think that Architeuthis or Mesonychoteuthis make a habit of it. On the other hand, it's churlish to fault Melville for not getting it right. Moby Dick was published in 1851; Architeuthis was named (by Japetus Steenstrup) in 1856. 150 years later, we're still guessing about its habits, though the size issue has largely been resolved.

As for Melville's mile-wide squid, this exaggeration must have been a knowing one. Chapter 59 concludes with a brief acknowledgment of Bishop Erik Pontopiddan, who included kraken lore in his 1755 text Natural History of Norway. Melville/Ishmael correlates the Bishop's krake with the "white ghost" he observes, with the caveat that "much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it." A squid "furlongs in length" obviously warrants some abatement itself, so I suspect that Melville was winking at Ishmael, suggesting that his narrator might not be entirely reliable.

:roll:

Clem

[MobyDick]

Clem,

Thanks very much for your insights. That really clarifies matters for me. So kraken is just another word for squid, if I understand it right.

[Clem]

Moby,

Kraken is just another word for "sea monsters." It's the plural of krake. Modern Norwegians use the word blekksprut to describe octopus and squid; kjempeblekksprut is a giant squid.

Kraken rolls off the English tongue nicely, though. If I'm ever menaced by a big squid in a Norwegian fjord, I'm not gonna waste time trying to pronounce kjempeblekksprut. I'm gonna yell Kraken.

:heee:

Clem

[Tintenfisch]

We won't ask what you'd yell if you encountered a giant jellyfish. :)

In(k)identally, Germans also use the word Krake, mostly for octopus (though I have heard different definitions from different Germans), but also in the context of Riesenkrake, any enormous ceph (of necessity, mostly squid).

And blekksprut translates literally as 'ink-spitter.'

:mrgreen:

[Clem]

Moby,

Would you happen to know where Melville's whaling trips took him to?

If we could figure out where he went when he crewed with whalers, we could at least eliminate some of the big species. It is just possible that Melville saw pieces of Mesonychoteuthis coughed out of a sperm-whale, since the colossal comprises a hefty percentage of physeter's squid intake. His chances would have improved had he sailed south of New Zealand, and his ship taken a sperm whale fresh from Antarctic seas.



And blekksprut translates literally as 'ink-spitter.'

I thought it meant "200kg squid falling onto a concrete floor."

:heee:

Clem

[Tintenfisch]

I thought it meant "200kg squid falling onto a concrete floor."

There are words for this in several languages but unfortunately none are printable. ;)

[tonmo]

Related (even though it's a humpback):

'Moby' the White Whale Sighted Off Australia (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=585&e=3&u=/nm/20030711/sc_nm/life_australia_whale_dc)

[MobyDick]

Great sighting of a white whale, tonmo. If you submit Moby Dick as a search term to Google News, one of the result news items contains a picture of this albino whale.

As for Melville's whaling route, he sailed on a whaler called the Acushnet. The most up-to-date research on this must be the first volume of Hershel Parker's biography Herman Melville (1819-1851), published in 1996. Parker also prints a list of the crewmembers, so I guess he must have tracked down the route as well.

I will borrow this book again when I find the time.

[Clem]

"There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Mo-no, no, sorry, it's a squid, never mind. Pissant mile-wide squid. Sorry about that."

"There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Mo-oop, no, it's a humpback. Just a white humpback. My bad. Just furlongs of bad from Ol' Ahab. Sorry."

"There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick! Moby! Moby the irritating bald DJ! Shet mah mouth! Lower the boats!"

:boat:

[Clem]

As for Melville's whaling route, he sailed on a whaler called the Acushnet. The most up-to-date research on this must be the first volume of Hershel Parker's biography Herman Melville (1819-1851), published in 1996.

Moby,

Terrific sleuthing. Let us know what you find.

:notworth:

Clem

[Clem]

The Todd Mountain Theater Project (http://www.roxburyartsgroup.org/main/calendar/calendar.html#august) of Roxbury, New York is currently presenting a new play by Mr. Len Jenkin, "Kraken." The play explores the friendship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, with Architeuthis and Kraken serving as recurring motifs.

The production runs from August 7 'til August 16.