The whiteness of the whale, silence du chant

Abstract

Chapter 42 in Moby-Dick might well be said to be Melville's most complex speculation on the unnamable. Maneuvering between explanation and illustration, analysis and incantation, question and silence, terror and mystery, the discourse proceeds forward and backward to an unlikely understanging of the « phenomenon » of whiteness. Though unveilings but reveal other veils, the narrator's logical imagination will have eventually made an eventful journey through both values of the chromatic idea : hue and tone. Hence our discussion of painting and song, the visible and the inaudible. The method of presentation makes use of the « weaver's loom » metaphor : « In all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. » (102 : 375)