Moby Dick

En New Bedford el relator sale, una mañana fría, a conocer la capilla del pueblo, en donde encuentra a los fieles rezando. Se sientan separados, aislados en su dolor por la pérdida de sus seres queridos. En las paredes inscripciones de mármol recuerdan a aquellos marinos que perdieron la vida en los mares embravecidos. A la memoria de John Talbot, Robert Long, o Willis Ellery dicen. Queequeg, cerca, es el único que lo nota. No sabe leer por lo que no se interesa por las placas en las paredes.

En vocabulario encontramos moody, stroll, sallied out, shaggy, bleak.

Del clásico de Herman Melville, Moby Dick, en inglés…

 

… Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit…

 

Generalidades

Moby-Dick; o, The Whale es una novela de 1851 del autor norteamericano Herman Melville. Cuando Moby-Dick se publicó recibió diferentes críticas, fue un fracaso comercial y no estaba en circulación al momento de la muerte del autor en 1891.

Melville sacó de sus experiencias como marinero entre 1841 y 1844, incluyendo varios años en balleneros y una gran cantidad de lectura sobre los mismos. Las detalladas descripciones de la caza de las ballenas y la extracción del aceite, así como la vida a bordo entre una comunidad culturalmente diversa, se mezclan con la exploración de las clases y el status social, el bien y el mal y la existencia de Dios.

Arrowhead, la residencia de Herman Melville en Massachusetts

Paragraphs

. . . In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:

Sacred to the memory of John Talbot, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.

Sacred to the memory of Robert Long, Willis Ellery, Nathan Coleman, Walter Canny, Seth Macy, and Samuel Gleig, Forming one of the boats' crews of the ship ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the Pacific, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.

Sacred to the memory of the late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, AUGUST 3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall.

Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh… (Excerpts from Moby Dick, The Chapel, by Herman Melville)

Vocabulario

Moody: (of a person) given to unpredictable changes of mood, especially sudden bouts of gloominess or sullenness.

His moody adolescent brother.

Stroll: a short leisurely walk.

We took a stroll in the garden.

Sally out: set out.

Shaggy: having, covered with, or resembling long rough hair or wool.

Bleak: cold and cutting; raw:

Bleak winds of the North Atlantic.

Recursos

You can read a summary of the novel in this page:

Moby Dick´s Summary, from Cliffsnotes

This is a wonderful page to read about the characters, Shmoop:

Characters, from Shmoop

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