July 3, 2019 - Chapter Forty-nine

A short chapter follows the first whale hunt, with a reminder to the reader that Ishmael is on his first whaling voyage and was previously unaware of how apparently dangerous such expeditions are. Now having this knowledge, he prepares his will. He says, “After the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might be.”

I was here reminded not only of the stone before Jesus’s grave famously rolled away when found on Easter morning, but also of a poem by Robert Browning about the case of Lazarus. This poem, entitled “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” (and available here), is the report of a doctor who treats the resurrected Lazarus, finding him far worse for the wear for having been dead before Jesus raised him.

The point here is that, despite Ishmael’s claim to the resurrected Lazarus feeling good, a contemporary writer of his came to the opposite conclusion. Whether Melville was aware of the poem I cannot say, but knowing one way or the other could lead to further conclusions about Melville’s foreshadowing.