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Moby-Dick

By Elizabeth Renker, Herman Melville

(421)

| Paperback | 9780451526991

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Book Description

A novel that explores the darkest depths and brightest hopes in the souls of men, Moby-Dick is an impassioned drama of the ultimate human struggle that the Atlantic Monthly called "the greatest of American novels."

Critics

La nave Pequod tra quattro oceani

Il viaggio della nave Pequod tra quattro oceani e infinite digressioni, in caccia di un’enorme balena, ha reso Moby Dick (Il Narratore) di Herman Melville un classico americano. Per la prima volta, con una nuova traduzione di Alberto Rossatti, esce u ... (read full critics)

corrieredellasera published on Mon, 16 May 2011

La nave Pequod tra quattro oceani

Il viaggio della nave Pequod tra quattro oceani e infinite digressioni, in caccia di un’enorme balena, ha reso Moby Dick (Il Narratore) di Herman Melville un classico americano. Per la prima volta, con una nuova traduzione di Alberto Rossatti, esce u ... (read full critics)

corrieredellasera published on Mon, 16 May 2011

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12 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

Pesante, sarà anche bello, molto allegorico e pieno di riferimenti etc.etc., ma leggerlo tutto, sforzandosi di non saltare nemmeno le descrizioni dei vari tipi di balene, si è rivelato un'impresa!
La storia della discesa nell'ossessione del capitano Ahab, ossessione nella quale trascinerà poi anche ... (continue)

Pesante, sarà anche bello, molto allegorico e pieno di riferimenti etc.etc., ma leggerlo tutto, sforzandosi di non saltare nemmeno le descrizioni dei vari tipi di balene, si è rivelato un'impresa!
La storia della discesa nell'ossessione del capitano Ahab, ossessione nella quale trascinerà poi anche tutto il suo equipaggio, è ben resa e attraverso gli occhi di Ishmael non ci perdiamo nessuno di quei sintomi che da psicologa mi sento di temere e parecchio pure; quando nelle ultime dieci pagine si conclude il tutto non ci si può dimenticare l'affermazione di Starbuck, che più di tutti aveva cercato di impedire ad Ahab la caccia della balena bianca: "Oh Ahab, not too late is it, even now...See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is Thou, that madly seeks him!" E invece era già troppo tardi.

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Gonza said on Feb 7, 2012 | 9 feedbacks

1 person find this helpful

And on the third day...

This is a huge barrel of whaling lore, brimful and stoppered with every possible scrap of information about 19th century whaling ships, about the men who sailed them, the tools they used and the skills needed for the nearly impossible task of hunting the great sperm whale for his precious oil. But ... (continue)

This is a huge barrel of whaling lore, brimful and stoppered with every possible scrap of information about 19th century whaling ships, about the men who sailed them, the tools they used and the skills needed for the nearly impossible task of hunting the great sperm whale for his precious oil. But underneath all that blubber beats the comparatively small but throbbing heart of a great adventure story, peopled with entertaining characters straight out of Shakespeare and pervaded with biblical foreshadowings of doom.
And I got to the last page on Easter Sunday

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Top of the pile said on Apr 27, 2011 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | 1 feedback

1 person find this helpful

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it re ... (continue)

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principal to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get sea as soon as I can. This is my substitue for pistol and ball."
mi succede di provare certe sensazioni ultimamente! non sarebbe male prendere il mare, almeno metaforicamente parlando!

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Pal Sil3 said on Feb 9, 2008 | Add your feedback

http://broncobilli.blogspot.com/2010/11/libri-che-leggo…

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Riccardo Mariani said on Dec 5, 2011 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

De toutes les matières, c'est la ouate que je préfère!

Oh my Holy Goodness Gracious! When has it last occurred to me to need five months! - not three, not four: five! - to read a book? It almost felt like I was traveling myself on the Pequod along with Ishmael, Queequeg, Ahab and the rest of the crew: a harsh, long protracted journey by the slow rhythm ... (continue)

Oh my Holy Goodness Gracious! When has it last occurred to me to need five months! - not three, not four: five! - to read a book? It almost felt like I was traveling myself on the Pequod along with Ishmael, Queequeg, Ahab and the rest of the crew: a harsh, long protracted journey by the slow rhythm of a Nineteenth Century sailboat. And as difficult and lengthy and tortuous as it may have been, I enjoyed it. How's that possible? Well, just as some people enjoy to spend a night in a cold, humid tent among mosquitoes and other bugs yet without a bed and a bathroom while they could just as well spend that night in a comfortable hotel room; just as those people did I enjoy a rustic, comfortless journey reading through the "pagewaves" of this lofty, glorious "bookocean". Having understood by far not all of it's 1851-old, literary, experimental and oftentimes technical language (I should however add that I am not a native English speaker), and this having contributed to understand only fragments of it's convoluted complexity (which, of course, is not merely due to the language, but knowing English well does help), I shall nevertheless always carry with me a cherished memory of the hard reading work done between June 22nd and November 22nd 2011 (I told you it was exactly five months. And I didn't even cheat: it happened completely by chance. Bringing back the volume to the library - being aware i had renewed the loan an almost embarrassing amount of times -, I asked the librarian to remind me when I had first taken it, and she told me: 22nd of June. Maybe it's a sign of something rich and strange...).
But from now on, I shall never forget that no matter how many lungs a fish has, no matter how boiling hot his blood: arguing that because of such trivialities he cannot be a fish is simply humbug, or at least an insufficient reason. I shall never forget that no matter how many whales men will hunt, the whale is immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. There are simply too many sperm whales in the seas to be all killed by our greedy species. I shall never forget that if you take high abstracted man alone, he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. I shall never forget the heart and will I got, reading that not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favorites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out.
And as much as these few examples may give the impression I'm making fun of "Moby Dick or The Whale" (true blasphemy!), it is not the case, let me state this very clearly. Especially, in this contemporary fast pacing world of ours, we all too often rely on some so-called scientific truths, forgetting that any human truth is just one definition of an immanent objective truth. I constantly forget to remind this to myself. Perhaps, carrying this great novel of Captain Ahab chasing the giant White Whale across the world will help me keeping that in mind more often. I wish you a trying yet most worthwhile reading.

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Alessandro Persia said on Nov 25, 2011 about the Audio Cassette edition | Add your feedback

A book I've long wanted to read but dreaded actually doing because I knew it was a long book and feared it would be quite boring. Turns out it wasn't, a big help in getting through it too was the fact that the chapters were short so you kept thinking "ok, I'll read one more chapter and quit" and be ... (continue)

A book I've long wanted to read but dreaded actually doing because I knew it was a long book and feared it would be quite boring. Turns out it wasn't, a big help in getting through it too was the fact that the chapters were short so you kept thinking "ok, I'll read one more chapter and quit" and before you realized it you'd read 15 more chapters. This book tells the story of Ishmael and his adventures aboard a whaling ship in the mid 19th century. While he recounts his adventures hunting and killing whales the Captain (Ahab) is obsessed with killing the famous white whale Moby Dick and drives his crew relentlessly in his pursuit. During the story Melville intersperses chapters where he discusses the whale philosophically, historically and scientifically. Melville also adds separate chapters where he describes how whaling is actually done and describes the tools/methods used to extract the oil from the sperm whales. Although Moby Dick is always present in the book the final hunt doesn't actually begin until Chapter 133 of 135.

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Stcin10 said on Jan 13, 2011 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | Add your feedback