From Hell's heart I stab at thee!
Jul. 10th, 2006 12:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaYep, still on about the Pirates.
So,
Though "Dead Man's Chest" managed to include nearly every seafaring and pirate cliche in the history of film and fiction, there was no Whirlpool, no famous Maelstrom of the Norsemen (not to mention the version in Edgar Allan Poe's creepy story, "Descent into the Maelstrom"). So I assume a Vortex or Whirlpool will turn up in POTC3.
But right now I am just altogether happily savoring the AMAZING Moby-Dick references, which didn't strike me until this afternoon, while I was trying to figure out what was so familiar about Jack's exit line to the Kraken, "Hello, Beastie!"
"I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces,
while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"
It is Ahab's great moment, when he confronts the Leviathan of the deep, and the Beast swallows him and his ship together. I love the fact that Mad Jack Sparrow has his Ahab moment equally alone, confronting the monster laughing, while from the escaping longboatIshamael and the crew of the Pequod Will and Elizabeth and the crew stare aghast.
And it's not as if we weren't warned that Jack and the Pearl would go down to the Kraken, for consider how we first met Jack again, back at the beginning of the movie: he was, hilariously, escaping from dire peril and floating to safety in a coffin. Which perfectly echoes Ishmael's escape floating on the coffin of Queequeg: "Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main."
Yeh, the boys has read their sea classics.
Only other thing missing is the Ancient Mariner and his pet albatross, which may yet turn up in POTC3.
Oh, and maybe the Bermuda Triangle.
So,
Though "Dead Man's Chest" managed to include nearly every seafaring and pirate cliche in the history of film and fiction, there was no Whirlpool, no famous Maelstrom of the Norsemen (not to mention the version in Edgar Allan Poe's creepy story, "Descent into the Maelstrom"). So I assume a Vortex or Whirlpool will turn up in POTC3.
But right now I am just altogether happily savoring the AMAZING Moby-Dick references, which didn't strike me until this afternoon, while I was trying to figure out what was so familiar about Jack's exit line to the Kraken, "Hello, Beastie!"
"I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces,
while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"
It is Ahab's great moment, when he confronts the Leviathan of the deep, and the Beast swallows him and his ship together. I love the fact that Mad Jack Sparrow has his Ahab moment equally alone, confronting the monster laughing, while from the escaping longboat
And it's not as if we weren't warned that Jack and the Pearl would go down to the Kraken, for consider how we first met Jack again, back at the beginning of the movie: he was, hilariously, escaping from dire peril and floating to safety in a coffin. Which perfectly echoes Ishmael's escape floating on the coffin of Queequeg: "Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main."
Yeh, the boys has read their sea classics.
Only other thing missing is the Ancient Mariner and his pet albatross, which may yet turn up in POTC3.
Oh, and maybe the Bermuda Triangle.
