/lit/ - Literature

>>18590181
>Vladimir Nabokov
Who?

>>18590181
BASED
БAЗEД
BASED

>>18590181
Gonna need you to back that up. I thought Pale Fire was great.

>>18590563
Now go read Invitation to a Beheading.

>"Woe is me, I am persecuted by the whole world because I'm a super-smart genius intellectual who can't be understood by the small-brained narrow-minded neanderthals of common society." - Vladimir Nabokov

>>18590181
nabokov probably took literature more seriously than anyone else in the history of mankind before or since

>>18590181
I can't start another book until I finish the one I'm currently reading. I've been trudging through Lolita for months and I can't wait to finish so I can drop trou and take a dump on the cover.

>>18590181
for a guy who constantly bitched about authors being "moralists" he sure was a huge moralfag. he thought Don Quixote sucked Sancho gets whipped lol.

>>18590616
not more serious than Borges

>>18590181
Yeah, fuck that dude

>>18590634
>months
>309 pages

itt: a bunch of people who got offended because Nabokov said some of his favorite writers were bad (if I had to guess I would say it was Dostoievsky and Faulkner).

>>18590181
how can a man be this based, one can hardly fathom

>>18590634

If you don’t like Lolita you have serious aesthetic problems.

The book has glorious language (metaphorical poetry, the best kind of poetry), a disturbed and complexed narrator, some of the funniest humor ever created in serious literature, a character who has become a symbol in a way that few characters have ever did (Lolita) and a progression from comic and bizarre towards a gradually more tragic and deeply sad atmosphere.

I really don’t understand people who don’t like a book like this. What do you like to read? Blood Meridian?

>>18590843
It's amazing how subtly foolish every single part of this post is.

>>18590891
>subtly foolish
My own thought was ESL, so I opted to be generous.
Nonetheless an interesting descriptor; the words are rarely paired.

>>18590891
Care to explain, pseud?

>>18590843
Blood Meridians prose is ten times better lol.

>>18591407
Cormac McCarthy is a man's man writer if you're a loser who just graduated from high school. Anyone 25+ who's read a vast amount of literature cringe at their early obsession with his prose. Just you wait, big boy, five years from now you'll be doing it too.

>>18591434
t.filtered

>>18590181
he writes critiques like a shitposter, that is adjectives upon adjectives with zero evidence, therefore he deserves to be canonized in the /lit/ archives

Nabokov and McCarthy threads always draw ire

>>18590843
>"complexed"
>proceeds to suck off the book in the most 17 year old, ESL way
No wonder you got filteted by BM. McCarthy eats Nabokov any day if pure aesthetics is what you want. The irony in your post is amazing.

>>18591434
>who's
Filtered ESL

>>18590613
The small brained neanderthal who started this thread proved him right

>>18591523
Yeah, Borges threads too. I like all three of them equally but they are very divisive here

>>18591553
Now that I think of it, most authors are pretty divisive here. Strong opinions stand out

"I dislike Faulkner"

and with that, a generation of young stupid nerds will spend their time bemoaning one of our great masters of literature

>>18591549
bait or retarded? that was correct usage. It is a contraction of who has. whose is possessive

I liked Lolita and Pale Fire. I think many of his hot takes weren’t even actually sincere.

>>18591625
Joyce is better and Nabby knew this; he also knew that Tolstoy and Chekhov were leagues ahead of Dostoevsky, and that Melville was leagues ahead of Conrad (as was Hemingway, but they both still stuck); he was also correct in saying that, while he occasionally writes beautiful passages, Henry James was a massive autist

>>18590613
fuck off speed reader

>>18591631
You are retarded nigger. Stop pretending you are not ESL.
>"who's is Who has"

>NOOOOOOOOOO COWBOY CARNAGE 3 IS BETTER THAN PEDO PROF 4 YOURE JUST NOT MAN ENOUGH TO SEEEEEE

>>18591872
>COWBOY CARNAGE 3 IS BETTER THAN PEDO PROF 4
Yes

>>18591880
based

>>18591645
based reasonable anon

>>18590181
>an arrogant asshole who doesn't take literature seriously as an art form. He criticizes people who actually innovate and create real art while himself being an unoriginal hack.
Sounds based to me. In fact "criticizing people who actually [sic] innovate and create real [sic] art", is very based because most of these people need to be knocked down a few pegs. You need to back to your therapist and reddit if someone's criticism to one of your heroes sends you into this much of a frenzy.

>>18590181
Filtered.

>>18590181
You have no idea what you're talking about

>>18591657
He said no one above 15 should read Tolstoy.

>>18590181
He is an intelligent and very educated person from an old aristocratic family, it's expected for him to be arrogant and pretentious, though I do find his demeanor a bit distasteful sometimes. However, Nabokov is a great writer and definitely does take literature seriously and has a great passion for it, you should read his lectures - those can be quite insightful and interesting, even when he's writing about someone he "doesn't like", like Dostoevsky. And you shouldn't really take his comments about art being just a toy very seriously, Nabokov often wasn't honest about his views on morality or art, which he himself admits.
>In fact I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist: kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel - and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent and pride

He was great at: metaphor; precise description; narratorial ingenuity (his narrators are among the most surprising and peculiar in literature); evocation of a character's personality and characteristics through small details and singular gestures which most novelists would simply ignore (think of his description of Lolita's cheeks as she drinks); among other things.
Maybe you don't like metaphor.
Maybe you don't like description.
Maybe you don't like a good adjective or a good adverb and would rather run away looking for a noun (like I myself prefer to do when writing).
Maybe you don't even like writing. Maybe you just like stories and plot twists and cliff hangers and special effects.
And that's OK.
Trust me, it's completely OK.
But it would be silly to deny that Nabokov excelled at those things I mentioned.

>>18591489
You haven't even read his critiques. You only read a small selections from interviews.
He actually has some *very deep* analyses of classics in his lectures. In fact, his lectures are among the best books ever written on the subject of literary structure, which was a particular obsession of his. Very few people - even among famous critics - read as carefully as Nabokov. Those famous assertions calling other writers 'non-entities'' are very brief passages from interviews which he gave in a very nonchalant and humorous manner during his later years.
But he actually wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of careful literary analysis.
His university lectures were published in several volumes, and his study of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is famously gigantic and autistically detailed.

>>18591657
Notice how all the writers he likes conform to his universalist western liberal worldview?

>>18592415
>writing about someone he "doesn't like", like Dostoevsky

True, but as Nabokov himself said, and it's a very good thing that he said it: "For me, there are no authors, only books" (I am paraphrasing).

He disliked Dostoevsky's famous classics, but actually praises The Double, which he considered a very good book, though derivative of Gogol. He also absolutely loved Anna Karenina, while hating Kreutzer Sonata, and he loved Ulysses but disliked Finnegans Wake. This is actually a mark of a good reader. He wasn't impressed by reputation, only by the writing itself.

>>18592445
Since when does Dante conform to that? Maybe 'universalist', due to being a Catholic monarchist and a proponent of a new Roman empire, but certainly not liberal. And Shakespeare? We don't even know what his true beliefs were, but it seems to me that he was hardly a universalist, but rather an English patriot.
Remember that Nabokov considered Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare etc. the best writers of all time, despite most of his lectures being about novelists.

Stop looking for politics in everything, you YouTube-fed midwit.

>>18590891
Kek
Explain yourself or fuck off, retard

>>18591434
Look for a new hobby, retard. And stop pretending.

>>18592479
A lot of people misinterpret Dante as a secular universalist, because they interpret the HRE/Empire (Dante's side) vs. Papacy dispute as a secularism vs. religious dogmatism debate. This was actually a popular interpretation of Dante last century. Not that guy but thought I'd chime in.

>>18591658
Kek. Not him but i also read invitation to a beheading in one day, I loved it though.

>>18592415
>>18592441
>>18592447
>>18592479
great posts fellas. wish /lit/ was more like this!

>>18591546
Dumbest shit I have ever read. McCarthy cant compete with Nabokov.

>>18593047
You are dumb then.

>>18593051
t. Seething amerishart.

>>18593054
Dumbass yuropoor.
Nabokov was an American writer retard

>>18593058
Kek, Thanks for exposing yourself, Mr. Shart in Mart.

>>18590613
>Now go read Invitation to a Beheading.
Damn right, OP. I hated this book. It was so bad that I didn't even finish it. I never throw books into the trash, but for this one I made an exception.

>>18593067
Filter Status: HARD

>>18593063
>exposing yourself
You are fucking retarded. And you wanted to be taken seriously? Lmao

Pale fire Red pill? For all the praise it gets to me it seemed like a square slog with a literary device that's not nearly as interesting as reviews or the book itself have Tried to make me believe. What am I not getting here?

>>18593070
Thats all you got, muttyboy?

>>18593074
This is you

>>18593082
And this is you.

>>18590181
He couldn't enjoy music, he was clearly defective.

>>18593047
Only retarded ESLs think Nabocuck is even in competition.
>dumbest shit I have read
You must have read your posts surely. Can't beat that.

>>18593106
Mcfaggy writes easy accessible prose for easily impressed american retards. No one cares about rural mutt mongrels.

>>18593112
Hey, you are that guy from one week ago! Holy fuck, you are still seething lmao! McCarthy fucked your mama, innit?
>easy accessible prose for easily impressed american retards.
Even if your ESL ass believes that shit, this comparison makes no sense here because Nabokov is an even more casual and pleb friendly prose writer.

>>18593120
I have no idea what you are talking about but I am not suprised that there are more people here that dont like Mcfaggy and his boring stories about rural retards.

why is this the most retarded board

>>18593126
>doubt.jpg

>>18593135
Oh, some wojaks. Almost as original as your taste in prose.

>>18593134
I'd love to say reddit, but /pol/, sadly.

>>18593134
Nope, that would be /x/

>>18593138
More original than 3rd rate Flaubert for retards who are still learning English.
Them Npcs = your brethren tho.

>>18593149
Npcs? Like every single anon here claiming that the evening dilation in the west is best book evar?

>>18593144
at least /x/philes have some love and appreciation for their hobbies, no matter how retarded. people here just hate everything

>>18593164
More Pedokov loving pedos here more than BM lovers sadly. Casuals I tell you...

>>18593172
He thinks that lolita was pro-pedophilia..........Good job in humiliating yourself some more.

>>18593178
>hit a nerve
So easy to get pedos riled up. Be honest, that wasn't why you read Lolita originally, did you?
Got you mad, sweaty?

>>18593168
People here don't read.

>>18593187
OH MY GOOOOOOOD!!! THE JUDGE RAPE STHE KID!!!!! Stop projecting amerishart.

>>18593193
why are they here then

>>18593198
>The Judge rapes the kid
Where? LMAO. OFC THAT'S THE CONCLUSION YOU CAME TO.
CERTIFIED PEDO AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Fuck off you monster. Even here we don't like your kind.

>>18593209
No, thats the conclusion 99% of amerisharts came too and you know it. Just like always, its always gay or pedo shit with your kind. Always.

>>18593213
The Judge never even touches The Kid in a suggestive manner. You cannot draw conclusions on things that never happened, pedo. Try reading the book before seething like a toothless retard.

>>18593221
Tell this to your countrymen.

>>18593047
>Dumbest shit I have ever read. McCarthy cant compete with Nabokov.

This.

McCarthy goes for sound and shape of sentences, and also for tricks that have the aim of making his prose sound old and crude (like some sort of scripture).

Nabokov's prose shows a far more difficult and demanding kind of imagination: the creation of metaphors and a constant use of imagery, as is done in great poetry.

Prose like that of Melville and Nabokov are superior to the music of McCarthy, or Flaubert, or Faulkner, or even most of Joyce because of this gift for imagery.

I am not saying that Nabokov is the better writer. For me Lolita is a masterpiece, and I like Pale Fire too, but many of the plots and characters in his novels seem artificial and shallow to me. But his verbal gifts were superior to many writers who were better novelists. And as for Lolita, there is no denying that it is a perfect novel, so much so that it made the obscure Nabokov explode into the world as a household name.

>>18593486
>McCarthy goes for sound and shape of sentences, and also for tricks that have the aim of making his prose sound old and crude (like some sort of scripture).
>Nabokov's prose shows a far more difficult and demanding kind of imagination: the creation of metaphors and a constant use of imagery, as is done in great poetry
Dumbest shit I have ever read. McCarthy is far more descriptive and reliant on Imagery than Nabokov is in any of his books. McCarthy IS a proper imagist, Nabokov isn't. Imagery is all McCarthy writes, there is no SoC or reflection or reminiscences in his prose. Nabokov never shows that sort of stamina. Besides that factual error in your post I disagree with the poetry claim. McCarthy's prose reads closer to poetry than does Nabokov's. The intetnal rhythm isn't even comparable. Compare their audiobooks, not even close.
This is not even going into their use of grammar and flexibility with English. It would be like comparing a juggling act (Nabokov) to a full blown circus freakshow.

>>18590613
sounds based to me desu

>>18593072
No, you’ve got it. It’s just one of those books that you hate it or you love it. I loved it but I could see why someone pile hate it for the same reasons I love it.

>>18591734
baffling post

>>18593612

Are you that guy who is making McCarthy posts like a fanatic and defening him in every single thread?

Let me guess, McCarthy is greater than Shakespeare and Tolstoy too?

>>18593744
I made my first post here.
>Let me guess, McCarthy is greater than Shakespeare and Tolstoy too?
You don't like him it's fine but if you are simply going to stand claims on blatant misinformation then I don't see why I can't question them. His prose is certainly better than Tolstoy's but I did not read him in Russian.

Back at you, are you the same guy too obsessed with hating him in every BM thread? Or one of the 3 of them.

>>18593612
>McCarthy IS a proper imagist, Nabokov isn't. Imagery is all McCarthy writes,

Examples?

>>18591734
>t. Gustavo Eduardo José Lõpez

>>18593758
>His prose is certainly better than Tolstoy's

Tolstoy's greatness is not about the prose. Tolstoy was very limpid and simple in his prose, for verbal poetics where not his aim. He wasn't very sensible even to the poetry of Shakespeare's plays. So is normal that someone who writes prose more poetically is going to sound better.

What I was wondering is if would consider McCarthy a greater novelist and writer than Tolstoy. I honestly think you deem his style superior to the poetry of Shakespeare.

>>18593758
>Back at you, are you the same guy too obsessed with hating him in every BM thread? Or one of the 3 of them.

No. I just don't think is fair to say McCarthy is grater than Nabokov in the poetics of his language.

>>18593761
Read any book of his till and before BM. It is quite literally nothing but descriptions except for the dialogue. He greatly favours the simile over the metaphor, so his descriptions tend to present an image.
For singular example: Suttree's opening.

>>18593791
>McCarthy is grater than Nabokov in the poetics of his language.
Why? I like Nabokov btw, but his prose doesn't have the same rhythm of poetry. If you don't want to agree with me then look up what Banville says about the "singing quality" of his writing.
>I honestly think you deem his style superior to the poetry of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Goethe and Milton are all greater. Everyone else is fair game. I don't worship blind idols and I am certainly no fantatic of Tolstoy's.

Filtered hard. Nabokov is fire. Faggots will love joyce for his style (because joyce is 80% style) and then whine about nabokov. Eat my ass and seethe while you swallow my shit.

>>18593827
>and I am certainly no fantatic of Tolstoy's.

I rank Tolstoy above all writers except Shakespeare (and maybe Dante).

He is the greatest creator of characters after Shakespeare, and his men and women are even more realistic, more life-like than those of Shakespeare.

I also think Checkhov is as great as those other writers you named.

As for McCarthy, I dont thinkhe ever produced a poetic novel like Moby-Dick, but I think he has agreater number of consistent great works than Melville.

>>18593871
>I dont thinkhe ever produced a poetic novel like Moby-Dick
I think Blood meridian can compare as a poetic work. I recommend the audiobook if you haven't heard it. It is magnificient and does more justice to its language.

blood meridian is rapidly becoming the most overrated book of the 20th century here

>>18590190
bazed?

>>18593957
If you mean it in comparison with Moby dick then I don't see the problem. The comparison has been made since the early 90s and older /lit/ always rated it higher than MD back then. None of this is new.

>>18590786
>trudging
months because it's a bad book

>>18592377
He ranked Anna Karenina as the 19th century's masterpiece in prose writing, what exactly are you talking about brainlet?

>>18594081
Months because youre a retard. Protip: all of your responses to this comment will just prove my point

Hate Nabokov all you want but Petersonfags proved him right about Dostoyevsky

>>18590613
Oh my god you reminded me how terrible it is. What a waste of time.

>>18593612
>than does

Also, replacing full stops with 'and' doesn't equate, in any way, to "stamina".

>>18593758
>His prose is certainly better than Tolstoy's but I did not read him in Russian
nigga

>>18593800
>t is quite literally nothing but descriptions except for the dialogue.
This retard actually thinks being a good imagist means describing things.
Just off yourself.

>>18594518
You don't know shit dumb retard. Try reading it. You don't know the first thing about imagism.
>>18594472
If you simply want to be reductive and suck off Nabokov for his "nuance", then you are simply a hypocrite.

>>18594472
>implying there is anything wrong with "than does Nabokov"
Also, stop reddit spacing.

>>18593761
Is this extract from BM a good example?
>Even over that open terrain the concussion was immense. The howitzer in its truck leaped from the ground and clattered smoking backward across the packed clay. On the floodplain below the fort a terrible destruction had passed and upward of a dozen of the Yumas lay dead or writhing in the sand. A great howl went up among them and Glanton and his riders defiled out of the wooded littoral upriver and rode upon them and they cried out in rage at their betrayal

>>18591734

>>18595572

It's not bad, but then again, this is Moby Dick:
>It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

>But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?

>Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

>>18595674

Or here, Ahab to the cut-off head of a dead whale:

>It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed— while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”

Ot his small description of the sea:

>"When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang."

Or:

>Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?

>>18595759

Or this, from the Whitness of the Whale:

>“Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?”

>>18595766

Or this, the love-nest of the whales, in "The Grand Armada":

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly arrived from foreign parts.

“Line! line!” cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; “him fast! him fast!—Who line him! Who struck?—Two whale; one big, one little!”

“What ails ye, man?” cried Starbuck.

“Look-e here,” said Queequeg, pointing down.

As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan amours in the deep. [2]

And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.

>>18595572
I don't think this is a good one. The long sentences describing the landscapes are more in line with it.