There being division, I am able to observe myself, to be at once within and without, and an exploration occurs, inwardly derived, over the surfaces, the topography of face and head, and downward over my body; I gain the sense of being different, of causing this difference in myself, of altering the outwardness of myself. I discover that flesh and muscle, perhaps even bone, and certainly cartilage, are potentially alterable, according as the plan is laid down. And the plan itself may shift and change: I may be this Michael or that, Stonecipher or Mills — Western Man or Indian, sea-dog or lubber, large-headed or small, living then or now; and even such outrageous fables as that of converting Ulysses’ men into swine become not unreasonable, when we understand that the men must have experienced some swinish designs within themselves, to which Circe had access. .
Certainly, the study of Man: Literature is the study of Man: Anatomy. . when it ceases to be, books become merely literary.
(Melville: “I rejoice in my spine.”
Leaning back in the chair, my body straight out, I let the awareness sweep, as a tide, through my trunk, down my legs and into my feet.
Ahab: “. . I’ll order a complete man after a desirable pattern. Imprimus, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to ’em, to stay in one place. .”
and, with the carpenter,
“Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?
“Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?
“It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, to a hair, do I. Is’t a riddle?
“I should humbly call it a poser, sir.
“Hiss, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most solitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers?”
A sudden fury lashes me, a desire to mutilate myself, to amputate the great, round, ugly globe of a clubfoot — to make it not me. As in MARDI, in the chapter Dedicated To The College Of Physicians And Surgeons,
“In Polynesia, every man is his own barber and surgeon, cutting off his beard or arm, as occasion demands. No unusual thing, for the warriors. . to saw off their own limbs, desperately wounded in battle. .”
and
“The wound was then scorched, and held over the smoke of the fire, till all signs of blood vanished. From that day forward it healed, and troubled Samoa but little.
“But shall the sequel be told? How that, superstitiously averse to burying in the sea the dead limb of a body yet living; since in that case Samoa held, that he must very soon drown and follow it; and how, that equally dreading to keep the thing near him, he at last hung it aloft from the topmast-stay; where yet it was suspended, bandaged over and over in cerements. .
“Now, which was Samoa? The dead arm swinging high as Haman? Or the living trunk below? Was the arm severed from the body, or the body from the arm? The residual part of Samoa was alive, and therefore we say it was he. But which of the writhing sections of a ten times severed worm, is the worm proper?”
The fury lingers, contorting, aggravating. .
“Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung.”
and there was the woman in the mental hospital, brought onto the platform in the lecture hall to demonstrate for the medical students, of which I was one — she suffered with a compulsion to strip her ragged clothes, and over and over to lash herself. .
The anger quiets a little, becoming sardonic, and then wrying into a smile. Again, there is Ahab:
“. . for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.”
And Melville himself, reading of a writer whose work was presumed to be influenced by his illness, makes a marginal comment:
“So is every one influenced — the robust, the weak, all constitutions — by the very fibre of the flesh, & chalk of the bone. We are what we were made.”
THREE
Rising, I turn from the desk, and begin to walk, without aim, but confined by the structure of the attic itself. I think again of the infant Melville, held motionless through a brain-caking hiatus, before his delivery; and then of myself, and of the medical data regarding Talipes:
The notion that heredity may not be a factor; that, more likely, clubfoot results from the maintenance of a strained position in the uterus, or entanglement with the cord, or interlocking of the feet. .
And further:
“Equinus—The heel cord and the posterior structures of the leg are contracted, holding the foot in plantarflection. The arch of the foot is abnormally elevated into cavus and weight is borne on the ball of the foot. In infancy, correction may be accomplished by successive plasters gradually forcing the foot into dorsiflexion. It is extremely important that the cavus, or high arch, be corrected before the cord is lengthened. It may be necessary to sever the contracted structures on the sole of the foot. These consist principally of the plantar fascia and short toe flexors. These structures may be divided subcutaneously. After the cavus deformity has been completely corrected, the heel cord may be lengthened by tenotomy or successive plaster.”
“Valgus—In early infancy, the foot should be manipulated daily by the mother, twisting it into a position of adduction and inversion. A light aluminum splint should be worn day and night to maintain correction. . After care consists in the wearing of a Thomas heel and special exercises to develop the anticus, posticus and toe flexors.”
I have observed these operations and manipulations, performed on others; but in my own case, things being as they were, none of this was done.
The westward end of the attic, farthest removed from the chimney, is cold, and I hear the rain against the side of the house. I turn, and amble back to the desk.
“I was struck with the singular position he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod’s quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable willfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance.”