THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-
FOOD
THE SUBPOEM
...................-
Sugar
WORD COUNT (Total)……...- 333
STANZA(S)............................-
18
—Stanzas
1-8 170
—Stanzas
9-18 163
THE LEADER........................- THE
STEINY ROAD POET
CO-LLABORATORS.............-
MODPO
STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS
About reading Tender Buttons thru Moby Dick: See introto Breakfast thru MD
“Yes, as every one knows,
meditation and water are wedded forever.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 1: Loomings
What did Gertrude Stein do
to prepare herself for a writing career? The short answer is that she spent
several months in London at the British Museum reading every novel written in
English that was in that collection.
A longer answer involves her
scientific background and what she said in her lectures in America. Having
scientific training and experience as an undergraduate researcher at Harvard
and then four years studying medicine afterwards at Johns Hopkins, Stein was
not likely to build a new career without a methodology. In “What Is English
Literature” from Lectures in America by
Gertrude Stein, she said, “It is awfully important to know what is and what
is not in your business” (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1957, p. 13).
In “Poetry and Grammar” from
Lectures in America, Stein spends
considerable effort saying she had not intended for Tender Buttons to be poetry but it is because she is reliant on
nouns to name the thing she loves. She points to Shakespeare as having “in the
forest of Arden…created a forest without mentioning the things that make a
forest.” She says you sense what is there but Shakespeare “does not name its
names” (p. 236). What she hoped to avoid in the language she chose was “imitation…of
sounds or colors or emotions” in favor of “intellectual recreation” (p. 238).
What the Steiny Road Poet is
saying is that Stein based her writing on writing already written but she did
not name names. A long standing reader of Stein will sense the things that make
Stein’s forest and then revel in her intellectual
recreation.
In looking at “Sugar.” through
Moby Dick, Steiny encountered
obstacles that were actually doors to other works of literature—the Prose Edda and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The composite
becomes a commentary on personal freedom relative to slavery in America,
racism, homosexual discrimination, and artistic choice.
SUGAR.
So Steiny asks where is the
sugar in Moby Dick? In Chapter 94: A
Squeeze of the Hand, Melville equates spermaceti oil to a sweetener. Of course,
sugar is a sweetener and since Stein’s “Sugar.” has nothing to do on the
surface with the white crystalline carbohydrate called sugar, a consumer of
this subpoem has to look elsewhere.
No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a
favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! [excerpt from Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand]
A violent luck and a whole sample and even then
quiet.
Steiny will back into stanza
1 based on believing strongly that Stein draws stanza 2 from Chapter 94: A
Squeeze of the Hand. Therefore, she thinks stanza 1 pertains to what happened
to Pip the cabin boy in Chapter 93: The Castaway when second mate Stubb took
Pip out in his whaleboat to replace an injured crewmate. When a whale goes
under Stubb’s boat, Pip, who is terrified, jumps out of the boat and worse gets
tangled in the active harpoon line. Tashtego, the harpoonist is forced then to
cut the line and lose his harpoon, which is attached to a whale. Otherwise Pip
would have been strangled to death. Stubb gives Pip some “wholesome advice”
which relates to Stein’s “whole sample.”
According to the Oxford
English Dictionary, sample is from an Anglo-Norman French variant of Old
French essample or “example” and example goes back to Latin exemplum “sample,
imitation,” from eximere “take out.”
Here’s the passage from Chapter
93: The Castaway:
"Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the
whale was lost and Pip was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little
negro was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting
these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like, but still half
humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficially gave him
much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never jump from a boat,
Pip, except—but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is.
Now, in general, STICK TO THE BOAT, is your true motto in whaling; but cases
will sometimes happen when LEAP FROM THE BOAT, is still better. Moreover, as if
perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted conscientious advice to
Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future; Stubb
suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command,
"Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump;
mind that. We can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would
sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and
don't jump any more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though
man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too
often interferes with his benevolence.
But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again.
One could say that Stubb
made an example of Pip by staying true to his word—if Pip jumped out the boat
again, then Pip would get left behind. The etymology of sample points to example
and take out which fits what happened
with Pip. The other thing about this passage is that Stubb’s threat to Pip
alludes to the slave market of Alabama where Pip’s monetary value would only be
one thirtieth of the value of a whale.
Water is squeezing, water is almost squeezing on
lard. Water, water is a mountain and it is selected and it is so practical that
there is no use in money. A mind under is exact and so it is necessary to have
a mouth and eye glasses.
Given the word squeeze, what
comes to mind is Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand. Here Ishmael is squeezing
fatty lumps of sperm whale blubber (lard) to make it liquid. All the stress of
Ahab’s quest to find the white whale vanishes into a crazy bliss that cannot be
sustained by the intellect or imagination in the face of everyday callings. For
now, I will table associations for mouth
and eye glasses.
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged
on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil
sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed
my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost
within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their
opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that
uncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I
declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all
about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my
heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that
sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely
free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the
morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I
squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found
myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands
for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving
feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing
their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer
cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come;
let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each
other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of
kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that
sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have
perceived that in all cases man must
eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not
placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart,
the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have
perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the
visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his
hands in a jar of spermaceti. [excerpt from Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand]
A question of sudden rises and more time than
awfulness is so easy and shady. There is precisely that noise.
A couple of things come to
mind relative to stanza 3. A question of sudden rises might point
to whales suddenly surfacing and being under a whale boat as was the case in
Chapter 93: The Castaway when Pip, startled by such action of the whale, jumped
out of the boat twice. In the last chapter: The Chase—The Third Day, the crew
of the Pequod see Fedullah’s body lashed to Moby Dick’s back. Melville often
describes Fedullah as a shady character. Ahab drops his harpoon and cries out,
reflecting on Fedullah’s prophesy about two hearses.
A peck a small piece not privately overseen, not at
all not a slice, not at all crestfallen and open, not at all mounting and
chaining and evenly surpassing, all the bidding comes to tea.
Melville uses birds both
metaphorically and actually. Therefore, peck
brings to mind avian instances such as the comment that passes between Stubb
and Flask about Ahab in Chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck:
But on the occasion in question, those dents looked
deeper, even as
his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark.
And, so full of his
thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he
made, now at the
main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost
see that thought
turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he
paced; so completely
possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the
inward mould of every
outer movement.
"D'ye mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb;
"the chick that's in him pecks
the shell. 'Twill
soon be out."
In Chapter 134: The
Chase—Second Day, Ahab is overheard muttering to himself about the loss of
Fedullah, whom he refers to as the Parsee, and what Fedullah’s death means.
Ahab says it is a puzzle that like a hawk’s beak pecks at his brain. This
passage also seems to be operative for Stein’s stanza 9.
"And as mechanical," muttered Ahab. Then as
the men went forward, he
muttered on: "The things called omens! And
yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh!
how valiantly I seek to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in
mine!—The Parsee—the Parsee!—gone, gone? and he was to go before:--but still
was to be seen again ere I could perish—How's that?—There's a riddle now might
baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges:—like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain.
I'LL, I'LL solve it, though!"
These two passages seem to
set up the use of the word peck in
Chapter 135: The Chase—Third Day. Melville uses the word peck twice in this chapter. The first reference pertains to a hawk
visiting the Pequod to peck and tear away the red flag flying on the mainmast. Flags
often carried the crest of owners and so we could view this theft as a crest
falling incident.
“…drive off that hawk! see! he pecks—he tears the vane"—pointing to the red flag flying at
the main-truck—"Ha! he soars away with it!—Where's the old man now? see'st
thou that sight, oh Ahab!—shudder, shudder!"
The second use of peck depicts Tashtego nailing up a new
flag to the mast but his effort is hampered by the marauding hawk that ends up
getting nailed to the mast. As Melville describes what happens to the bird, it
seems the bird becomes part of “the flag of Ahab” as if he is a living crest.
But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured
themselves over the
sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a
few inches of the
erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming
yards of the flag,
which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings,
over the destroying
billows they almost touched;—at that instant, a red
arm and a hammer
hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the
act of nailing
the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar.
A sky-hawk that
tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from
its natural home
among the stars, pecking
at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there;
this bird now chanced to intercept its broad
fluttering wing between the
hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that
etherial thrill,
the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept
his hammer frozen
there; and so
the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his
imperial beak thrust upwards, and his
whole captive form folded in the
flag of Ahab, went down
with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink
to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven
along with her, and
helmeted herself with it.
An interpretation of not at all mounting and chaining and evenly
surpassing, all the bidding comes to tea could point to the activities of
catching a whale which when done well come
to a T, perfection. Or at least the bidding or order/commands of Captain
Ahab from his perspective would be rated that way.
A separation is not tightly in worsted and sauce, it
is so kept well and sectionally.
Stanza 5 could be
referencing Chapter 83: Jonah Historically Regarded. This chapter deals with
the story of Jonah and the whale. The following paragraph from that chapter
uses the word worsted (meaning gotten
the advantage over, to defeat or beat) and discusses a real life possibility
that Jonah’s whale was a ship called The Whale.
One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for
questioning the Hebrew story was this:—He had one of those quaint old-fashioned
Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented
Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head—a peculiarity only true with respect
to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the varieties of that
order), concerning which the fishermen have this saying, "A penny roll
would choke him"; his swallow is so very small. But, to this, Bishop
Jebb's anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints the Bishop,
that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale's belly, but as temporarily
lodged in some part of his mouth. And this seems reasonable enough in the good
Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale's mouth would accommodate a couple of
whist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might
have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right
Whale is toothless.
Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that
name) urged for his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something
obscurely in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric juices.
But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist
supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a DEAD
whale--even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned their dead
horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has been divined by other
continental commentators, that when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa
ship, he straightway effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel
with a whale for a figure-head; and, I would add, possibly called "The
Whale," as some craft are nowadays christened the "Shark," the
"Gull," the "Eagle." Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that
the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver—an
inflated bag of wind—which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved
from a watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had still another reason for his want of
faith. It was this, if I remember right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in
the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days he was vomited up somewhere within
three days' journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much more than three
days' journey across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast. How is
that?
Put it in the stew, put it to shame. A little slight
shadow and a solid fine furnace.
The teasing is tender and trying and thoughtful.
Stanzas 6 and 7 seem to
point to the first whale killed by the crew of the Pequod. The whaling team was
Tashtego and Stubb. Once the whale is moored with chains to the Pequod, Stubb
orders a midnight dinner of whale steak from the Black cook Fleece, but he
tells the old man the steak is overcooked and that cook has beaten it too much
so the steak is also too tender. Then he teases Fleece, who has been summoned
from sleep, to tell the sharks to quit feasting on the dead whale.
"Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a
rather reddish morsel to his mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone? You've been beating
this steak too much, cook; it's too
tender. Don't I always say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now over the side, don't you
see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go
and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in
moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice.
Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this lantern," snatching
one from his sideboard; "now then, go and preach to 'em!" [Chapter 64: Stubb’s Supper]
The line which sets sprinkling to be a remedy is
beside the best cold.
The rope line which attaches
to a harpoon gets burning hot after the harpoon is thrown. In Chapter 61: Stubb
Kills a Whale, Stubb accidentally drops his hand-cloths and then calls out for
the line to be wet (sprinkled with sea water) in order to cool it down.
"Ka-la! Koo-loo!" howled Queequeg, as if
smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and
yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van,
still encouraged his men to the onset,
all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged
and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard—"Stand up,
Tashtego!—give it to him!" The harpoon was hurled. "Stern all!"
The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something
went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical line. An instant before,
Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead,
whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now
jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed
round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it
blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's hands, from which the
hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had
accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged sword by
the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.
"Wet the
line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated by the
tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.* More turns were
taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew through the
boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed
places—stem for stern—a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion.
*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it
may here be stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the
running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is
set apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient.
A puzzle, a monster puzzle, a heavy choking, a
neglected Tuesday.
Melville uses the word monster frequently to refer to Moby Dick
and Ahab is heard muttering about the puzzle the monster has created relative
to the loss of Ahab’s special mate Fedullah in Chapter 134: The Chase—Second
Day and what Fedullah’s death means. Ahab says it is a puzzle that like a
hawk’s beak that pecks at his brain. This passage also seems to be operative
for Stein’s stanza 9 (the scene is mentioned in the discussion of stanza 4 of
“Sugar.”). However, the word Tuesday,
and a neglected Tuesday at that,
remains a mystery until Steiny investigated the etymology of Tuesday.
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