Great Paper: "Moby Dick" By Hermann Melville ~A Shade Translucent~

Great Paper: Moby Dick by Hermann Melville 

~A Shade Translucent~

Ishmeal stands on the deck of the Pequod late in the hours of some windy night at sea. He stands out on the deck and looks upwards to the massive canopy of the night sky. Scattered across its appearence is a multitude of white points, things called stars, dotted all over across the wide dark expanse. Im not entirely sure what the author means in this passage, but i think it may have something to do with the numb feeling of the aspect of Nature, and the natural world. He stands out on the deck late at night and speculates on it. To himself, and very much so to the reader.

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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 earthy 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 subtle 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, forever 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

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