Moby-Dick, tragédie de la médiation

In Moby-Dick, tragedy is, for character, narrator, and author alike, fundamentally a problem of mediation. Ahab may ultimately be in pursuit of a high «romantic object» ; but despite his deepening aversion to the material world, he «must use tools» to attain that goal. And «there's the rub» : the concrete world reveals itself in practice to be as little «trustworthy» as his ivory leg ; the whale-line-often « magical » at times « terrible »-does indeed turn out to be a hangman's noose. If on the level of tragic plot Ahab's metaphysical quest thus ends in the triumph of matter over spirit, the problem of mediation arises once again for narrator and author. The question is, how to give form to this « tragedy of thought » (as A. W. von Shlegel described Hamlet)-i. e., how to render Ahab's tragic greatness and make Ishmael himself a modern equivalent of the Greek chorus without falling victim to the treacheries of material representation ?Urbas Joseph. Moby-Dick, tragédie de la médiation. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°82, octobre 1999. La Tragédie : variations américaines. pp. 34-57