Only a gentle whale is unlucky: the tragic story of cetacean relations with humans
Another book from the cultural and historical cycle of the French medievalist Michel Pastoureau devoted to animals is imbued with special sadness and sympathy for its hero, the whale. All the animals studied by Pasturo (bear, pig, wolf, bull, raven) have suffered from humans in one way or another, but the whale, which is on the verge of extinction, seems to have suffered the most, despite its enormous size, or, conversely, because of them — too much benefit and greed. Thrifty bipeds can extract from whale carcasses. Critic Lidia Maslova presents the book of the week, especially for Izvestia.
Michel Pastouro
"The Whale: a cultural history"
Moscow: AST: Ice, 2025. — Preface by M. R. Maizuls; [translated from French by Stanislav Mukhamedzhanov]. — 176 p .
In the introductory article "Whales and Other Marine People," Mikhail Maizuls, Pasturo's Russian colleague, notes that "in the cultural history of whales, a special place belongs to the communities that were mentioned in the Bible and then began to play an important role in Christian tradition. We are talking about the monstrous Leviathan, which turned into one of the personifications of the devil, and about the huge creature that swallowed the prophet Jonah."
However, subsequently, the image of the whale in human consciousness underwent a significant evolution: "... whales, which once inspired horror and were often associated with angry gods, and in the Christian world with the devil, have acquired a fundamentally different status in modern culture: victims of human greed and cute characters in books for children." Today, as Pasturo writes, "we are no longer talking about an ugly whale, but about ugly people — sea robbers and exterminators of wild animals," and "the gentle whale has not only found its place in children's books and works of art," but has also become an emblem of environmental protection and a dying planet.
Giving in the preface a brief overview of ancient treatises and encyclopedias devoted to marine life, which could hide whales or their relatives, Maisuls calls the study of Pasturo a modern analogue of the "Book of Fishes" (Visboeck), which began to be written in 1577 by a hereditary fisherman, and later fishmonger Adrian Kunen from the town of Scheveningen on the shores of the North Sea. Following Cunen, Pasturo tells "about real sea giants, their fictional relatives, and the peoples who lived by the sea." In "The Whale" there is a miniature from the "Book of Fishes" — a spread with the image of a whale washed ashore near Antwerp. It's hard not to give symbolic meaning to the mise en scene, in which a huge black carcass with a sad, extinct eye lies helplessly on the shore, while enterprising little men scurry around it.
This drawing is echoed in Pasturo's book by numerous descriptions of the cruel and dangerous whale hunting and its subsequent butchering: "... the whale was fixed along the hull of the ship with ropes and ropes, most often on the starboard side. Then a special platform descended to it, which made it possible to start extracting the fat — a lengthy and complex operation, at the beginning of which special pointed blades were used, and at the end — cutting knives. The skeleton of the animal was thrown away to be eaten by sharks and birds. The fat was lifted on board as the carcass was being butchered and immediately melted. If a sperm whale was caught, the head was cut up first, because expensive spermaceti was extracted from it."
Pasturo dwells in detail on the famous literary sperm whale named Moby Dick, who managed to take revenge in a confrontation with a man. Herman Melville's famous 1851 novel Moby Dick was inspired by the tragic story that happened to the Essex whaling ship in 1820. Attacked by a huge sperm whale, it crashed in the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, eight of the 20 sailors remained alive: three stayed on the island, and five drifted in boats, slowly eating each other, until they were picked up by passing ships. One of the survivors, Owen Chase, wrote down his impressions of the events, and his son gave these notes a few years later to Melville, who served as a cabin boy on a merchant ship, but dreamed of retraining as a marine writer. In addition, Melville was impressed by Jeremiah N. Reynolds' article "Urine Dick, or the White Pacific Whale," published in 1839, which told about a giant albino sperm whale living in the southern waters of the Pacific Ocean.
However, Melville's ambitions as a writer and thinker extended much further than a fictionalized retelling of sailor adventures or a documentary description of an outstanding biological specimen. "It's not easy to reproduce this story briefly," admits Pasturo, who considers it his duty to help the reader get at least an approximate idea of Moby Dick, one of the main works of American literature, which can scare off with its whale—like dimensions. Melville managed to load his sperm whale to the brim with all sorts of information, both practical and abstract-theoretical: "... the presentation of events is interspersed with chapters describing the species of whales, hunting techniques, what expensive products can be obtained from them, as well as, even more unexpectedly, chapters with discussions about economics. free trade, social classes, good and evil, and even the existence of God. The long journey of a whaling ship in pursuit of a whale is not just a hunt for an animal, but also a metaphysical search."
Deciphering the hidden meanings of "Moby Dick", Pasturo returns to biblical symbols and metaphors — the Bible was already useful to him at the beginning of the study, where Leviathan ("a creature from the depths of the ocean, the embodiment of all evil forces hostile to Yahweh") and the cetacean monster, in whose womb the prophet Jonah served three days of punishment for disobedience ("Christian exegesis early began to draw a parallel between the story of Jonah and the story of Christ, who died on the cross, descended into hell and rose on the third day"). In Melville, Pasturo draws attention to Old Testament allusions in the names of the central characters: "Ahab was the name of the wicked and cursed king of Israel; and Ishmael was the eldest son of Abraham, adopted by him from a slave girl and exiled with his mother to the desert, where he almost died of thirst."
The half—mad Captain Ahab, who is hunting Moby Dick to avenge his bitten-off leg, really looks like a completely negative character in Pasturo's description: "His prosthetic whale bone is the focus of hatred for all cetaceans and a reminder of the obsession bordering on madness that pushes him to search for Moby Dick." However, Pasturo does not rush to draw conclusions about whether the Melville sperm whale should be considered a positive hero, presenting the reader with a guess for himself what Moby Dick's whiteness symbolizes: "Of course, it is opposed to the dark captain, but is it justified to believe that Moby Dick's color makes him a symbol of good fighting evil?"
But the image of the whale in modern art, samples of which adorn the final pages, can be considered unambiguously positive. For example, a rather conventional drawing by the surrealist Eric Ditman, where it would not be so easy to identify a whale without a signature.: "In modern art, comics, and children's drawings, a whale is depicted in completely different ways, but it can always be recognized by four signs: its colossal size, fish tail, disproportionately large head, and melancholic smile." The whale has something to fall into melancholy from, as Pastoureau hints, quoting in the finale of the book the ichthyologist Bernard Lacepede, who predicted back in 1804: "Today the sea giants are dying from human weapons. But since man's genius is immortal, and knowledge is now limitless, whales will remain a victim of his interest until the last individual of this species disappears."
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